The following information is published with ROUNDALAB's permission from the ROUNDALAB Reference Manual compiled by Richard & Jo Ann Lawson, 1987.

Teaching Techniques and Practical Psychology

by Manning Smith

(As taken from tapes of the Teachers Seminar at the MSC)

Teaching techniques, the ways of presenting dances to prospective dancers, is the main concern of most teachers.

There are many ways of presenting dancing, but the actual "selling" of its various aspects is involved in our dance program. Before we can accomplish our goal, we must SELL OURSELVES to our people.

You can do this in many ways. One of the first means, of course, is by being friendly. It is absolutely necessary that you make friends with them; and, we can start this off on the first night. I have been accused of politicking... or running for sheriff... but I feel it is my duty as a leader to show the way to people who come to this place. I feel it is my duty to pattern for them. Even though I don't tell particularly brilliant some mornings or some nights, I still feel that this is my responsibility: to set an example.

You can spend many hours talking on a microphone. You can spend many hours talking to people face-to-face. But, they are not nearly so impressed by what you say as by what you do. This is true of dancers. What we say does not count nearly so much as what we do. As we begin our programs the first night, we must show the people what they are to do.

We start off by being FRIENDLY. We walk around the hall. We shake hands with everybody there. If a new person comes into the hall and you are busy and don't get a chance to go down there, at least acknowledge them. Actually this is your home, your floor; you are the one who rented it! You are the one who is paying the bill. THESE PEOPLE ARE YOUR GUESTS AND YOU MUST TREAT THEM AS SUCH. You must see that they meet one another. You will have two or three couples over there who will get together and meet one another, and two or three over here who will get acquainted and start talking. It is important that those groups meet everybody else so that we have just one big "clique", instead of a bunch of little ones!

It isn't the dancing in the beginning that is important as much as the laying of the foundation for what you are ultimately going to do. You do this by showing the way.

If YOU are FRIENDLY, your people will be friendly. If you will get in the habit of being friendly, you will find that the most reserved of individuals will open up, and they will be friendly to the next guy. You will have a group that is much more cooperative with one another.

If YOU are ENTHUSIASTIC, your dancers will be enthusiastic. If you throw aside the things that bother you during the day and do not carry them to the dance floor, then they will be happy people. But if you had a bad day at the office or washing or ironing; if you don't feel particularly up to par and get on one of these microphones, remember — they amplify the way you feel. If you don't feel good, you must learn to leave that feeling at home. When you come to the dance floor, you are in a recreational activity and people could care less about the way you feel. Oh, they are solicitous, of course; but actually, they came there to be entertained. This then is one of our first objectives: ENTERTAINING PEOPLE. You give parties in your home.

You know how to entertain people. You have folks in for lunch, for after-parties, other occasions. The same attitude should hold when you are teaching on the dance floor. YOUR ARE THERE TO HELP THESE PEOPLE HAVE FUN AND ENTERTAINMENT. This is your goal! I believe entertainment is the most important thing in dancing. If they are not entertained, if they do not enjoy themselves, they are not coming back - and, I don't blame them. It is up to you to start off entertaining.

Meeting new people and making new friends is a stimulus; one of the greatest things that you do. Normally our program has developed and continued to go forward because we bring new people into our dance program and activities. These new people have the one thing that a lot of the "old dancers" have lost; and that is, enthusiasm. They're bright-eyed. They're so enthusiastic that they want to learn it all right away. They can't, of course. But we don't tell them that. Let them think they can learn it all in a couple of weeks or so. Their eagerness is catching. The old timers who have been dancing five or ten or fifteen years love these beginning dancers because they are so enthusiastic. They are learning something that makes them happy. Something they have always wanted to do.

The First Step...

After you have gotten them together and you have shown them the way to get acquainted, then what are you going to do?

This is the question that is asked of me time after time. How do you start a round dance class? How do you start a group?

I cannot tell you how to start a group in your community. I can tell you what I do, and other teachers can tell you what they do. But they cannot tell you how to start YOUR group in YOUR home town. They don't know your situation. They don't know your people. They don't know what has gone before.

The background of this group of people, not of dancers, but of people, is very important. Their background of dance knowledge, the kind of people they are, whether they are city folk or ranch folk, or what they are: these are important questions that you have to answer for yourselves. Then, on your own common sense and judgment, you must decide what these people can do. Not what they want to do, but what then CAN do. This is the determining factor.

What can they do — easily and quickly? In any recreational activity (and I still class this as a recreation), you must get people into action. They are not interested in having you stand and talk to them. They want to do something ... right now! They came to DANCE.

