Unqualified teachers

[balletbean]

Interesting read:- 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35130914?SThisFB

[LinMM]

I'm surprised to read this in this day and age! Maybe back in the 50's ....but these days it's hard to set up a dancing school with no qualifications at all! 

I always thought the idea of "baby ballet"  (18 months to four years old) classes was not to get too much into technique  anyway just to enjoy dancing and bring in the technique side gradually when ready to start slightly more formal training around five or six years old.

 

I have noticed that some schools of Dance do allow older students who themselves may only be around Grade 6 level or Intermediate level if vocational etc to take the very young children. Of course this is fine if fairly closely supervised by the main teachers but these students shouldn't be left to their own devices.....although some who may have already started some sort of teacher training course it's probably okay.

But I've not see or heard of children these days being put on pointe much before the age of 11/12!! 

In most graded ballet systems pointework doesn't come in until around grade 5/6 level and most children wouldn't be taking these exams until 10 at very earliest. 

Pointework certainly nearly ruined my feet....the bunion thing....but I was trained back in the 50's initially when children were more likely to be put on pointe too early or with insufficient training or strength.

 

[RuthE]

10 minutes ago, LinMM said:

I always thought the idea of "baby ballet"  (18 months to four years old) classes was not to get too much into technique  anyway just to enjoy dancing and bring in the technique side gradually when ready to start slightly more formal training around five or six years old.

 

That surprised me as well.

[Ruby Foo]

Found this article very confusing! Have always believed that teachers who use unqualified students to teach the youngest students are making a huge mistake as those tiny tots are the most challenging in many ways. However, teachers in the article are complaining that they have received young children who have little or no technique due to being taught by unqualified students.This is completely contradictory! Young children should not be trying to master technique!  Developing musicality, storytelling through movement and a sense of poise is the way to go with small dancers. It is not until a child is around 8yrs old that their brain maturity can begin to understand the complex nature of  the classical technique.

[Peanut68]

Absolutely at pre-school age it should be about enabling a child to discover their own musicality, natural movement & sociability...

But I can see how some parents with knowledge of how hard training is down the line might very mistakenly think that if they work on turnout & flexibility  (I am recoiling in horror just typing that!!) at a young developing age that they may increase a child’s chances of ‘making it’ down the line. Again victims perhaps of the Insta shots & Dance Moms style of push push push & glorify what are basically tricks & extreme positions. They would be clearly misguided which is why it is so so important to be taught correctly with age appropriate range of movement. It is parents who must seek correct training for correct age from the best teachers they can find (& I am aware too, afford) Some unscrupulous people will take advantage teaching too advanced too young. Others may simply be under pressure from parents & the competition culture. 

It was ever thus that precocious high achievement was glamourised & rewarded but that used to be a very small minority....

As a form that really does cross over between the worlds of art & sport, Ballet Teachers must operate best practise in all areas & parents must do their research & make informed choices for their children 

[alison]

Hmm.  I must admit, though, that if I had a 3-year-old I wanted to send to dancing lessons, and there were lessons going on in the church hall up the road, I'm not sure I'd necessarily bother checking out the teacher's credentials beforehand, and I guess a lot of parents would be the same  

[Fiz]

That’s was exactly what I did. I was very lucky that it was a good foundation for our dds.

[Confuddled]

39 minutes ago, alison said:

Hmm.  I must admit, though, that if I had a 3-year-old I wanted to send to dancing lessons, and there were lessons going on in the church hall up the road, I'm not sure I'd necessarily bother checking out the teacher's credentials beforehand, and I guess a lot of parents would be the same  

It’s what I did - just chose the closest ballet school because it was easy to walk to. I think most mums wouldn’t even consider that any harm could come from an unqualified ballet teacher at such a young age. A few years ago, I would just have assumed it was music, movement and a lot of herding cats.

[Picturesinthefirelight]

I too am a bit confused and cross about the article.  It appears that I have been guilty as I have run pre-school children's classes with unqualified teachers. (actually they were qualified but in Early Years Education or drama).  My classes were general performing arts classes, a mix of dance, drama and singing.  They were as others have said, not meant to develop technique (at 4 years old you are lucky if they can skip in time) but to develop creativity, musicality and imagination.

