So you’ve started teaching aerial, or you’re about to get started. Congratulations! You have the opportunity to change your students lives for the better and to have an amazing time doing it.
You might also feel a bit overwhelmed, because there’s a lot to think about when you start teaching aerial. Planning class, keeping everyone safe, keeping everyone feeling challenged, reading the room, and making decisions on the fly. Teaching is a very different skill set from just knowing how to do a skill. Even very experienced aerialists can struggle in their first few months of teaching. We built Aerial Fit Online to raise the level of aerial teaching, to share what we’ve learned (from our own mistakes and successes), and to give aerial instructors a teaching-focused tool in their toolbox.
Aerial is never about getting everything perfect on your first try. Aerial is about getting a little better every day.
So let’s dive into our list of the Top 10 Mistakes New Teachers Make, and of course how to fix them. And, by the way, experienced teachers can stumble over these from time to time too.
This is absolutely something just about every new teacher does. It simply comes from the desire to do a good job and a slight misunderstanding of what that looks like. There can also be a dash (or torrential spill) of normal human insecurity.
The problem with teaching too much too quickly is that it doesn’t help anyone. Students need time to make connections in their own heads and bodies to the other skills they know. Repetition literally creates new pathways in the brain and the muscles. Adding onto material before students have had a chance to master it first will only make the next skills harder.
For teachers, this mistake can lead to having to always chase new skills to teach. If your aim is simply quantity, then you and your students will miss out on the infinite moments of exploration, self-expression, micro-variations and more that can be found within every skill.
Teach less material, but cover it in more depth. That means spending more time reviewing, comboing, sequencing, and exploring micro-variations of skills your students already know.
It’s easy to forget that many of our students don’t spend every moment of their day thinking about aerial. If it is a hobby, even a passionate hobby, it still means the majority of their day isn’t focused on aerial. There is a good chance students haven’t thought about the material since the last class, which means they need a refresher.
Even after over a decade of full time teaching, we are still sometimes surprised at just how much review our students, even our most dedicated students, need. That’s why we make review fun and it’s why we’re constantly reworking past material into new variations, sequences, and conditioning drills. Review can be incredibly fun and rewarding because it’s the time when students are most likely to have an “a-ha” moment and feel the empowerment that we love about aerial.
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We sometimes refer to this as trying to be too profound. If you are an aerial teacher it is safe to assume that aerial has changed your life and it is only natural to want to share that experience. But you can’t bottle and reproduce that in one class. Life is too diverse and complicated.
I promise you that I have come out of class thinking that was the worst class I have taught and then get a message from a student thanking me for such an amazing class. And, I can guarantee that even if it was possible to plan a profoundly amazing class, the students may be on a different page or just have had a bad day outside of the studio.
Profound just isn’t realistic, but good is. Teaching well every class, connecting with the students, seeing their issues, and providing solutions that work for them will change their lives slowly over time.
In order for your class plan to be malleable for the realities of the students in class, teachers need to be spending time on the apparatus themselves. This time needs to be spent exploring the material that you’re planning to teach. This looks like exploring how to break down the skills, how to help students who are struggling, how to identify the moments where students are most likely to struggle. And, finding fun ways to address those challenges.
Aerial Fit Online has done a lot of that work for you, because every skill in our library includes our progressions, drills, variations, common mistakes, and more. But, it’s important to embody this information by actually moving through it yourself. Especially as a new instructor without a lot of teaching experience to fall back on.
It is important to have a class plan. That might look like a detailed plan written up nicely, or it might look like a few short notes jotted down and then memorized in your head. And as crucial as this is, it’s also just as important for that class plan to be malleable and adaptable, because reality often throws a curveball and what the students need that day is not always what you made a careful plan for beforehand.
In our decades of teaching, we always planned our classes. It gave us a purpose for the class and a great starting point. But the vast majority of our classes deviated or completely broke away from our class plan. That’s because we are always working with the students in front of us that day, and sometimes they will let you know that they need a different plan.
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As a new teacher, you’ll learn pretty quickly how differently different bodies move. Normal differences in anatomy like limb length, where the center of mass is held, and how the brain processes new information and stimuli, means that not every skill is going to look the same on every student, and many students will have different experiences learning the skill.
This is one reason why teaching beginners can be such a lifelong, rewarding experience. Everyone is different and everyone will benefit by being taught to their reality. The more bodies you teach the more experience you will have to help different students succeed in the way that’s best for them.
This one comes with experience, and it will come quicker the more you can observe and work with your students. At AerialFitOnline.com our tutorials all include giant arrows showing you exactly where to look and when. But this is only the first step. After observing you need to talk to your student to find out what they are actually feeling and what experience they are having. Teachers can learn a lot from their students and that’s the experience that will help you teach more effectively to more diverse bodies over time.
This is the flip side of the previous mistake. Different bodies will of course do skills differently, but there are certain non-negotiables because in aerial safety is always the first priority. And, depending on where you are taking a student next, building that safe foundation starts at the beginning. And there are always certain important aspects of a skill are a fundamental part of staying safe.
In aerial teaching we always want to educate students, so correcting this mistake means letting students know when they are doing things that can hurt their bodies over time, giving them the tools to stop making these mistakes, and having the persistence to keep pushing the student to build the strength and control they need to to stay happy and healthy long term.
In many ways, the most important goal for an aerial teacher, after keeping their students safe, is to make sure the student comes back again, because there is so much depth to explore in aerial. At first, it means coming back to the next class, but eventually it might mean they come back as a professional or even as a teacher themselves.
This means you need a general longer term plan. “Aerial is fun” or “This skill is cool” might be true, but we also need to know where we’re taking our students, and how each skill fits into that plan. A lot of this may come down to the school curriculum and the school culture.
Think about what future goal you have for your students. Think about fun ways to work them towards it, with lots of successes and learning along the way. If you’ve done this well than even if a student never hits that goal you had planned, they will have learned all the valuable lessons that make it important and they will have gained even more valuable knowledge along the way.
If you’re an AerialFitOnline member, scroll to the bottom of each skill’s tutorial page to see our suggested Future Goals.
So far the longest we have had a student take class is twice a week every week for 13 years. How would you plan your classes if you knew this in advance? The extended plan doesn’t need to be linear. In fact, student progress isn’t linear and taking playful tangents or pursuing side projects can often lead to “ah-ha” moments, but if there isn’t a long term plan and sense of movement forward over time, then both the teacher and the student can feel lost.
Not having a long-term plan also makes class planning challenging because you will always be starting from scratch.
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It’s so easy to move on with your day, but taking a few moments to reflect on your class is the best thing you can do to become a better aerial teacher over time. This can look like discussing the class with a trusted friend, taking notes about what you actually taught and what you might like to address next time, taking notes about specific students in your class so you remember to find the drills they need for the next time, or just sitting and thinking during your commute home.
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This simple habit will greatly improve the quality of your teaching.
Log in and open your next tutorial. Take a look at all of the cross-references including Building Blocks, Common Mistakes, Related Drills, Ground Drill, Variations, Next Steps, Future Goals, and Sequences. Think about which of these sections you use most in your own teaching. Then take some time to explore a different section and see what new guidance it provides you.
Join us today and unlock every tutorial — cross-linked with all the building blocks, ground drills, related drills, progressions, sequences, and more. It’s not just a library — it’s a full learning system.
Send us a message. We genuinely love chatting about this stuff — whether it’s a quick question or a deep dive into your training.
