Last month we talked about what aerial teachers are actually teaching when they teach aerial. Today we’re diving into one specific situation that most teachers have faced or will face at some point….the need to say “no” to a student. Whenever possible, we try to say no without actually saying no. Read on to see what we mean by this.
You are an aerial teacher and your student is really excited about a move they saw on social media or saw another student doing. They show you a video or tell you about what they saw because they want you to teach it to them.
These days this scenario is becoming more and more common and sometimes the requests are just fine, but what do you do when a student wants to learn something that you, the instructor, are not comfortable with?
First things first…let’s figure out why you are uncomfortable with it. Here are four possibilities and they should each be handled differently.
Have we missed any possibilities? Let us know in the comments.
Before we dive in deeper, we want to take a moment to briefly talk about gatekeeping verse safekeeping.
“Gatekeeping” is the idea a student is being blocked from learning a skill because of some unnecessary prerequisite. “Safekeeping” is the idea that teachers are responsible for students’ safety and it may be necessary for teachers to refuse to teach something to keep the student or themselves safe.
Nobody wants to be gatekept, but being safekept leads to healthy long-term aerial training and enjoyment.
Let’s say the move your student is requesting is just too advanced for this particular student. Maybe it involves a height that the student can’t safely work at yet. Maybe its base support is at a higher level than where your student is currently. Maybe it requires more strength, flexibility, or body awareness than your student has demonstrated in the air.
The way we approach these requests at our studio is we typically don’t just say “no”, but instead we find something to say “yes” to that will give the student a step towards their goal. We may say something along the lines of “Great. That is an awesome skill. For this move we need to start here, then we’ll build to this, and then we’ll ace that skill.”
We can always find some early progression that our student can safely and effectively work on. For example, if the move requires a pull up then we train those actions in many other skills. If the move requires a straddle up then there are thousands of fun progressions for those. If the move requires a complicated base wrap then we start that process from the very beginning which sometimes means focusing on related drills first.
To sum up, we give our student a new goal, that is a stepping stone towards the move they want to learn. We’ll make sure students see the connection between the easier progressions and their end goal. This also gives students motivation for working hard and coming back for more which is always a great path to success.
What if the answer is that as an instructor, you’re not familiar enough with that move to teach it. Or perhaps, you can do the move yourself, but don’t yet know how to teach it to different bodies or different learners. There are so many new moves being created and, many teachers specialize in certain areas, so no one individual can be expected to be able to teach everything that’s out there!
If we’re not familiar enough with a move to teach it well, then in that case we need to decide whether it’s a move we want to put the time into developing teaching progressions for. Don’t forget teaching is more than just demoing. Teaching requires progressions, familiarity for troubleshooting likely problems, knowing everything that can go wrong and how to avoid it, and always keeping students safe and succeeding.
It’s perfectly valid to tell a student “That is a cool move, but it’s not one I’m familiar with so I’m not able to teach it to you yet.” Developing teaching progressions means figuring out where all the supports are in the skill, what can go wrong and what will happen if it does, how physics and different bodies will be affected by the move, where it fits in your curriculum, and knowing if there have been injuries or accidents in the wider aerial community related to that move. It’s a lot of work and time and research and that brings us to the next possibility:
What if this move is notorious for causing injuries? Not just traumatic injuries, but shoulder or hip tweaks that can force a student to take time off or interfere with their lives outside of aerial.
This is probably the easiest to answer. In these cases we will educate the student. We will also let them know that it’s not just our opinion. We may say something like “Other teachers we respect have also stopped teaching this skill because of the risks.” Saying a hard “no” can be a good teaching moment and learning opportunity for the student. So, we say a polite hard no, but we educate our student so they know why!
Years ago there was a drop going around online that had paralyzed more than 1 aerialist. That drop was very quickly banned at reputable aerial studios, and safer alternatives were taught instead. So we always ask ourselves, is there an alternative move that we can safely teach our student instead? The good news is that the answer is almost always “yes”.
This is perhaps the most subjective, especially in an age of social media when everything seems to be up for grabs. If a move is unique to the performer who posted it then we definitely shy away from teaching that move to our students because it doesn’t feel like our place to do that. We truly want our students to develop their own creativity, so when they request something like this we let them know that that move is unique to that aerialist, and was probably developed by that aerialist through a creative process.
We then typically take our students through a creative exploration exercise in skills that they already know, to get their own creative juices flowing. Maybe they can develop their own transition or move and then post that to social media instead!
There are many ways to redirect your students and to say “no” by saying “yes” to something else. This can keep you and your students safe and smart, and open up new and unique possibilities in their aerial journey. No instructor should ever feel obligated to teach a move that a student saw on social media, and oftentimes finding a different path forward is a tremendous learning opportunity for your students! This isn’t gatekeeping. It is safekeeping.
If you’re an aerial teacher, we want to hear from you! Let us know how you “say no without saying no” to keep your students safe and progressing in aerial.
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