Teachers
Effective versus Ineffective Teacher Traits:
Eye contact: All students appreciate eye contact, but little dancers especially need this individual focus to help them stay engaged and create a positive relationship with the teacher. Eye contact and a warm facial expression creates a caring, positive bond. Eye contact can also be used for behavioral management when paired with a more neutral facial expression and a flatter tone of voice.
Lack of eye contact or a distant gaze: Teachers who don’t make eye contact with little dancers have more difficulty holding their attention, creating a warm environment, and managing classroom behavior. Studies prove that we perform better for teachers that we like, and it is difficult for dancers to build a relationship with a teacher who doesn’t make eye contact.
Facial Expressions: Toddlers and preschoolers mimic adult facial expressions. They are learning how expressions are related to emotions. In general, a pleasant or happy expression creates the best classroom atmosphere and helps students to bond with the teacher. A flat affect, a very neutral facial expression, can help when guiding behavior challenges, but can otherwise make connecting with students very challenging.
An extra note: Make it a point to observe parent/caregiver expressions as they bring their dancer for the first class. An anxious parent face will most often bring anxious behavior in the child and a happy, relaxed face will bring a happy, relaxed dancer. When approaching a new adult and child, try to bring a happy, confident expression to the situation. Children will mimic you almost immediately and adults will slowly do the same as they see their dancer relax.
An angry or disconnected facial expression will often sour the mood of your dancers. Even though children in this age range can present challenging behavioral issues, a teacher should never show anger towards a dancer. A firm tone and flat affect are very effective in dealing with behavior, but an angry expression can actually be counterproductive as it can break the bond between teacher and student and diminish a child’s desire to perform positively in class.
Tone and Vocal Shift: Dancers are still absorbing how different tones relate to different emotions, but they are generally familiar with how tones broadly relate to basic feelings like happy, sad, etc. Through repetition, the dancers will become familiar with their teachers joyful tone versus a deeper, sterner tone, and this helps tremendously with classroom behavior. The majority of class time allows for a joyful but authoritative tone. Your classroom is a positive environment, which means a positive feeling and tone from the teacher, but your classroom also has a clear leadership structure. It’s best to avoid tentative or hesitant voice because dancers do sense this and feel freer to monopolize attention. When students do act out, dropping to a lower, sterner (but not angry) tone and making direct eye contact is often enough to stop the behavior. You can and should also use your voice to characterize the movement. The sing-song tone shift of low-high-high while teaching a basic waltz makes the movement clearer for dancers.
Flat, Neutral Tone: Maintaining a flat, neutral tone without much variation can make it difficult to engage the dancers’ attention. (This is also true of older children and adults. We lose focus with a neutral, monotone presentation.). Learning to use your voice opens another level of classroom engagement between teacher and student. Maintaining a flat tone makes it difficult for your dancers to know whether you approve or disapprove of what’s happening in the room, whether they are performing the movement well, and whether they have made progress, either in behavior or movement. It can feel silly or embarrassing as a new teacher to use your voice in this way, but without it, you make role as leader much more difficult.
A note about attire: All teachers are different and dance is an art so many teachers will naturally bring elements of their own personal style into their classroom attire. As a new teacher, especially a younger teacher, I recommend dressing for functionality and to complement your authority in the classroom. You might be teaching little dancers who don’t have the same preconceptions as adults, but you will also be interacting with their parents and siblings who do have a preconceived idea of what a “teacher” looks like. To gain respect from both your dancers and their families, dress to make yourself feel slightly older and more authoritative.
A note about safety: In addition to juggling everything else that happens in the classroom environment, you have to remember that you are responsible for the safety of all the dancers, assistants, and yourself. For the dancers in this age range, keeping their hands to themselves is essential and watching for movement that you consider unsafe (excessive running, banging on mirrors, etc.). Your assistants can typically manage their own space and behavior, but if they are intervening with a student who is behaving aggressively, you may need to intervene and hand the talking/teaching off to the assistant. Lastly, you need to keep yourself safe. Toddlers can sometimes hit, kick, or pull hair in stressful moments. While this isn’t acceptable, it can be a form of communication, especially for the littlest dancers. If the dancer is struggling to control their behavior, your best course of action is to put their back to your chest while holding on to their upper arm on the opposite side (crossing your arms in an X in front of their chest). From here, sit directly down on the floor. You can also cross one of both of your legs on top of theirs if needed. Take deep breaths because their breathing pace will change to meet yours and gently rock side-to-side.