Strictly Come Dancing

Last week was an interesting one for me. After many weeks of practice it was the actual night of the school Strictly Come Dancing competition, in which I had to learn three dances and perform them with our professional dancers, the performing arts pupils. It was safe to say I was in full panic mode all week but with the exception of the last night (explain later) I really enjoyed dancing. The experience started me think if there are many dyslexic dancers in the world. However as I’ve discovered in my life it’s only a matter of harnessing the gifts dyslexia gives you to over come the perceived drawbacks. You may think what has dyslexia got to do with dancing, well I’ll try to explain in my own incoherency rambling way.

Dyslexia displays itself in many ways, in relation to dancing I guess the two major areas would poor spatial awareness and an inability to remember sequences. I thankfully after a lifetime of playing sports have good spatial awareness but I am more than useless at remembering sequences. Giving me directions is pretty much pointless I wont remember it. Hence why I’m always asking people to email a reminder and when I travel somewhere new I print out the Google directions even it’s it’s only a few streets over.

The Google maps example there is one of the tools I use to combat this area of my dyslexia. Most dyslexic people develop coping mechanisms some advanced and some not so advanced. one of my favorites at school was writing both versions of how I thought a word was spelled on top of each other and hope the teacher would give me the benefit of the doubt (I’ve just discovered spelt isn’t a real word!).

The slightly more advanced mechanism I use is known as the gift of mastery. I read about it in a book a friend bought me called The Gift of Dyslexia. Each new challenge/interest I try that I don’t at first get I go into a mode where I focus on it and don’t rest until I am happy I have sufficiently mastered it. I did this in university with CSS, 3D Studio Max and Flash. Sadly I’ve not kept up with these and am not quite the “master” I once was.

When it came to dancing I had to adopt the same approach to learning the dances. I spent hours and hours going over and over the dances until I could do them without thinking. It was very hard and I have even more respect now for our pupils who manage to remember so many dances, especially if any of them are dyslexic.

This amount of practicing made me look like I was being overly competitive but in reality it was just my need to work harder than others just to keep pace. However it was easier to let people believe I was being over-competitive because I am very over-competitive at time.

Unfortunately by Friday I was physically and emotional drained; both of which increase the level of effect my dyslexia has on me and even with 3 hours of drilling myself after work on Friday I still didn’t manage to learn that night’s dance. I was quite annoyed at myself; 1 for letting my dance partner (who had made up a good wee dance) down and 2 from the feeling of failure I get when I set out to learn anything that I don’t get (it doesn’t happen often because I am very persistent but it takes time). I can be quite hard on myself and have some perfectionist tendencies, I’m sure Sarah Kerr would have a field day working out where they came from.

The ugly over-competitive side did come out a bit in work last week during a staff netball/basketball on Friday, however that was still me holding back and thankfully I didn’t actually hurt or shout at anyone, so it could have been worse! It was actually quite good fun, even though netball is officially the worst game ever!

Sorry for the ramble I just felt I needed to share this wee thought with the world and as no one reads my blog in the age of Facebook and Twitter anyway it’s really just good to write it down to help me process it all. Maybe someday a dyslexic will stumble on it and fell good that they have the same problem with learning routines.

I’m sure there are many dyslexic dancers about, after all I once thought it would be impossible for me to be a teacher and here I am. It just took a little bit of extra time and harder work than most. So if you are a dyslexic dancer all the best with that and as they say “Keeeeeeeep Dancing”.

As for the shows, I signed up to do it not to learn to dance but to help and encourage the pupils. There are some exceptionally talented dancers and as Friday night showed, choreographers at the Girls’ Model. The winning pupil was excellent, her partner was a former pupil now working as a classroom assistant who is also an excellent dancer also. The crowds entered into the nights really well and all in all it was great fun for all. On the Friday night I really couldn’t believe how good some of the dances were as they had all been made up by the pupils. Well done Girls’ Model.

What I did learn from the whole event was how many of the staff really do put themselves out for the good of the pupils. I work in a great school, with some wonderful staff and great pupils who have yet to discover just how talented they are and what heights they can reach.

I hope I can help them see their potential and have a good impact in the lives of the pupils I teach. Just like Mrs Harbinson, Mr Alderdice and of course Mrs Magee (the discoverer of my dyslexia and subsequent dyslexia tutor) had on mine. I’m sure none of you will never read this but thanks.