The easiest kind of teacher on earth!

You have a problem with your dance!

I spent 10 years of my life teaching in various settings. I learned a lot about the skill of teaching. Honestly, that is why I don’t aspire to become a Tango teacher. Recently I discovered how much easier it can be to be a tango teacher. I spoke with a teacher some time ago. They mentioned they would never say to their students “You have a problem with your dance”. Even if students asked, they would refrain from saying it. I have heard about such teachers in the past. Teachers who are sensitive about their students. Teachers who consider how their students will receive feedback. Teachers who will try to land their feedback softly, to avoid hurting their students. Sometimes, they don’t land it at all. They try to sugarcoat it or even omit it.

My tango teacher wasn’t a very sensitive one. He would tell us every time what kind of problems we had in our dance. If you asked him he would be direct to the point that you could maybe feel uncomfortable. I know this is not something that everyone can handle. But that is a quality I really appreciated in him.

Receiving feedback

I spent 4 years conducting PhD research. During this time, I submitted research papers for publishing. I received reviews from total strangers (blind reviews). I would have to consider their reviews. Then, I needed to submit a new version for full acceptance for publication. It sounds simple but believe me there were comments that could make you outrageous. Reviewers being pedantic, interpreting what you wrote in a totally different way, etc.. The whole process would start with my supervisor. Whenever I went with a draft he would just return it full of corrections and comments.  Imagine the pain of writing the whole PhD thesis. It had to finally be reviewed by not just 1 but 7 other professors. I didn’t know what to expect. I had to be as clear as possible in my writing. I needed to be precise. I had to support everything with evidence. All this experience hardened me against reviewing and criticism. It is very easy to get offended, feel belittled or get into depression with all this. Seriously! Depression is a thing with PhD candidates. I was lucky and I think I got off pretty easy. But even that felt a struggle at times.

Later on, I became a teacher myself. I had to supervise thesis projects and mark exam papers. Do you know what is the hardest thing? Marking the exam papers of your students and having to fail them. Honestly, this is one of the most difficult things to do. The issue is not merely failing the student. The problem is that every failed student is also partially a personal failure. It makes you question yourself. Ask what is wrong with me. Why don’t they get it? It is a pain. Especially when you are also evaluated based on your success rates. Some schools and universities expect you to both have good success rates and not lower the exam standards. So you are forced to get better at it.

That is why when I met the teacher who gave me straight and honest feedback I appreciated the honesty. He would often tell us. “You can go to other teachers who will tell you that you are ok. But will you learn anything from that?” He had a point. Without receiving honest and sometimes even brutal feedback there is no way to improve. You think you are just fine and there is nothing more to improve. So why struggle?

The choice of a Tago teacher

So here we are. This is how the life of a Tango teacher could be. You have a bunch of students. You don’t examine them. You don’t mark them. You avoid providing direct and honest feedback. You do this because you don’t want to hurt them (and lose them). You take them one year and you put them in the beginner class. Next year you automatically promote everyone to the intermediate class and next to the advanced! Three years of happy students thinking they learned how to dance. Three years of you fulfilling your dream to be a Tango teacher! Three years of successful business with happy customers. Isn’t this a dream job?

But then what? Would you dance with your advanced students? Would you enjoy it? Would you feel ok with yourself? No. The only thing you would have succeeded in doing would be to raise your ego a little bit more. For all those students that you wouldn’t want to dance with, you would blame them. It’s their fault. You are the teacher. You know and you give them everything but they don’t care.

Every time I failed a student of mine in the exams, I knew it was also partially my own failure. However, I also knew that I was honest with myself. I was not lying to myself. I was facing the truth as hard as it may be and the same I expected from my students too. That is why I prefer a teacher who might make me feel uncomfortable. They will be honest 100% of the time. I prefer this rather than one who will try to sugar the pill. No. I pay my teachers to give me honesty. I don’t pay them to hear compliments. I want to hear compliments from my partners. For that to happen, I need teachers who will be brutally honest with me.

The choice is yours

Now of course you might not be as hardened as I am. You may not handle criticism and feedback the way I do. You may be afraid to receive honest feedback from a teacher. But at the end of the day remember that. What will help you grow faster? Getting uncomfortable and expanding your comfort zone or staying forever where you are? Getting uncomfortable is part of the learning process. Get comfortable with it and demand from your teachers to make you feel so if they have to.

Think about it like this. When you pay your doctor you expect them to be honest with you. If you have a problem what is the point in trying to sugarcoat it? You have to face it sooner or later. If they don’t tell you now the problem will be more difficult to fix down the road. So if they are not honest with you, the service you pay for is not delivered to its full. Demand from your teachers to face you like a patient. Tell you the truth no matter how hard it is to swallow.

It’s not only going to help you! It’s going to help them too. Every time you fail, they need to grow, face their failure too and get back to improve their teaching. Every failure you will force them to face today will benefit their future students as well. If they don’t grow, they will also stay in their comfort zone. The hardest thing for a teacher is to face their failures. The easiest thing is to just take your money for three years, lie to you and run a financially successful business.

Tonight’s Goodnight Tango

Tonight’s Goodnight Tango is a new discovery for me. I never heard of it before. I discovered it with a bit of help from Google and I liked it right from the beginning. The title says it all. The milonga of the teachers! What could be more fitting for such a post?

So how about you? How do you handle feedback? How do you prefer your Tango teachers? Brutally honest?… or Soft and sensitive? And if you are teaching… what is your style for providing feedback?

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