DAY 113 - March 5th 2014 (By Elina Ayako)

DAY 113 - March 5th 2014 (By Elina Ayako)

Hey you, haven't talked too you in a while.. 
Is that a new haircut? 
Maybe a new shirt? 
Ha - I knew it, you look fabulous dear! 

Anyway, let me tell you a little about our day at the education.
Today our schedule was a little different than usual.
We got an assignment from Lin and K to prepare a class for beginners. 
It's a scenario in which we are teaching them for the first time, and the focus of the class is to introduce them to the world of hip hop dance and make them hungry for more.

So Denice had the hard task of going first - and she did a really good job! 
Whilst the person in front is busy trying to be a motivating and positive teacher, the "fake" beginner students (us) are trying to mess up on purpose to create a more genuine class environment. 
I must admit, it's pretty funny!! 
We might have given Denice a little bit of a hard time (apologies for that!) but she handled the out of control kids well. 

Elin was up next and her class was totally different to the first one - she decided to go with a robot routine!! 
This was definitely fun to learn, she incorporated some isolations and fixpoints so we could really get the feel of being a robot. 
And Elin's humor is just epic.. 
To explain a move, she gave us the image of a small person blowing wind at us (what the heck, right?!)

So we had a lot of good laughters in her class. 

For the last beginners class, it was Cecilia's turn. 
She chose a Swedish song and used a lot of funny stories and images to explain the moves. 
All in all the classes were super fun!

The evaluation was extremely helpful. We took a look back on all the classes, and Lin and K gave us very specific feedback on how a beginners class should look like. 
So here are some pointers to what I'll remember for the future:

- If you chose to give an introduction to what "hip hop" is, make sure to do your research,   mention the right names and give them an insight on the whole culture, not just the dance part of it

- The warm up and stretching part of your class has to be very well explained. 
Break it down as much as possible so that your students get warmed up properly and don't injure   themselves by stretching the wrong way.

- During the class, give an explanation on basic terms like "choreography", "eight counts",   "marking" etc. 
All those words are new for them so make sure to properly introduce them to the dance-language

- MAKE THEM DANCE! 
Try to avoid any technical exercises, poses or stops as much as  possible and try to focus more on grooving, moving, and making them sweat! 
When it  comes to being more detailed and teaching them the more technical side of dance, it is better to wait a couple of classes until they are really committed to dance

These are only a couple of things we learned today. 
There is way more to learn about how to teach beginners, it is definitely the most challenging group of people to teach, and you also have the biggest responsibility. 
Maybe some of you blog readers have learned something as well or just found it interesting to read what we are learning in school. 

See you next time!

Elina Ayako