 

I think that any dance teacher complaining about a 5 year old entering their class with poor technique and posture needs to spend a few weeks in a nursery or pre-school.

[Pups_mum]

I would think that at a very young age the issue is not so much not learning the right things (yet) but actively learning the wrong things. I think it can be very difficult to "unlearn" bad habits learned at an early age in any activity, not just dance. I recall girls arriving at my DD's old dance school having started elsewhere and even I, with my limited knowledge, could see that they had poor posture and were doing the most basic things wrong. And this wasnt their natural posture, it was something they had been taught to adopt for ballet. I am sure it was harder for them to correct than for children of a similar age who had never done a class at all.

[drdance]

It is true sadly that the majority of people believe that pre-school classes are easy to teach because there's "no ballet" involved except for maybe standing in first position. This isn't true - a good pre-school teacher who is well qualified and good with that age group is worth their weight in gold! What is more damaging I think is when pre-school classes are taught by teachers who want to create mini prodigies as seen on the internet. This is when damage to posture/technique/turnout etc is caused, because children aged 3-4 should not be learning ballet movements except simple, basic gross motor skills (walking, running, jumping) using the imagination etc. 

[taxi4ballet]

The article is more than three years old, but I suspect that nothing has changed. Was it aimed at firms which run franchises teaching so-called baby ballet, and which don't requires franchisees to have recognised dance teaching qualifications, but offer in-house teacher training programmes instead? 

Edited January 14, 2019 by taxi4ballet
spelling

[Dance*is*life]

I think some of the remarks are referring to older children joining a school without basic technique.  I think the article is a bit misleading, but it is very true that correct teaching from the word go is vital, no matter what age the child.  I started at 3 and 4 months with a brilliant teacher of "babies" , Nancy Robinson in Streatham and that wonderful start set me off on a lifetime of dance.  In my year alone most continued on to professional careers.  My Great Niece started going to ballet around the corner from her home.  She was there four years without advancing significantly - the student teachers working with the class just shouted corrections and orders the whole lesson.  The qualified teacher in charge didn't seem to check on them.  Such a waste.  There's nothing wrong with having teenage assistants, but they shouldn't be running the classes in my opinion.  

[invisiblecircus]

I would argue that some qualified dance teachers can damage children too!

 

I've taught dance for over 15 years, and am unqualified *gasp*. Much of my work has been with youth companies, both selective and non-selective, and I've worked with students who were studying at local dance schools, or had in the past. I have seen many many students with extremely poor technique, and I don't mean the kind of things that need to be worked in over time, but things that could be corrected immediately. It was quite apparent that the focus of the syllabus classes at some schools was to memorise the exercises rather than work on technique. Several students from different schools reported doing the whole of the barre on only one side! Additionally, we have seen reports on this forum of presumably qualified teachers treating students in ways which are clearly pshycologically damaging.

 

While I certainly agree that there are unqualified teachers out there who really shouldn't be teaching, I don't think it is as clear cut as that.

[Dance*is*life]

Well Invisable Circus I agree with you - the RAD may have been talking about unqualified teachers, because well that's what they advocate, but I come from a dancer background and never attended a teachers course.  I did get qualified right at the beginning when the RAD decreed that you had to be, I even took their teaching exams to do it properly,  but I personally believe that experience and your own knowledge gathered from years of training is what's important.  There are some wonderful teachers out there, who may, like you, be considered 'unqualified' but whilst theoretical knowledge taught on a teaching course is obviously good to have,  I would suggest that that alone does not make you a qualified teacher - it's the years of hard work and experience that follow.

 

Of course one of the main problems in all this is that the majority of parents don't  really understand whether the teacher is good, bad or indifferent.  All you lovely parents on here excepted of course !   But I once nearly lost a good friend because when she asked me along to her daughter's recital, I'm  afraid I told her in no uncertain terms that it was dreadful - not a single child knew any actual dance steps even the older ones!   This was a highly intelligent woman, who simply had no knowledge of what her child should be learning. And indeed why should she?  So whilst it may help to check out a teacher's credentials, it is and will remain a problem.

