Tag: teaching

Stopping a class to demonstrate a complex pose is an excellent tool to teach key alignment points, inspire your students, and convey important information. While providing a visual guide to your students can be very useful, there is an art to creating an effective demo. Check out these five tips to rock your demonstrations and inspire your students.

Move Your Students

The first step – and the one most often neglected by teachers – is to move your students to where they can see you. Oftentimes teachers get shy about stopping the class. Be bold! Moving students can be like herding cats; they often don’t want to move (or don’t realize that they need to). Be clear about moving your students to where they can see you. Take charge of the room.

Do It For Them

This is a no brainer, but don’t demonstrate for yourself. Make sure the demonstration is for the benefit of your students. Check in with them through making eye contact, nodding, and looking for affirmative signs of understanding. Make sure they get it.

Offer Stages

Break down the pose that you’re demonstrating into at least two stages so that there is something for everyone. Affirm the goodness of each stage (“this is already a lot of work!”) so that students don’t feel badly if they can’t do the final variation. Be clear about how students should know if they should move onto the next stage. For example, say, “if you can keep your leg straight, then you can move onto…” rather than a vague invitation such as, “if you feel comfortable…” The more specific you are, the more you will empower your students to effectively evaluate their own practice.

Inspire without being a jerk

Doing a demonstration can be an opportunity to inspire your students to a new level of practice. But make sure to inspire them without demoralizing them or showing off. Remember: the demonstration is for their benefit. You want them to think, “I want to do that!” rather than, “I could never do that.” You can inspire your students by being clear and specific about the steps they need to take to ultimately do the pose. Even if they can’t do the final pose, they will feel empowered that they can see the route to get there.

Give Three Takeaways

After a demonstration, summarize the key points of the pose by giving your students no more than three simple take aways that will help them do the pose well. They won’t be able to keep more in their head than three! The art of great teaching is knowing how to be simple.

Happy teaching!