I've often wondered why students tend to pick the easiest option. Like, if I offer a set of choices or offer work that is optional (generally, this is to further reading on an already assigned topic), the majority of students I have will opt for the choice of least resistance, especially at the start of the semester, and especially-especially if the extra thing doesn't bear any extra credit, only extra enrichment. Some teachers call this laziness, but I don't. I don't like the word "lazy" in the classroom. I was called "lazy" by my teachers in elementary school, and it couldn't have been more damaging. It made me hate school. And besides, I didn't think I was lazy. Truth is: "Lazy" is a lazy word. It's a quick way of shoving a complex situation under the rug. Students have responsibilities. In college, this comes in the form of work, taking care of family, caring for friends in crisis, and seeing to their own self-care. In elementary school, there are fewer responsibilities (though chores are certainly a thing), but many students can feel overwhelmed at that (or any) age.
My last ballet class got me thinking about why some have the tendency to set the video game level to "Easy" from time to time. I attended on Tuesday, so I was back with the teacher I originally had. I hadn't seen her in weeks, due to me taking Thursday classes. Her teaching felt a bit alien to me. Honestly, she wasn't doing anything terribly different from the Thursday teacher, but little tweaks in language and types of movement threw me off. I really felt good during the barre work. There, the teaching was similar to what I was used to, so I could focus on myself in the mirror.
This is generally hard for me to do, look at myself in the mirror. I'm prone to body shaming myself, and the more I see my reflection, the more I...don't like it. But Tuesday was an exercise in moving past that, and I think it kinda sorta worked. I won't say it wasn't uncomfortable, but there were times when focusing on something I liked about myself - the way my fingers fell, how my arm looked when it was outstretched, my Pikachu T-shirt (#nerdshirtsforlyfe), little things - I felt better. I felt like maybe I shouldn't try to avoid myself as much. As a result, the dancing felt smoother, more confident. It's as if...everything was connected. That's probably not shocking to read, but it's something I don't tell myself often enough.
Later, I moved through the across-the-floor routines pretty stumble-y. The teacher would demonstrate the series of moves we were supposed to do, and what their count was. This really stumped me. I'm having trouble counting music, and so when I dance, I try to count the music and get the steps right, and, as a result, I usually end up going at a snail's pace and doing neither the counting nor the dancing very well. Based on my experience with the barre work, though, I think this can improve if I just focus on counting music more outside of class. That way, counting can start to feel natural, and, when I need to count off steps in class, that'll just throw one less-natural thing into the mix (the ballet-ing). Plus, counting music can be done virtually anywhere. If I started practicing the sweeping dances on my bus ride to work, I'd probably get more stink-eye than that one time I cracked open a tupperware of hot fish (sorry! I hadn't eaten that day and it was the only vaguely healthy thing the store had!).
It's these across-the-floor dances (in which a series of ballet steps is designed to take me from one end of the studio to the other) that also gave me a moment to think about why students choose "Easy" sometimes. In these sequences, both the Thursday teacher and the Tuesday teacher give add-on steps that more advanced dancers can do if they like. In this case, the added step was a turn that I knew I could do. I had done it before in the Thursday class. Sure, it wasn't easy, but I knew I could do it. Yet, when it came time to opt-in and prove myself, I...didn't. I shied away and stuck with the easy steps, the steps that were, sure, not easy for me, but also not a push. I knew I could get away with doing those steps and not risk getting called out. (Being called out in this ballet class, by the way, is never bad. It's always supportive, and the teacher is consistently careful to use one-on-one coaching as a lesson to others, and she'll do that in a respectful way. I think getting called out, though, does trigger my feelings in elementary school, when those same teachers who called me "lazy" called me out for other stuff. I'm being forced to confront that here, which I think is good, but it'll also take work.)
This gave me some insight as to why my students might sometimes not elect to do the add-on work. They're *not* lazy, that much is for sure. However, their reluctance also does *not* stem from a lack of intellectual curiosity. They *do* want to get smarter, just like I *do* want to learn ballet. They stop short sometimes, as I do, because the challenge of performing the harder step comes with the risk of getting it wrong, and then that's two failures: not only did you fail to do the actual step, you failed in mustering courage, because the courage you mustered was in vain. Logically, I know it doesn't work this way. *Any* courage mustered, regardless of the result, is meaningful so long as it's in pursuit of an honest, positive goal. But, in the moment, when you have to make that split-second decision about whether to, as Master Yoda says, "do or not do," it's hard to think logically. The impulsive courage has to be there, and, for me, in ballet, it isn't.