What can they accomplish in five minutes? I go back to the simplest of drills. The simplest of things. I get everybody on the floor and make them join hands. All people will get on the floor and join hands. I don't know why... but they will. If you tell them almost anything else, some will have to be prodded. But, if you say, "Everybody on the floor, join hands, make a big circle", they will do just that.

What do you do next? Circle to the right, circle to the left, anything you want to do — THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE TEACHING! We are talking about teaching techniques. And, I'm telling you to do something that doesn't require teaching? Very definitely. Use something they can automatically do just by you telling them. This is the way you start to teach. By telling them to do something that they know they can do.

And you know that they can do. So, if you start by telling them to circle to the left, they will circle to the left, and they will have fun doing it because somebody is going to step on somebody and someone is going to trip and stumble. But you can look at these people and see what they can do. Then you tell them to circle the other way. This is nothing but walking.

ALL LEARNING, ALL TEACHING, GOES FROM THE KNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN. You start them doing something they do every day, something they have no difficulty doing, and then you add something to what they know. We assume that everybody can walk. (Actually everybody can't walk, not very well. All you have to do is watch them at the airport while waiting for a plane. You wonder how they get from here to there.) A lot of times we make play out of teaching them to walk. They think they are learning something very big when we say, "Lift your left foot. Extend the foot out, put it on the floor, carry your weight over, now lift your right foot, etc." When they have done that a few steps, we tell them, "This is walking!" We have started with the basic things. They get a kick out of it and we kid a bit.

Simple Drills for Rhythm and Timing...

Now that you are sure they can walk, that they can put one foot in front of another, then you can teach them to dance, and you can tell them that you are teaching them to dance. You can teach them to slide their feet along the floor. This takes a little time. However, all this time you are getting acquainted with these folks and what they can do. You do the very simplest to things. Then you can have them promenade and grand march. This is very find training.

Finally you get them into some simple dance that you know very well, and you like and can teach in five minutes. There are many, many of them. I used to use "Jessie Polka" all the time. Just "Heel, toe, brush, etc." I didn't even two-step. I walked eight counts, which is also teaching rhythm. Teaching that most of our music is phrased out in eights. They have to learn to count eight counts so that their foot will come out in the right position, and they are ready to go again.

I get out and who them real fast, and say, "This is what we are going to learn". Three or four guys start to sit down, saying "Oh, I could never do that. That's impossible. I can't move my feet around like that." I say "Back on the floor". We start over, slowly, and in five minutes these guys are doing the impossible. If we take it slowly, and keep doing it until everybody's got it, then go on doing it, they are doing what they had said was impossible. And... you are the greatest teacher that ever was! You have taught them something they couldn't do. Thus you become a teacher and you have respect in the eyes of the dancer.

Earn Their Respect!

Respect is something that you must have. You must be respected by your dancers and many times we have to do things we do not want to do to gain it. Love is based on respect. If they don't respect you, they won't pay attention to you. They will learn from what they can, then move on. If they respect you and your ability to teach them, they will become your dancers and they will stay right with you.

Selection of Material and Pace...

When beginning your teaching, pick any kind of dance that you can talk somebody through. The beginning should be one night stand type of program. If you walk out on the floor and start teaching a two-step turn, or some dance that is complicated or difficult because you have named this a "round dance class", then I say you have made a mistake in the beginning. It is going to take too long.

Simply because you have the top 10% of the class who are doing some round dancing somewhere in a square dance group, or some place like that, and you have named this a "round dance class", is not reason to get out on the floor and teach "Seven Moons". It's a very popular dance and one that everybody ought to know: 40% of the groups never took a dance step of any kind probably. Consequently, you are going to antagonize these people, make them mad, unhappy, and you have made a mistake. Unfortunately, in this dance program, you are only allowed the privilege of make one or two experiments a year in dealing with the people. Each class is a new experiment. On each class you learn something - you find out something about this class. You learn ways of presentation which will allow you to get across to these dancers faster and better. The clock on the wall is the only problem that a teacher has.

There is no question in my mind about my ability to teach anybody as far as dancing is concerned. If they can hear and understand and walk! I am not being over-confident, I have had a certain amount of experience. If they have the desire to learn, I think I can teach them. I must be very careful in the way that I approach these people. I have to start on the ground floor. The more experienced dancers will go along with the simpler dances if they have good music and you have an enthusiastic group. It is up to your mature judgment how fast to go, and how much to give the group. This depends on your individual situation. You have to take your time!

