As a teacher, I've welcomed it with open arms.
Ceroc Kent have changed their format for the beginners class - it will now be 3 moves rather than 4 it seems - my venue opens for the first time this year tonight so I don't know if anything else has changed but my workmate goes to Croydon and he confirmed this happened last night.
Any comments? Is it a good or a bad thing?
Not sure why they are doing it, I don't think the beginners were struggling to pick up 4 moves, and it may well make the gulf between beginner and intermediate classes even bigger.
As a teacher, I've welcomed it with open arms.
Apparently this is also happening at Ceroc Central - is this happening everywhere then?
Good Thing, definitely.
Maybe because it'll give the chance to teach people to dance - by giving time for the teacher to teach a little technique - rather than to memorize 2,000 moves?
Are the intermediate classes changing also?
I'm all for it too. Taught 3 moves for the 1st time last night. Didn't have to rush things as much as normal, so had more time to work on the little things. And, as Jamie says, more times to run through to music as well.
I asked a few people afterwards what they thought of the change, and they were all positive about it.
Does this mean that Ceroc will have to make a new beginner's DVD with all the new three-move routines?
Let your mind go and your body will follow. – Steve Martin, LA Story
I don't quite follow the logic there. Surely the moves are taught as individual components which can be linked together, rather than blocks of about 27 beats which are taught as a set piece. Having a DVD which does not 100% match the format of a class might help re-enforce the idea that the class is just one way of putting the parts together.
Sean
At the end of each class (previously) you'd often hear an advert for the DVD saying that you could practice the routine you'd just learnt as it's number <whatever> on the DVD.
I haven't seen the DVD, but perhaps it will tell you that the routines on it are the same ones taught at your local Ceroc class.
Whether this is a good way of teaching freestyle dancing or not is open to question, but the DVD and the 4-move beginner lessons are supposed to be closely linked.
Let your mind go and your body will follow. – Steve Martin, LA Story
I'm somewhat curious. For the a fair old time we've been teaching 4 moves in 45 minutes. The punters seem to get it, even the absolute beginners. How much technique are you going to teach a newbie? I can see that there is a benefit from muscle memory but as long as the mix of beginners moves is right, I'm not sure that the number of moves has been an issue. I'm willing to be convinced but at the moment I just don't see it. May have to amble across to Ceroc Hyde one night to see how is works (or not ).
Well, they get the moves, sure. But they don't get anything else.
Err, all of it?
Off the top of my head, you can say simple things like:
- Don't yank / push, just lead / invite
- Smile
- Take small steps
- Followers, follow your partner not the routine
- Leaders, lead the move, don't rely on sequence
- etc.
I'm sure actual teachers will have other things they do.
Surely, moving away from moves and into actual dance teaching is the very thing lots of us - including you - have been advocating?
Last edited by David Bailey; 9th-January-2008 at 08:53 PM.
The changes that have been put in place are specifically designed for the person who is at ceroc for the 1st time, it is well known that the retention rate of new customers in most social dance forms is very poor, something like 1/10 are retained in MJ so it`s an effort to improve on this figure, IMHO i think it`s definately a good thing, there is no rushing and as stated in this thread previously you have more time for repeating the shorter routines and of course adding more technique but of course without losing the fun factor, sofar it seems to have been well received.........no changes have been made to the intermediate class format to date.
IMO the large number that come back a second time depends on them not being taught too much. A lot of first timers see the demo and say "no way!". 45 minutes later they are doing it. However awkwardly, they are doing it. Nothing succeeds like success. They go away on a high, and, mostly, they come back.
I believe that if you start asking them to do it with style you will produce better dancers sooner, but you will lose more than we do now. The statistics will tell the tale soon enough, and I will be pleased to be wrong.
To be fair though - these things don't exactly require a huge investment of time from the teacher to do in every class. If you mentioned each aspect only twice in each class I'd estimate it takes around two minutes out of your class time. In reality, that's time spent teaching the moves anyway, and not just an addition so it should be getting done already.
If you're talking about really hammering a few details in-depth with associated exercises then freeing up 10 minutes of a class by removing a move makes sense to me.
The cynic in me says that this kind of detail isn't likely to make it out there into many Ceroc classes at all, least of all beginners classes. It's just not the way the model works. In the grand scheme of things I'm not confident that many of the teachers could really do a good job of it either*. I'm very much doubting that there's a convenient CTA script for such things.
I suppose I'm of the mind that giving a poor teacher more time to teach something poorly won't necessarily give any improvement. I'd also say that there is only so much a company can do to make a dance class more friendly for beginners and that Ceroc has invested a huge amount of effort and resources into doing thing already. It's difficult to be more beginner friendly than Ceroc already is. If they say they're not coming back because it's too hard then I suspect it's more likely because they're really uncomfortable with the idea of dancing with someone at all, or perhaps just with strangers.
*In fact, I'm fairly certain there are a few who aren't that good at them themselves
Unfortunately people, from the best of motives, do not always tell the truth. "I just could not get it." is a useful cover.
The vast majority of beginners classes I have seen end up with almost a formation performance. However, too many many are overcome with basic insecurity, and will tell me, whilst "doing it" that they can't do it. That is why I like to hear a class, including the newcomers, laughing. They are relaxed and having fun. They will probably return.
The only time I have seen beginners really struggle is with the "shoulder drop", and I do remember having to make a model with pegs and string to work out how to do the "Octopus" (I actually found it during our house move.) A class that involved many beginners and the shoulder drop was in real trouble until a Taxi-dancer took the lead and swapped partners when beginner was paired with beginner. I and another copied that behaviour, and the class was transformed. I did think that a voluntary "buddy" system, where experienced dancers wore a sticker too, and were prepared to stand next to beginners and help/swap, but only if really necessary.
I tried to persuade Phil Roberts to let me correlate moves taught with beginner return rates, but failed. It is something I have advocated on this forum a few times before.
I went tonight and it was three moves for both classes.
Yes more technique can be instructed but when your on the floor, are the beginners REALLY taking it all in and noting what I have heard many times being called "waffle"? (NB : not referring to Hyde specifically at all)
The answer is a simple no on a general scale. The odd one or two might but that's all.
But if the extra time is used to repeat the moves, especially to music more, then that's all good.
And this "fact" is from your extensive teaching knowledge then??
TBH, my experience is that the real beginners do actually listen, and most try to actually do the things that you're teaching. It's the intermediates who think that they know it all who aren't taking it in, and who think that it's waffle!
and some of them get upset that they cannot absorb it all. Which is why I worry about the idea "one less move, lets teach them something else." More practise will give them a better chance.
The problem might be that the beginner class gets boring for intermediates and we will lose the "everybody joins in" ethos. This is where recording everything on the computer should really show its worth. Not only can Ceroc analyse retention rates, but can also see how the changes affect arrival times.
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