Good point Emmy!

I see lots of feedback on instuctors. Now I want to see the instuctor's point of view. What is a good student (besides having the natural talent).

I would love to hear some ideas on what makes a good student. Should this be on a different thread? I think that this thread was meant to give an instructor feedback on what would make his studio better. Mabey some of the points seemed harsh, but if he he takes what we said and uses it constructively, he will be ahead of the competition.

I recently assisted a local intructor start a beginning to intermediate course in West Coast swing. She had never done west coast unitll just a few months before when she went to NY City to learn the dance. She started her beginning class with the basic step. My fault with this is that 1. Unless she knew the students personally she had no idea if they had any dance experience at all. 2. She sluffed over any mention of connection or frame or lead and follow, spotting. 3. She didn't go into any detail what so ever on how the dance came about or any history of the dance and reasons for its developement.
I feel people who understand the reason why they are doing a particular movement will be able to remember the movement more fully.

beginner class, basic step... what's wrong with that?

you have to have some context of an easily remembered common goal in which to explain the more subtle concepts of partner dancing

Oh, the AM studio uses flattery a lot to get me to go to competition. They even had a Coach sit in on our spotlight party to compliment us and try to get us to go to the DOR.

A good dance instructor starts with someone who had an ability to teach. Anyone can take steps they've learned and just reiterate them back to someone else, but a good teacher can see that everyone learns differently and has the ability to tune into that person's weaknesses and find creative ways to overcome them. Now a good dance instructor should not only have the aforementioned ability, but should also obviously be a resource or wealth of knowledge about the dance he/ she is teaching. The more experience, the more resources this person will be able to give his/ her students. But they will not necessarily be able to communicate those resources. That is why good instruction is two-fold.

Here's a clue that someone may be a bad dance teacher. They tell you that dancing is merely counting the beats in your head to the music. Or that as a female student, you don't need to be able to perform the steps by yourself, as long as when you dance with the the man you let him lead and you follow him well.

You don't need to be able to perform the figures alone as lady, but you do need to develop reflexes sufficient to create the component actions of which they are made. Thinking in terms of complete figures is actually very disabling for a follower as then she becomes only able to follow known figures, and not new material made by reshuffling otherwise familiar actions into unanticiapted combinations. Of course some familiarity with figures is probably necessary to provide a context in which to practice the actions.

Sorry...the idea that the man leads and the woman should be able to follow is fine and dandy...but if I am paying hard earned money for my lessons, I want to be able to practice them at home and I can only do that if I actually know the entire step.