Paths to Becoming a Social Partner / Ballroom Dance Teacher
There are many paths to becoming a dance teacher, probably as many as there are dance teachers. Here are some common approaches.
Get Hired
A traditional path is to get a job at an existing dance studio. Many of these will hire you with no dance experience and will train you. The downside to this approach is that it is typically sales-heavy - the studio has to recover its investment in you. Many independent dance instructors I know started on this path.
Assist
Start assisting at an existing venue. Being a teacher's assistant is a good starting point. It doesn't automatically lead to being a teacher, but if you are assisting a teacher who will let you gradually lead parts of the class, it can be a great transition into teaching.
Just Teach
Just start teaching at an existing venue. They provide the students. Venues that do not have a teaching staff are great for this, as they are constantly hungry for new instructors.
Be a Promoter and Teacher
Create your own event. This requires marketing skills, in addition to dance and teaching skills. If you can get people to show up, you can teach. This is probably the hardest method. There's more on this below, under "Students" and "Place".
Skill Development
What skills do you need to become a ballroom dance teacher?
A short list would be:
- How to dance
- How to teach
- How to promote
The list of skills is actually endless, but these are the essential skills.
How to Dance
There are so many ways to learn to dance. You can take classes, dance socially, or join a performance group. You should do at least the first two, and the third one is almost a cheat code for skill development.
How to Teach
This skill is sometimes neglected, but teaching dance is teaching, not dancing. You need to know how to convey information to students, how to organize a class, how to notice and correct mistakes.
You can take classes in teaching, you can take other teachers' classes or you can watch other teachers' classes.
How to Promote
Promotion is where I see so many independent dance instructors fail. Most dance instructors are good dancers, and the large majority are reasonable teachers, but many do not promote themselves and their classes at all. At the very minimum, have a mailing list. You need some way to let people know how to find your classes. You could use a Facebook page, a TikTok account, an Instagram feed or whatever is trendy now. I feel that something that pushes notifications to potential students is better than something they have to remember to go check, so I recommend email as your first one. There are emailing services that are free for small lists. You can add others later, but you have to keep them updated.
You need to have a way for students that like your classes to find them. Even if you always teach in one place, reminders are good. If you are an employee, you may think your employer will do all of this, but the more people that come to your classes, the happier your employer will be. Check with your employer before you start: they may have rules about your collecting students' contact information.
Other Useful Skills
Public Speaking
You can go to Toastmasters for free or low-cost public speaking practice. Yes, teaching is definitely public speaking. Feedback on your public speaking will absolutely improve your teaching.
Improv
Teaching is improvisational theater. While I would never say you have to do improv to teach, improvisation is an extremely useful skill for teachers.
Other Kinds of Teaching
There are so many other kinds of teaching, and they can all help you be a better dance teacher. Whether you teach kindergarten, volleyball or chess, you will learn skills that will carry over. Any teaching practice will help your dance teaching.
Learn from Others
Watch People Teach
You've taken lots of dance classes, but have you taken classes just to watch the teaching? Before I started teaching, I spent a year taking classes and watching how other instructors taught. I was taking the class more to learn how to teach than to learn the material being taught.
I encourage you to take or watch other instructors' classes with a focus on how they teach, not what they are teaching.
You can take the classes or watch them. If you just watch them, it's easier to take notes! It's even better if you can get a video, as you can rewind or play back in slow motion. Unfortunately, many instructors don't want to be recorded, so ask first.
If you want to take notes while taking a class, I highly recommend using a paper notebook. If you use your phone to take notes, you'll look like an idiot who is surfing the web during class. But a pen and notebook signal that you are a serious student.
Look for Things to do Right
My strongest recommendation is to watch other teachers for what they do well!
It's easy to watch other teachers and find fault, but you won't learn much from that. It also produces a bad attitude.
If you watch 100 classes and learn 1,000 things not to do, you still won't have any material to actually teach a class. But if you learn 1,000 things to do, you'll never run out of material. Even one good thing can be made into a class.
As an experienced instructor, every time I take a dance class, I look for something the instructor does that I don't do, or something they do better than I do.
Take a Formal Teacher Training Program
Dance studios usually have internal training programs. If you are employed by a studio, this is usually taken care of for you. For independent instructors there are some training programs you can take, like Ballroom Dance Teachers College, but they are few and far between. There are a few online.
There are some college majors in teaching social dance, like Oregon State.
Students
What do you need to be a teacher? Students!
How do you get students? Well, if you join an existing studio or event, they provide some students. But if you want to get invited back, you'll want to find a way to get more students to come back.
If you are starting your own event, you have to convince people to come. This is the hardest part, in my opinion. If you are someone who dances a lot, tell everyone you dance with. You can use web pages, Facebook groups, TikTok, Instagram or whatever else is currently trendy.
I've tried most of them, and nothing beats friends telling friends. Try to make lots of friends and talk to lots of people.
This is where starting out at other people's events can help build up an audience for your own events.
And, unless your employment agreement forbids it, you must have a mailing list, or some way people can sign up to find out about your classes.
Other Items
Projecting
Projecting is a theatrical term for making yourself heard. I was in good shape when I started teaching. I was dancing 10-20 hours a week. Dancing was easy, but it was still surprisingly hard to speak loudly while dancing. Practice this a few times. Use a microphone if you have to, but you will still have to learn how to breathe between comments while dancing.
Place
You'll need to find a place to teach. If you join someone else's team, this is handled for you. If you are starting something new, you'll need to figure out a place where you can teach. The dance you do makes a lot of difference. Tango can be danced in a small room. Waltz and Foxtrot, on the other hand, are much harder to find a venue for, as they require much more space.
There are websites with lists of venues. I haven't found one specifically for ballroom, but look for wedding websites for big spaces. Many places have community centers. You can look at where dances you attend are renting space. Libraries, churches, bars, and any other places people already gather can be a possibility. Dancing adds the challenge that you need a decent floor, but that frequently isn't in the room description.
Equipment
You may need to provide your own equipment. A microphone and speaker are common items that an instructor may need to provide. See the "sound system" section in the "Prepare for Class" chapter of How to Teach Ballroom Dancing for more information.
You may also need to provide music for the lesson and maybe for dancing after the lesson. Figure this out beforehand.