Experience 2: Teaching
SLOs: Community Contributer
Collaborative Worker
Effective Communicator
Teaching aerial kid’s classes was my first job until it was cut short by COVID. When teaching, I was sent back to revisit beginning steps. Helping the kids with their movements reinforced my understanding of the sport as a whole and I was able to translate what I was teaching them on silks to what I was learning on rope. When I was working a lot with them, I noticed their form and how it could improve. Straight legs and pointed toes might seem petty and a purely visual critique, but I noticed in myself when I had that engagement throughout my entire body, everything got a lot easier. Although some moves focus on a certain muscle group more than another, that doesn’t mean there is nothing else affecting it.
Aside from studying aerial itself, teaching taught me a lot about kids and how they learn. It also showed me what I can do to communicate and make friends with them. Kids are mainly there to have fun, especially the five-eight year olds. Telling them over and over to do something isn’t going to make them want to do it. I found that focusing on things they like and building off of that was a great way to get them to learn while still feeling comfortable and confident. A lot of people don’t take kids seriously because they for some reason think that just because they’re young means that they don’t know anything. This is far from the truth, I learned a lot from these kids and they were incredibly capable little acrobats. Treating them like humans and not babies made them respect me as a human as well and established a positive relationship between us.
^ 2021 - rope ^
(I don't know what pictures to put for teaching so here are extras)