Sometimes you love them, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes they do what you say, sometimes they don’t. There are all kinds of teachers out there: music teachers, school teachers, art teachers, dance teachers, etcetera. I am a dance teacher and I teach kids ages 3-14. What teaching has taught me, is that a new kind of patience is acquired when teaching a child.

Learning for every student is different. There are all types of learners: Auditory, Visual, and Kinesthetic. Auditory learners learn by hearing the material and then they are able to do it. Visual learners learn by seeing it drawn or written for them. Kinesthetic learn by seeing it and trying to do it.

How this applies in a dance classroom setting, is that I have to try and teach in a way that satisfies each child’s learning type. Part of this is the reason why I enjoy teaching older kids rather than younger. For me, if I teach a three year old a shuffle ball change, they see it once, do it once, and are ready to move on. Whereas a fourteen year old sees the shuffle ball change, does it, asks what they should fix, and practices it until they get it right. Now this is not going to say that one particular four year old will not want to practice a step over and over, there are those kids too. What I find most unique about teaching kids is the looks on their faces when they finally get a dance step they’ve been working on for months.

I don’t think there is anything more fulfilling about being a dance teacher than when you see the look of pure joy on a child’s face as they finally execute the “hard” step correctly.