Talking to a Wall:Or, Selected Stories of my Students

One of the common complaints of my dance teachers growing up was "Say something! I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall here." Mercifully, that tends not to happen with me as most of my students are young enough to be bubbly and playful (and the older girls figure out pretty quickly that I want responses). However, I bring this saying up because I had a horrible case of it the other night.

I teach one "ballet" class in my entire schedule, and ballet is in quotes because for the first half of the year, I basically didn't teach. I only had one student (Maggie), and she absolutely hated dance and did not care about it at all. In a one-on-one situation, there was very little I could do short of threatening her that would make her dance, and I wasn't about to make her more unhappy than she already was. Luckily, Maggie has a great natural facility with languages, so I was able to pique her interest in learning French ballet vocabulary. She was at least learning that, even if she flatly refused to try and execute the movements correctly.

This was our workable dynamic until the last few weeks, when we were joined by a new student Nina. Nina, in sharp contrast to Maggie, is nearly silent. She's extremely anxious, and has arrived to every class in tears because she's so scared/unwilling to leave her mother. We started with letting the mom watch class, and slowly weaned Nina away from her until the start of this semester, when Nina was able to enter class alone (albeit still crying). However, with boisterous, chatty Maggie, and miserable, silent Nina, it's been a struggle trying to balance the class dynamic and enable both of them to learn anything meaningful.

Now at the start of this semester, we got another student Rainbow. Rainbow, as it turns out, is six years old (Maggie is eight, and Nina is seven). The ballet class begins at 6:30 on a Monday night and is an hour and a half long, so Rainbow's age makes it difficult for her to focus. Another issue is that Rainbow doesn't speak a lot of English (neither does Nina, actually), and she's prone to daydreaming, so I have a hard time figuring out what she's retaining.

Last night, Maggie showed up to class without her ballet clothes. When I asked her why, she burst into tears and immediately fled the classroom to her nanny, who then came in and explained that Maggie's mom had forgotten to pack them (or something like that) but had insisted that Maggie go anyway. It's worthwhile to point out here that Maggie's mother works until about 9pm every night, so Maggie rarely sees her, and they're really a very disconnected mother-daughter pair. Once I explained to Maggie that I wasn't angry at her, but that she would have to sit out and watch class, she immediately cheered up. However, that left only Nina and Rainbow to dance, and neither of them would give me any feedback.

I tried to review the positions of the feet with them, but neither one would respond, and Maggie at the front of the classroom was getting increasingly frustrated with them. After dragging the two girls through plie, tendu, and port de bras without a single indication of understanding or retention, I gave up. They clearly were not going to learn any ballet like this. Not only was I teaching to a wall, it was a wall that was only capable of radiating intense misery.

I decided to show them some ballet videos instead (hopefully inspiring them!!!), but the wifi at the school was broken! One of my coworkers tried to help me get a video up while I played a rhythm game with the kids, but ultimately her attempts failed as well. So instead, we played ball for the rest of class.

During the whole fiasco of trying to get the wifi working, I ended up leaving the three girls in the room alone together, When I returned, Maggie and Rainbow were playing, and Nina was watching with a look closer to happiness than I'd ever seen on her. This was a big factor in my decision to let them play instead of trying to force the class - maybe once the three of them get comfortable together, Nina and Rainbow will be able to do something other than cower at the bar.

So, here's to all my teachers through the years who have faced unresponsive students. Thank you for your struggles and your efforts. Let's hope that my motley ballet class opens up soon!