Yes, Dance Teachers Plateau Too!

<p>&quot;Hell yes, hell yes.&quot; That&#39;s my answer every time someone in the group asks whether teachers hit plateaus too, and I teach Brazilian Zouk for a living.</p><p><br></p><p>Ours just hides better. I can teach all week, feel completely fulfilled, and then meet Christina after three months apart and find that the things we could do together suddenly need thinking about again.</p><p><br></p><p>Gui said it cleaner than I did. He&#39;d been dancing mostly with his beginner students, having the time of his life, and then he went to do something explosive: &quot;there was a wall. I couldn&#39;t do the thing.&quot;</p><p><br></p><p>What we get into:</p><p><br></p><p>→ A student feels stuck and knows it. We feel great, right up until someone challenges us socially, and that&#39;s when I go &quot;hang on, I have not been training that division of my dancing.&quot;</p><p><br></p><p>→ Gui&#39;s pizza chart. Almost every hour you teach goes into basics and everything vertical, so the sharp explosive layer gets a sliver of the pie and quietly rots.</p><p><br></p><p>→ Why I can&#39;t train with my own students. It&#39;s never their level, it&#39;s the hierarchy, and you hear it in the disclaimer: &quot;I don&#39;t know, I&#39;m probably wrong, but I feel like this.&quot;</p><p><br></p><p>→ What we actually do about it: the student seat at somebody else&#39;s weekender, a private lesson where you tell the teacher to hold nothing back, and cross-training in styles that have nothing to do with Zouk.</p><p><br></p><p>The big takeaway: The plateau exists because we have a certain expectation, and the moment we remove that expectation, the plateau is not there anymore.</p><p><br></p><p>When did you last catch yourself plateaued without noticing? Tell us in the comments.</p>