Finding Where I Want to Be

I just have to say I’m so glad for class tonight!  I made fourty-eight dollars!  I’m not talking about two women who paid the monthly rate either.  I had that many people pay the single class rate!  I also had a couple of students who paid the monthly rate.  It’s great because I really needed the money.  Maybe next time I’ll make just as much.  It was a great class!  There were a whole bunch of new people.  It’s making it a little tough on the choreography, but you do what you can, right?

I’d gotten a commentary today about how I run my class.  Right now I have everyone dancing in a circle.  They have a hard time with it because of the right/left confusion.  However, I have a hard time with it because I’ve got to do everything backwards if I want to teach it to them.  There are no mirrors, so that makes it really tricky to see what they’re doing unless I’m facing them.  I think I want to consider teaching a class in a studio with mirrors now.  I mean, I love the ability to teach while facing my students, but unless I get to the point where I can do improv, I can’t see them to do the choreography or I have to be facing away from them the entire time.  It’s tricky.  I love the shop I’m teaching at, but without mirrors it makes teaching dance that much more challenging.  I may have to look for other options.  I’m also thinking of putting out a tip jar for class to donate towards getting some mirrors put up in that back room, but I don’t know.  I don’t know how Janice would feel about that.  They’re not exactly cheap additions.  We’ll see.

Anyhow, I was thinking a lot tonight about what I really want to do.  I love this class and all, but it’s too mixed in level.  There are people who have never taken a belly dance class before in their lives mixed with people who are really pretty damn good!  Seriously, I don’t know how much I can teach some of these people.  However, it’s making it hard to teach.  Either I’m dumbing it down too much for the advanced people or I’m challenging the advanced people and losing everyone else.  I think this is my biggest challenge with teaching.  I really wish there was another instructor I could learn from, someone to teach me so that I could continue to improve my teaching skills and dancing skills, but it looks like that’s not going to happen.

I’ve really got to get into a regular yoga practice.  I’m really very stiff.  My shoulders hurt.  My back hurts.  I know it’s because I don’t stretch out well before class.  Personally I hate doing stretches during class because when you’ve only got an hour, that’s one hour to teach everything.  I hate feeling like I just threw together a class that’s spent half it’s time in stretching, warm-up and cool down.  I hate kind of rushing everyone through.  If I had a two hour class, I’d go through all of that, but an hour is hardly enough time to cover what I want to cover in a class.  Who am I kidding?  An hour isn’t even close!  I always end up running over my time anyway.  I feel bad about it, but it always happens.  There’s just too much that people want me to go over.  It’s either stretch and work on three moves or don’t stretch and work on moves and choreography and everything.  I really need to develop better habits.  I really need to start structuring my class better!  I really need to work on all of that.  Then I’ll be developing better habits every time I dance, which I really should be doing anyway.  It’s not surprising how tight my entire body is!  I never stretch before anything I do!  I really need to be more focused on stretching and yoga.  Body flexibility could make a huge difference.  It’s important for a dancer.

Well, I should get going.  I’m really tired.  I’m going to read a bit or something before I go to sleep.  I need to unwind a bit.  Caelan was supposed to make dinner when we got home, but he was too tired and didn’t.  I can understand.  He has to get up early every morning.  Even so, I’ve lost that as my wind down time.  I really need to do something that doesn’t involve the computer and thought.

Ten positives…here I go…

1) My dance class rocked tonight, the biggest class yet.

2) My Saturday class starts the first Saturday in August.

3) We’re going to be putting together a Pagan mother’s group…that means playdates!

4) I had a student pay her monthly class fee tonight in entirely quarters.  Laundry money!

5) Corde was at class tonight.  She played so much that I’m surprised she’s still awake.

6) I got two more colors of sock yarn today!  I’d better start cracking on my socks!

7) Though some of my aching hurt isn’t good, I mostly have that good hurt from dancing.  Yay for that!

8) I’ve gotten one third of the way through writing the choreography!

9) Though I was tempted to just grab McDonalds on the way home, I didn’t…which is good.  Go me!

10) The chicken pot pies in a shell that I made earlier today were WAY better than I expected…

~*~Raven Night~*~