“Good Jobs” Part 2

I experimented alright. On one person so far because my other student whose name I won’t mention (JACK!) blew it. You couldn’t just NOT read the blog for 1 day, could you? 🙂 Lucky bastard escaped my experiment…
Alright, so my other student is a nice, shy guy who feels very uncomfortable on the dance floor; came to me for help a couple weeks ago. GREAT experimentation material! One of those who crave results (only positive results and preferably every day). But I have to admit – a hard worker too.

So here we are into class number 5, poor thing giving his best, me biting my tongue so that no “good job” slips (ok, one time I did let it go; just that one time though), we went through class with minimal positive feedback on my side.

After class I like to ask my students what they got out of it. Usually, my guinea pig of a student (sorry for the sound of it) notices that he’s feeling more confident with every lesson although he is not able to pinpoint the exact areas of improvement. This time? His face said it all! The man just gave up. I just wish I knew what was going through his head!

Did I just send my student onto plateau? Or did he just send himself by relying too much on teacher’s feedback? Was he really seeing his performance in class through my positive reinforcement only?

Let’s not allow that to happen again, guys. From now on we praise ourselves! AMEN.

P.S. Eric thanked me afterwards saying that he learned something about himself that day which makes me very happy