I can foresee that changing, though. In this class, there was one familiar face. There was also one kind and warm newbie who was taking her first class. We spoke afterward, and she expressed sadness that she didn't get a lot of the steps right. I told her I can relate to that feeling. "But you're so good!" she said. This I did not expect to hear. I am, by no measure, "good." But I appreciated hearing her say that. I reassured her that any improvement I have made has happened because I started in exactly the same position she was, and that, over time, you really do notice incremental improvements. Especially when you blog about them! I told her to stick around, and if she's falling over her feet, I am probably falling over mine, too. As the colorful, plastic Ponies say, "Friendship is Magic," and they are absolutely right.
That may be why, later in the semester, students take risks in my class more readily. They have people they know will love them either way. Early on, though, I feel like the choice to not take the added risk makes total sense. I wouldn't encourage people that way, but I do get it. They'd rather put their effort into something that has a higher chance of working out more-or-less perfectly than risk *both* failing a task (graded or not!) and failing some sort of test of courage. Maybe this is where we need our heroic stories to step in. Should Luke Skywalker be celebrated even if he took that shot and *didn't* blow up the Death Star? (Okay, that would make for a much different movie, but maybe apply that to a lower-stakes, real-life situation.) I think yes. I kinda think courage for courage sake, regardless of outcome, needs more celebration in our stories. That may be where the true virtue of *Rocky* (the first one) lives. Creed wins the match, technically, but the endurance Rocky exhibits (and his love for Adrian) means we are still happy to partake in tears. It isn't that we leave "unsatisfied;" we leave questioning what truly satisfies us. Change that in our stories, and I think we'll start changing it in our lives, too.
In my class, there is an older student. He is in his 70s. After class, we talked. He told me he wished he had his youth back. He told me that dancing must come from the heart, and if you don't have that, you don't have it. He told me about how much he loves the music that comes with our lessons, which I do, too. I see him every class, but, in this vulnerable moment, he seemed to feel as though his physical age was a barrier to success. Quite the contrary. I've seen this person at every class I've attended, including the one on the infamous -15-degree night. When he's dancing, he's clearly in love. He gestures beautifully, and, though there are some steps he physically can't do (again, in his 70s), the dances he performs are so graceful, so delightful. I would pay to see him dance! All I could think as he was talking was how much he is the most youthful student in class. He's an example to me. I hope, someday, I can achieve the level of carefree elegance that he has. It's that kind of courage I want to celebrate.
QUICK GENDER THOUGHT:
This is a thought that couldn't really flow with the rest of this post, but I wanted to write a paragraph about it, anyway, just because it was on my mind. In this class, we, like usual, have the task of moving barres out to the floor of the studio and then putting them back in their place afterward. (There are also fixed barres on the walls which don't move, obviously.) In this class, I moved the barre back by picking it up in the center. Two women flanked me, carrying the barre at the ends. One joked, "I didn't know we were gonna be able to take it easy today, having a big, strong man carry this for us." I laughed and shrugged that off, returning the joke by furthering the humor with some off-the-cuff comment I don't really remember. It was a light moment, and I'm happy to let it be such. But it did get me thinking about when mentioning my non-binary self is "appropriate," in the sense of "personally rewarding." On the one hand, I want everyone to know I'm non-binary - I'm happy to be! On the other, my masculine appearance doesn't exempt me from gender-based joking around (or male privilege, another thing I want to remain conscious of and take VERY seriously), and I kind of am not bothered by that? I need to think about this more because I'm not yet sure if I go along with being a "man" in some cases for my own comfort or for the comfort of others. I'm not in a place where it really hurts me to *not* shoot down a joke based on me being a "man" (and a big, strong one, at that! [Where was that comment when I was younger and probably could have used the confidence boost!?]). I know some non-binary people for whom that sort of implication, the implication that they are of a binary gender, would be quite triggering, though. So, at times, I feel like I want to be better at saying, "Actually, I'm non-binary, so..." not just for me, but for *them.* For the people who really are hurt by misgendering in this way. (Intentional misgendering WOULD hurt me, too, but this sort of jokey, innocent assumption-based stuff doesn't.) I want to contribute to a world where enbies of all neurologies are at home. I'm just not fully sure, yet, how to reflect that in my behavior. So I think on...
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