jducoeur

Very long day yesterday. Thursdays are my busiest days at work, where I see all five of my classes rapid in a row, with just my lunch break in between. It always gets me a little bit bleary-eyed, and then today we had conferences after. At least those were scheduled in the earliest time-slot we ever do them --we move the times a bit so that different parental situations can have access at different times, and this was the 3-5 event.

Then, as Clayton-workbestie and I were walking home, I mentioned offhand "oh, and I have to go teach Scottish now". Which was actually a great comment to make, as it led us back to my absolute favourite walking-home-conversation-topic, to wit, the pedagogical and logistical differences between teaching high school geometry, Scottish country dance, or Japanese tea ceremony. We know a surprising amount about each others' niche hobbies, just from being passionate and enthusiastic about them, and willing to nurse that enthusiasm in the other, and it's really nice.

(the biggest conclusion this time was the pairing of advantages/disadvantages. I can run a dance class on a school night, because setting up and tearing down only takes me about 15 minutes on either end (plus a potentially infinite amount of prepping a lesson plan, but I can get by if that's measured in a single digit of minutes). He can't do that, needs much more time to prepare fancy snacks before and carefully hand-wash and ensure all the dishware is dry after, but if only one other person shows up to his class, they will have a marvelous and fruitful time, where I get nothing but footwork practice at that point.)

And of course, every time I say the phrase, I think about a post Tricia made years ago, about a gentle correction BDan gave her when she said "I have to go dancing tomorrow". Change "have to" to "get to". I _get_ to run my dance class on odd Thursday nights.

Really truly, it has been astoundingly consistent, that no matter how up or down I'm feeling beforehand, I have not yet had a week where I came out of class feeling bad. Varying levels of tired, but the fact that I've bent the world to my will enough to have this one little bright spot of joy and community is amazing, and I feel consistently so privileged and excited to get to witness it.

Also it's _so nice_ to have simply embraced my ethos of "do hard things badly" and just run forward with it. Another difference from tea ceremony --they have more of a set and ordered curriculum, which is lovely for them, but doesn't have as much flexibility for my style of "you've been here like twice before ever and just walked in a few minutes late? yeah, we're just gonna throw you in, do your best"

I'm also so privileged to have found-made-cultivated-developed-whatever a group of people willing to extend me grace and patience as I learn the best ways to say the things to share the idea. I still need to remember that modeling is often best, but on any given dance, I can feel myself getting better within the moment as I encourage them on. Truly, my class is spoiling me for regular teaching.

(that's actually not a joke --when I last taught at Cambridge Class, the biggest and much more traditional class in the branch, I found myself second-guessing and being slightly shocked at how much support these far more experienced dancers needed, and having to occasionally rewrite programs between weeks to take some challenges down a few notches. Which is really just a different culture of dance --there's much more of the "wanting to do the same things enough times to feel confident" where I'm more, as I said, be okay with doing things badly.)

Maybe I should write a continuing set of ethos up sometime, what I'm actively hoping to cultivate. Include things like "we communicate without words [except the caller]" and "we keep trying to find our spot". The compliment for the two newest dancers on the floor tonight was that both of them were very good at _not stopping_. One of them, the one who's only come two or three times before, is the one we all cornered at the end to express astonishment she does no other form of dance.

"If you're having fun, you definitely should come back, because you have a quite good sense of how to communicate non-verbally" I say (approximately) and Alex interrupts to say "if you're having fun, you should come back because you're having fun" which I appreciate. It's all a very good situation, honestly.

And it's nice to know that there's something feeling interesting and exciting and sustainable in my world, especially when some days my job is feeling, uh, not those things. This year has been very long and hard, it's important that it also has dancing.

I love you,
~Sor
MOOP!