This is the dividing line. How much routine are you going to teach and how much dancing? This is the question. We get to "teaching techniques" — how we do a thing. You are asking: "How do I get across quickly to people the routines that I am called up to teach?" Given an hour; I can teach anybody almost anything (if I know it well enough myself) in the way of rounds that come out. But your question is: "How can I take this dance and do it in 30 minutes?"

Show — Demonstrate...

First, you eliminate words. Most round dances are taught by imitation rather than words. Here again, you are showing the way and they are following what you are doing. It is the quickest way. When people have been taught basic steps and you demonstrate a routine, they will assimilate about 50% of it just watching. Then it is just the question of putting the steps together in their logical order to fit the music. It's memory work. They watch you teach. They watch you do these steps. And they imitate you in what you are doing.

THE BEST OF ALL TEACHING TECHNIQUES IS TO DO A VERY POLISHED JOB YOURSELF. Do a very good job of dancing, and your dancers will imitate you and become good dancers themselves.

Build Their Vocabulary...

How do I say the right words that carry the right meanings? No one can tell you this. You have to experience it until words become familiar to your dancers, and the words that you say to them have specific meanings. If you, as a teacher, assume that our dancers know any of these terms, you are making a mistake again. When you have a group of strange folks on the floor that you are not acquainted with, you do not assume that they know anything. They will not know some of the words that you assume they know. You have to start in the beginning and you must build a language. It must be one that you and your dancers understand.

For example, in the dance, "Bill Bailey", written by Wayne and Norma Wylie, we had two or three interpretations from the written word "cross-foot run". It wasn't until they danced the dance that we knew what they meant; and, now we will know what them mean when we encounter it in the future as they interpret it. We have a new dance out with the word "whisk" in it, borrowed from the ballroom. How many know what a "whisk" is?

Can you specifically define a "grapevine" or a "twinkle"? Until I qualify what I mean for my dancers, these words have no meaning. You have to build a language as you teach steps.

In square dance calling, we can do what we call "equivalents". In other words, we can do a "pass through", we can do a "star through", and a "square through three quarters", we can do a "right and left through with a full turn around", — these three different things we can do to accomplish the same position. In teaching or prompting, I am not a stickler for certain words, because some people may know it by two different phrases. Some may know it as "turn two-step", others as a "two step turn". We learned there is also a "two step turn" where we go only half way around. There are meanings which have never been defined. I, for one, am always searching for words to carry a specific meaning.

Where to Learn to Teach...

You will learn through observation — one picture is worth a thousand words! Watch every teacher that you possibly can. OBSERVE. Take from them what you consider is good. Eliminate what is bad. You learn regardless. If you don't learn anything but what not to do, you are learning by the process of elimination. We try something, it doesn't work satisfactorily, we discard it. When we find something that will work, we put it into our repertoire and keep it. If it works on one group of people, it will work on the next group.

This is the reason we deplore so many routines. We never really get out of a good routine all that is in it. We do not have time to dance it that much. Can you learn it in five times through? Ten times through? About that; it depends on the routine. If you have been through this routine, the teaching process and the dancing process ten times, you are beginning to learn the routine. But... how well do you know the steps in this routine? DANCE IT FIFTY TIMES and you will really BEGIN TO SMOOTH IT OUT. Dance it one hundred times and you will really get good at it. This is what the old timers used to do. They use to do "Cotton Eyed Joe" four or five times a night. "Put Your Little Foot", the polkas, three or four times. They were really good at these dances and they made their own fun in this manner.

The best teachers, I feel, are the ones who give basic dancing along with the routines. You can teach basic steps, basic sequences along with routines. This breaks the monotony and is a lot of fun because they are learning dancing. You can do this in many different ways: circles, lines, and all sorts of ways.

You consider and are guided by these little "teaching techniques". You have confidence to teach what you know is needed on the dance floor, in spite of the fact that some of the people would rather learn "Lazy Quick Step", or something similar that is completely over their heads. If you give them material for which they are not ready, they will end up unhappy and "fighting", and when we lose them we don't get them back easily.

In Summary...

So we prepare ourselves for teaching b always observing and learning We set an examples as a leader by being a friendly and enthusiastic host(ess). We start out teaching by going from the known to the unknown, by building a meaningful vocabulary. We strive to use mature judgment in the selection of material and rate of progress and thus earn their respect.

Above all: we keep in mind that it is a RECREATION and SHOULD OFFER ENTERTAINMENT and FUN to the participants.

Roundalab Journal, Summer, 1982