To put it mildly, without bruising my already bruised “dancing” ego, I am not a naturally born dancer, but always wanted to improve my dancing skills. In my middle school, dancing was offered as an elective subject. As a 12-year boy, I decided to take this class. The first few weeks of the class went without an incident — mostly because I always stayed in the middle of the other students so the teacher wouldn’t see my dancing moves. However, it didn’t last long. One day the teacher noticed me and called me to the front. He then asked me to dance in front of the class. I think, with all my fear and shame, I danced the worst possible way. The teacher let me dance for a few minutes and it was one of the longest few minutes of my life. Then he raised his voice and said how utter failure I was and went on to ridicule my moves in front of the class. I was devastated.
I stayed in the class for the rest of the year, mostly because I didn’t have a choice, but my teacher treated me like I was invisible. As a consequence of this, I am yet to improve my nature talent for dancing and try to stay as far away as possible from dancing floors.
What could have done differently?
For teacher’s part, he should have been more empathetic for the people who were not naturally born dancers. Instead of berating and ridiculing a student in front of the class, he should have explained what needed to be done in a different setting – may be after the class or some other time. In addition, if he thought that the class was not appropriate or too advance for me, he could have suggested a different class or asked me get more help. This incidence could also be forgiven as a momentary lapse of his mindfulness, had he tried to help during the rest of the school year. For his defense, it was long before Daniel Goleman popularized Emotional Intelligence (or my teacher may have had a similar experience in his EI class and decided to stick with his natural EI, instead of improving it!).