“To teach is to learn twice”
-Joseph Joubert
I have given some dance performances that I’m not proud of. I’ve turned in school papers that would be more useful lining a birdcage. However, I have never taught a workshop that I didn’t put myself into 110%. I was once asked what I would do if I couldn’t teach. That answer is easy. I would teach.
Teaching is a passion. For me, it’s the only answer. I’ll jump at any chance to share knowledge, to cultivate a mind. When I’m asked a dance question, I know I’m supposed to say:
“Why don’t you take a private lesson? Then I can show you in detail.”
Instead, I answer the question. I tend to answer a whole lot more. Sometimes they end up taking a private lesson, most times they don’t. The risk for me is bigger than losing a private lesson. It’s missing an opportunity to teach. That loss would keep me up at night. It’s with that passion that I approach every class. It’s also the standard to which I hold other teachers. The advice I give to other teachers, is the advice I live with.
Teachers, accept the responsibility. Be accountable. Give it your everything, every time. Or don’t do it at all.
Aristotle was a student of Plato. Plato was a student of Socrates. Beethoven’s work is influenced by Mozart. These are not embarrassing facts. It does not take away from their accomplishments, instead it adds to their credibility.
We are experiencing an increasing number of Salsa teachers that claim to have learned ex nihilo. They woke up knowing how to dance Salsa, or they threw themselves onto the dance floor and learned by trial-and-error. Regardless, they may be great dancers, but that does not qualify them to teach. There is a system to learning, and a system to teaching. If your instructor cannot tell you what system they base their instruction on, then it is an injustice to themselves, their students, and their teachers. Teaching without a foundation creates dancers without a foundation.
How often have we driven somewhere using the following method:
“Don’t turn on 12th street, we got lost last time we did that.”
Or:
“Let’s just take the route that we know will get us there.”
This system might work, but is it the best way? Is it the most efficient? Can it be adjusted? Would you feel comfortable explaining these directions to someone else?
I call this the “Mistake/Survival technique”.
Mistake: “OK, I thought I could do it this way, but that didn’t work out, so I won’t do it again.”
Survival: “OK, this seems to be working for me, I’ll keep doing it.”
Don’t get me wrong, this system has its uses. It works great for accomplishing independent, short-term tasks. Say you plan to make dinner tonight. The meal will be steak, salad, and roast potatoes. You don’t need a lot of research to do this. If you forget to sear the steak before broiling it, or cut the tomatoes before the onions, the world will not come to an end.
But, what if you need to show a friend how to make this dinner for 20 people? What if you want to open a restaurant and train your cooks to make this meal? Now you need to know the exact cut of meat, how many tomatoes it takes to make the salad, how many cloves of garlic are involved? What type of pan to use? How long should the potatoes cook? How thick to slice the cucumbers? It’s a much more involved process. You have to learn every aspect of your meal, so that you can teach your staff how to make it to your standard. You also need to know how to identify when, and where, the process has gone awry. In case you need to quickly fix it.
Before, you thought you knew it. Now, you have to know that you know it. Luckily there is a place to learn this. A place where you may start knowing how to make a steak, but you finish knowing how to run a kitchen. It’s called culinary school.
When it comes to learning and teaching Salsa, the same rules apply. I take a light approach to teaching students when their primary interest is to have a good time social dancing. My mantra is:
“Don’t worry about it. You’re not doing any damage. You’ll be OK.”
It’s like picking up apples from the grocery store. You don’t need to know the difference between a Pink Lady and a Granny Smith. You taste enough of them and you find out what you like.
When a person tells me that their goal is to perform, I raise the bar.
“You need to be able to execute these 4 fundamental moves before you can learn any of the choreography.”
This is like spending a day picking apples at the farm. Now it’s important to learn how to handle them. You have to identify when they are worm-eaten, versus when they are ready to eat.
When teaching is their goal, the serious Shaka comes out. Now I demand:
“Explain a break step. Talk to me about weight change. Why is this called a back-spot turn? What are the principles of the copa?”
It’s a bigger task. Now you are preparing someone to own an apple orchard. This is to be taken seriously, because there is more at risk than growing a batch of bad apples. A bad farmer might grow more weeds than apples. Poor farming decisions can end up fostering pests that destroy other trees. It’s possible to ruin the land for anything to grow at all.
When I encounter people that don’t want to take classes, it’s not usually because they don’t want to learn. More often it’s because they had an experience that turned them off. Experiences like that hurt all teachers. Not only do we create an environment of dancers that do not acknowledge their teachers, we also leave teachers to learn by “winging it”. They end up developing their teaching with the “Mistake/Survival” technique. They may have figured out how to dance by throwing themselves onto the dance floor, but to apply that same approach to teaching is short-sighted.
Our students today will be the teachers tomorrow. We owe it to the world of Salsa. Teaching is not an independent, short-term task. One day you will hear your students use your exact words when describing moves, shines, turn patterns, and their philosophy of dance. Live and teach with that in mind.
If we do that, we can all enjoy the trees that we have cultivated. The work may be hard today, but eventually we can rest in the shade, knowing that we made a positive contribution to the world.
-sGB
From Washington DC, residing in Miami, Shaka Gonzalez Brown teaches around the world. His first Salsa lessons were with Leon Harris at Habana Club, in DC. He has taken classes with Eddie Torres, Ismael Otero, Edie “The SalsaFreak”, Luis Vasquez, Raul Santiago, Frankie Martinez, and countless others. He likes a medium-rare ribeye steak, and Granny Smith apples.