Check In With Your Students – Part 2

First to clarify, when we talk about feedback we’re not talking about a feedback form or a questionnaire (although those can certainly be useful tools sometimes). We’re talking about the feedback that you get by observing your students in action.

• Are your students progressing nicely? By that we mean getting stronger, smarter, and more confident in the air over time.
• Are your students enjoying themselves? Do they leave class happier than when they entered, or do they leave feeling bad about themselves?
• During class, are your students breathing? Or are they exerting so hard that their face is constantly red and screwed up in concentration?

Teaching means being a good observer. And we are often adjusting the material that we teach based on the answers to the questions above. Let’s dive into that process.

When to add new moves to a curriculum

Have you ever been troubleshooting a skill for your students and discovered a new variation, or stopping point, or progression that makes the move easier to break down? This happens to us all the time!

We love adding these new skills to our curriculum. These new additions are like new apps to solve problems for future students. Not only does it feel great to be able to present a new progression to students having trouble, but we also tell our students we know how to solve the problem because they aren’t the first or only student to have this problem.

Knowing all of the newest, trendiest skills on social media doesn’t necessarily make you a good teacher. Knowing how to problem solve for your students and shorten the journey to success is a much more valuable quality in a good teacher.

Here are some examples of moves we added to our curriculum that solve some sort of problem our students were having.

Similarly, have you ever had a student who discovered a variation that works better for them? We learn so much from our students! The more different bodies and brains you teach the more likely you will experience this at some point.

• Different bodies have different preferred movement pathways, limb to torso ratios and other anatomical differences that can dramatically influence skills. Sometimes these students have to discover a different way to do a skill to make it work.
• Some students’ brains take in information and then process it differently than others. Or their brains have different experiences to interpret the cues through. Sometimes these students end up going places you never considered.
• Sometimes students just make mistakes that turn out to be happy accidents. The more safety first philosophy you can instill in your students the more often mistakes are happy accidents.

Here are some examples of moves that our students discovered, and we later added to our curriculum!

When to take moves out of a curriculum

Have you ever become disenchanted with a move over time? Sometimes an old skill gets replaced by a new and better variation over time. Sometimes a skill appears to be tweaking shoulders or hamstrings and needs to be removed from the curriculum until it can be re-worked and improved. This is all part of the growth of aerial.

Have you ever learned that a move you love caused an accident or injury? We never like hearing about these situations but it is so important to be informed. If this happens there are a few questions it’s important to ask:

• How and why did it happen?
• Is there a safety or progression that could have prevented it?
• In the end, is it really worth the risk? Or is there a safer way to accomplish the same or similar idea?

Sometimes we take moves out of our curriculum to prevent a future accident. This is absolutely valid, and a great reminder that aerial does come with risks.

When to relevel moves in a curriculum

Have you ever introduced a new move to your advanced students, and in the process discovered progressions that would make it appropriate to teach at a lower level? This is always a lot of fun.

Have you ever found a move to be so much more challenging to your students than you imagined, that you decided to move it into a higher level? This is valid, but don’t forget to fully explore progressions because there might still be a way to make it work.

On a related note, in our curriculum the same move often lives in different levels at the same time. But, the way that we teach it is completely different and, the amount of time it takes to teach it is also completely different. Here are some moves that typically takes only 10 minutes to teach in our higher level classes, but that we work up to over weeks in our lower level classes.

Remember that curriculums can change over time, and this is actually a really fun and creative part of teaching.

Looking for new ideas to help you develop your curriculum and teaching plans? Our online library has hundreds of videos for experienced and new instructors (serious students can benefit as well).  Join Aerial Fit online here, or get a taste with the free membership.