Getting ignored in class

[chocakety]

Hi all, before I go onto the situation I am in, I would like to give you a brief introduction about my dance life.

 

I am now 19. I started ballet at 7 with RAD Primary. Unfortunately, there wasn't any big girls in the school to look up upon for inspiration and the silly young me thought that ballet was just "RAD Primary". I left ballet at 8 and went back when I was 15.

 

From 15-17, that was my "darkest" period of ballet. I met teachers who weren't very encouraging and nice. One even mentioned that I would never get my splits as I had "iron legs". They would scold/yell at me without telling me where did I go wrong nor demonstrating what is correct. All that changed when I met a new teacher who patiently groomed me. I had "lazy elbows" and we both worked together to get that fixed.

 

She treats me really well, allowing me to teach her baby classes and sometimes relieving classes for her too. However, recently, I felt that I am being "ignored". Usually when I attend a class that is not my level, she hardly corrects me and I have nothing against that because it isn't my class and it is not fair to the other students who rightfully belongs to that class. But, there are several girls who are from my level that attends the higher levels too, they seem to be getting more attention than the other students? About 70% of the time during my regular class level, I can walk out from the class without getting corrections for my technique at all.

 

She also mentioned that she knows that I do loads of reading on technique, anatomy etc and am very hardworking. I doubt it would be a case of "I do not need to correct/teach you much since you read up therefore I can focus on other students"

 

SURELY, there is something that I would have missed out and probably misunderstood.

 

Earlier today, A friend and I asked her about what should we work on to improve on and I got no answers from her about that.

 

I may sound arrogant in this and I apologise in advance for that, but isn't the student who is so passionate about getting proper technique and going the extra mile to read up, deserve to be corrected more than the other students who do not make the effort to read up?

 

I appreciate any advice/help for this issue. Thank You!

[Victoria Leigh]

Comparisons are not a good thing, chockakety. Whether the teacher is correcting you or not has nothing to do with whether you "read up" on technique or not. There are many reasons why people sometimes feel ignored in class, and the only way to find that out is to directly ask her. Sosmetimes the teacher is busy with those who have more problems than you do, or, maybe she feels like you need a break from so many corrections. Maybe you are doing so well that she feels it is not needed and others need it more. The only way to know is to ask.

[chocakety]

Hello Miss Leigh,

 

I mentioned in the post that I did ask her about it face to face and she didn't reply me back :l

[Victoria Leigh]

I know you asked her what you need to do to improve, but that is not the same thing as letting her know that you feel that she is ignoring you. Just ask why you are not getting any corrections. Does she ever say anything positive, like tell you that something was good?

[chocakety]

Thanks for the fast reply!

 

I used to get positive replies in the past, but it has stopped since a couple of months back I think? Haha.

[Victoria Leigh]

No need to quote the last post in your post, chocakety. It's right there for us to see.

 

Well, since you are not receiving either positive or negative feedback, then I think you will need to let the teacher know that you are feeling neglected. Sometimes they get so involved with trying to fix others that they forget to give any attention to those who are doing well. Some teachers sometimes go the opposite road, and give all the attention to those doing well. There should be a balance, but then there are a lot of things in life that "should" happen that do not always happen. As the saying goes, life is not always fair! ;)

[chocakety]

Indeed life is never fair!

 

I will speak to her about it and report back what's her reply.

 

Thank you again!

[Victoria Leigh]

You are welcome, and I hope it helps. I do think that it would be good if you try to find the right time to ask her, like when she is not busy with something or someone else.

[chocakety]

Hi Ms Leigh! Just like to share with you how did it go.

 

As my teacher is always busy (She always have her classes back to back and my classes are inbetween), I decided to drop her a text to tell her about it. She didn't reply me but even though she didn't reply me, she started paying attention to me during the next class and was correcting/praising me again

[Ballet Bunnie]

That's funny, because I am feeling that I get ignored by a teacher lately. Well, maybe not ignoring me totally, but he would look at me for a while, and walk away without saying anything!!!! It's driving me nuts because I was just so uncertain why he would do that! I talked to him after class yesterday asking him to see if I was doing one of the step right, and he told me that I was doing it very well because he was watching me during class as well, and that's why he didn't say anything. He gave me a high five~

He also said that I always remembered what he told us in class, and he could see me working on them, so that's why he didn't felt the need to remind me again. Now I am happy, at least that I know I'm not being "ignored" in a bad way!

[Victoria Leigh]

Glad to hear that, chocakety.