Stop Blaming Your Dance Students!

<p>&quot;I don&#39;t know what to do. My students don&#39;t wanna learn the foundations. Please help me.&quot; An organizer said that to me years ago, and it is the most common thing I hear in Brazilian Zouk.</p><p><br></p><p>This one is for teachers and organizers who have said out loud that their students do not want the basics.</p><p><br></p><p>That night I went to the social. Acrobatics everywhere, every head movement, not one Viradinha. Then he started dancing, because he was the local teacher, leading crazy moves to people who could barely do a basic step.</p><p><br></p><p>So Gui and I sort this into three buckets, a me problem, a them problem, or a design problem, and the one everybody reaches for first is almost never the right one.</p><p><br></p><p>What we get into:</p><p><br></p><p>→ Gui on why a curriculum gap only shows up a year later, in the warm-up, months after you built it.</p><p><br></p><p>→ &quot;Move, move, move more.&quot; His class moved their bodies and stayed where they were, until a co-teacher said the word he meant was travel.</p><p><br></p><p>→ What he told an organizer mid-briefing: &quot;I think it&#39;s the time for us to stop putting the blame into the students.&quot;</p><p><br></p><p>→ When it really is them. Someone read the format, said &quot;This is not for me,&quot; came anyway, and left after day one.</p><p><br></p><p>→ A month of classes where I never went past Soltinho, and the room grew every single week.</p><p><br></p><p>The big takeaway: Whoever is at the top of a community takes credit for the good and the bad in it, because a community identifies with what its leadership values.</p><p><br></p><p>Think about the last class or event that did not work for you. Me, them, or design? Tell us in the comments.</p><p><br></p><p>Chapters:</p><p>00:00 Opening highlights</p><p>01:41 Me problem, them problem, or design problem</p><p>03:08 Why a curriculum gap only shows up a year later</p><p>06:41 Over-preparing a class and losing the room</p><p>09:20 When &#39;too slow&#39; is really a design problem</p><p>11:54 &quot;My students won&#39;t take a basics class&quot;</p><p>16:44 The one word that changed the whole class</p><p>18:42 When is it genuinely a them problem?</p><p>22:06 Learning who your course is not for</p><p>23:49 Festival passes and what nobody reads</p><p>28:00 The scene with acrobatics and no basics</p><p>31:21 A month of classes that never passed Soltinho</p><p>33:41 Not every teacher belongs in a beginner cla