Edited January 15, 2019 by Dance*is*life

[LinMM]

I absolutely agree but you have to start somewhere so having some sort of highly regarded recommended training qualification is a good start. 

Even dancers who have had 7-10 years experience of dancing with a major company like the RB are doing this now. 

 

In the end though you can build up your own knowledge about teaching from experience etc ....but this does take quite a few years!! 

 

[annaliesey]

It’s true that the majority of parents I would guess, choose a ballet teacher based on convenience, where their children’s friends dance etc. Even when you do grasp an early concept of checking credentials, it’s all a bit meaningless really IMO. DBS = not worth the paper it’s written on. RAD qualification = doesn’t mean you’ll have someone without their faults (who can do a lot of harm). Professional experience = we all know some teachers exaggerate on their “About Us” pages of their websites or their CV’s.

 

it would be a lot more useful I believe for the RAD to give practical information on warning signs to look out for rather than come across as just being a bit sour to lose market share to the unqualified teacher population. 

 

I think theres also some responsibility there with their own exam structures for pre-Primary and primary as there’s minimum ages presumably for a good reason. Interestingly at intermediate foundation level where the first phase of pointework is examined there is a minimum age but we know of lots of children who get authorisation to take the exams early. Surely if they truly believe in the minimum ages, there wouldn’t be so many exceptions.

 

i know of quite a few teachers happily providing vast amounts of private lessons, with children coming out of school, in order to be fast-tracked. It doesn’t seem as if the minimum ages are a deterrent to this at all. 

[taxi4ballet]

13 hours ago, annaliesey said:

It’s true that the majority of parents I would guess, choose a ballet teacher based on convenience, where their children’s friends dance etc. Even when you do grasp an early concept of checking credentials, it’s all a bit meaningless really IMO.

 

Professional experience = we all know some teachers exaggerate on their “About Us” pages of their websites or their CV’s.

Agreed, and of course so much of what they put can sound really impressive, especially to parents who are only beginning their initiation into the dance world.

[Bluebird22]

I have qualifications with two exam boards and the difference in training to qualify with both exam boards is outstanding. One exam board assessed my capabilities  as a teacher purely on my ability to remember and recall the content of the syllabus from prep-advanced and essentially retake those grades all in one go. 

The other qualification route is in my opinion more rigorous, lectures and assignments on nutrition, injury prevention, psychological well being, safe practice, lesson planning, curriculum design, choreography, quality assurance and the role of assessment and numerous videoed and observed lessons. 

Is it fool proof - no, because much like learning to drive you learn what you need to pass and settle into your own routine shortly after. I certainly do not write lesson plans in anywhere near the amount of detail I did to pass my first year. This exam board also insists that to maintain their teaching status, teachers must engage in 18hours of CPD per year. Again this doesn’t really assess my suitability to teach, but I do feel there are substantially more things put in place to at least guide my teaching practice. The same exam body qualified my teachers some 20 or so years ago, and back then they just had to demonstrate the syllabus, and now they just have to complete their CPD to continue teaching, having never received training on some of the subjects they now deem essential for teachers. 

 

I think poor teachers exist whether qualified or unqualified and flashy credentials are used to entice parents. One of my students was invited to join a class with a royal ballet trained teacher - her mum assumed she had danced with the royal company. As it turned out she has been a JA just like the girl who was invited to the class but been unsuccessful at Mids where the student had been successful, thus actually making her more royal trained. 

 

We are so unregulated as a group, which is terrifying since we are probably the most long term teacher a child will have and we are such a huge part of their childhood. The responsibility is massive, we can make or break kids not just as dancers but as people. 

[LinMM]

There is a lot of mis information about "having trained at the RBS"

When you see someone who has either fully trained at the Royal or trained fully elsewhere and spent the last two /three years at the Royal you cannot miss this! They look really good as dancers at least! Their feet usually give them away! 

