About Failure and Break Dancing

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how I'm teaching a summer dance class (see #9). As part of that class, I do a short character building lesson. I try to do an activity or add something in the choreography each week that relates to the character building lesson. For example, our first week we talked about body language and how it sends a stronger message than what we say. We talked about how dance can tell a story or depict emotion. Then I had the girls walk across the floor two at a time to the music while showing them a paper with an emotion written on it. I asked them to adjust their body language to match that emotion. They had fun with it. We also went through some specific examples of how our body language can affect our communication with others.

This week, something kind of cool happened, so I wanted to write about it. I recently told you about my fear of failure. I'll have you know that I haven't overcome it by any degree. Probably never will. But I feel that it's something important to talk about with kids, so my lesson for this week's dance class was on failure. I asked the girls about failure and mistakes, and they said all the right things. They gave me all the quotes, and they knew their stuff. After our discussion, I told them, "Today I'm going to teach you a dance move that might be hard. You probably won't get it the first time. Some of you might not figure it out today. You might have to go home and work on it all week. But I promise that if you keep trying, you will get it, and you will be so proud of yourselves!"

Later in the dance class, I showed them the move - the "Coffee Grinder" or "helicopter" (and yes, I can still do this, but it ain't pretty, and it hurts). I learned it when I was eight, and I danced to "Rump Shaker."

(Yep. Eight-year-old girls dancing to "Rump Shaker." Sigh...)

Every single girl (except Daisy because I taught her this a few months ago) stared at me with her mouth agape and said, "I can't do that."

I asked them to practice over and over, and I told them, "If you keep trying, I promise it will click at some point, and you will be able to do it!"

I had two girls just flat-out give up. One even laid on the floor and didn't move again until it was time to leave. But all of the other girls kept trying, and one by one, each of them figured it out! Even one of my littlest ones - who always complains that I'm torturing her - walked out of class this week being able to do the coffee grinder (she claimed I made her get a butt cramp, and I said, "You enjoy that butt cramp! It means you worked hard!")

I loved watching this unfold because the girls all struggled at first, and they all had an excuse for why they couldn't do it. They complained that it hurt. That their legs couldn't move that way. That they were tired. Then one by one, they figured it out, and once they got it, they just beamed with excitement. They suddenly, it didn't matter that they had floor burns on their feet or that their leg muscles were tired. They were so proud of themselves that they kept showing me over and over again that they could do it! I even had a dad text me later that night and tell me how awesome it was that his daughter could "break dance," and I was thrilled to know that she went home and said, "Dad, watch what I can do!"

It just reminded me of that simple life lesson - one that I'm forever learning - that not everything is going to go right the first time, but if we keep trying, we might just get there.