However some are claiming this when may have only trained for perhaps a year at the RBS .....often when quite young ....and then left etc

perhaps training locally.

Theres nothing wrong with the latter but it isn't fair to give the impression that you've had full training at the RBS. 

I do agree that a qualification won't make you a good teacher necessarily but I think if you are mostly teaching children as opposed to mostly teaching adults it really should be a requirement to set up a school.

[Ruby Foo]

Even if you have been through a full training at RBS and followed through with a career in a company,  it doesn’t mean you will be a great teacher. Being a good teacher takes specialty teacher training and that special ‘gift’ of teaching which many dancers simply don’t have.

[RuthE]

41 minutes ago, valentina said:

Even if you have been through a full training at RBS and followed through with a career in a company,  it doesn’t mean you will be a great teacher. Being a good teacher takes specialty teacher training and that special ‘gift’ of teaching which many dancers simply don’t have.

 

Absolutely.  But it does at least mean that you can legitimately claim the above training and career on your CV, rather than referring to something you did for a short period of time and assuming your potential customers will be blinded by prestige.

[Dancermum2003]

Slightly off topic but in the ‘claiming to have trained at RBS’ vein..Cheryl Cole has made the claim on The Greatest Dancer TV show when she actually attended Summer School twice!

[LinMM]

Yes this has been talked about quite a bit on the Greatest Dancer Thread here!!

So she went twice? On that thread it was only once!!! 

So things seem to be looking up for her then!! 

 

[Pups_mum]

Obviously things are far more complex thsn qualified =good and unqualified =bad and there are lots of things that contribute to how good a teacher is. I think that context is key too. For example, someone teaching exclusively older teens in a vocational upper school will need a different approach and skills to a local dance school teacher with a class of 20 five year olds. They could both be excellent teachers in their own setting but virtually useless and even  potentially dangerous if they swapped classes! I think what this article was getting at is the dangers of people who have "danced a bit" setting up classes for young children without a real understanding of what is needed rather than ex pros becoming teachers. That said, I do think its a good idea for even ex pros to take adfitional training before they teach. As we have discussed on the forum many times, some "traditional" teaching practices in the ballet world can be very damaging both physically and mentally so its not ideal for people to perpetuate these by just replicating the way they were taught.

Interestingly a friend of mine recently completed a British Cycling coaching course where one of the other candidates was a well known professional cyclist. He had to do exactly the same as everyone else before being allowed to coach children. Obviously he could do the cycling skills needed in his sleep but still had to learn how to give feedback, deal with learners of different abilities and so on, as well as the health and safety, children protection etc. There is a lot more to coaching/teaching than just being highly skilled at the activity yourself.

[LinMM]

Even with ex professionals teaching adults ...some instinctively know how to simplify choreography for dancers below professional standard whereas others tend to just teach what they know without that much regard for the abilities of the dancers they are teaching! 

 

But adults are adults!  They can sort themselves out if need be.

 

Where children are concerned we just have to be that bit more careful. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sarahw]

Many SS and Masterclasses seem to advertise only the details of the professional's dancing career not their teaching qualifications. There seems to be an assumption that teaching ability is proportional to professional achievements.

 

 

[balletbean]

On 14/01/2019 at 11:42, alison said:

Hmm.  I must admit, though, that if I had a 3-year-old I wanted to send to dancing lessons, and there were lessons going on in the church hall up the road, I'm not sure I'd necessarily bother checking out the teacher's credentials beforehand, and I guess a lot of parents would be the same  

Very true. Especially in the more rural, smaller communities, especially with parents that have no previous dance experience themselves. 

[balletbean]

On 17/01/2019 at 21:03, LinMM said:

Yes this has been talked about quite a bit on the Greatest Dancer Thread here!!

So she went twice? On that thread it was only once!!! 

So things seem to be looking up for her then!! 

 

According to wikipedia this one ‘short’ summer school was when Cheryl was 9yrs old!!!  Whilst we can’t deny her experience I do feel it’s a tad creative to announce she ‘trained’ at the RBS as many of us would take that as a full time pupil. 

9 isn’t even lower school age !!

Edited January 20, 2019 by balletbean

[taxi4ballet]

41 minutes ago, balletbean said:

 I do feel it’s a tad creative to announce she ‘trained’ at the RBS

The wording tends to be more of a throwaway 'went to the Royal Ballet'

 

Which is even more misleading to the uninitiated.

[Colman]

By that standard I’ve danced with the Royal Ballet. 

 

(I mean, I did a whole class in the Floral Hall with Bhavnani and Thomas Whitehead taught  a class in a workshop and …)

[invisiblecircus]

On ‎17‎/‎01‎/‎2019 at 00:49, Bluebird22 said:

I have qualifications with two exam boards and the difference in training to qualify with both exam boards is outstanding. One exam board assessed my capabilities  as a teacher purely on my ability to remember and recall the content of the syllabus from prep-advanced and essentially retake those grades all in one go. 

The other qualification route is in my opinion more rigorous, lectures and assignments on nutrition, injury prevention, psychological well being, safe practice, lesson planning, curriculum design, choreography, quality assurance and the role of assessment and numerous videoed and observed lessons. 

Is it fool proof - no, because much like learning to drive you learn what you need to pass and settle into your own routine shortly after. I certainly do not write lesson plans in anywhere near the amount of detail I did to pass my first year. This exam board also insists that to maintain their teaching status, teachers must engage in 18hours of CPD per year. Again this doesn’t really assess my suitability to teach, but I do feel there are substantially more things put in place to at least guide my teaching practice. The same exam body qualified my teachers some 20 or so years ago, and back then they just had to demonstrate the syllabus, and now they just have to complete their CPD to continue teaching, having never received training on some of the subjects they now deem essential for teachers. 

 

I think poor teachers exist whether qualified or unqualified and flashy credentials are used to entice parents. One of my students was invited to join a class with a royal ballet trained teacher - her mum assumed she had danced with the royal company. As it turned out she has been a JA just like the girl who was invited to the class but been unsuccessful at Mids where the student had been successful, thus actually making her more royal trained. 

 

We are so unregulated as a group, which is terrifying since we are probably the most long term teacher a child will have and we are such a huge part of their childhood. The responsibility is massive, we can make or break kids not just as dancers but as people. 

 

Very good points, Bluebird22, and particularly interesting to note the differences in teacher training between the 2 exam boards you are qualified with and I have often wondered how much training qualified Teachers have actually had in aspects such as how to control and motivate a class.

 

As I mentioned previously, I do not hold a (dance) teaching qualification with any exam board, however, in addition to graduating from a vocational ballet school, I also have a degree in dance which included teaching practice, lesson planning, anatomy and physiology all at what I consider to be quite a high level. Although most of the teaching practice we did was contemporary based, much of the skills we were taught could be applied to teaching any genre of dance provided we had the required technical knowledge.

 

On ‎15‎/‎01‎/‎2019 at 22:18, LinMM said:

I absolutely agree but you have to start somewhere so having some sort of highly regarded recommended training qualification is a good start. 

Even dancers who have had 7-10 years experience of dancing with a major company like the RB are doing this now. 

 

 

You are right, and I have also looked into doing this but came across some obstacles.

1) It is difficult to find a school to work with you when you have not come up through the school. One exam board said I order the syllabus and enter myself for the exams (suggesting private lessons with an examiner to "check" me before entering and I probably would have taken this route had I not been offered a job that left me little time to persue the teaching qualification.

 

2) It is expensive to gain the qualifications. It is worth it if you're setting up a school and you're going to be teaching full time, but for people with portfolio careers who are also performing or doing other work, the cost can be prohibitive.

 

3) Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but most of the exam boards require you to keep entering students for exams in order to stay registered. Some teachers are not even interested in entering students for exams in the first place, and again, with a portfolio career you don't necessarily have a teaching schedule that would allow for this.

 

4) What about teachers of contemporary dance? To the best of my knowledge, none of the exam boards provide for this.