We are all haunted by the ghosts of bad teachers. Those that seemed to hate us, or we could never seem to please.
When you become an adult and still want to learn you can be slammed right back to being a scared little kid with some off the cuff comment. My personal bug bare is the teacher that expresses disappointment in you. What do they hope to achieve with that? How dare they? When you are doing your best to juggle everything life throws at you and you are coming to their class as a free choice, and at considerable monetary and sometimes personal cost, as a form of personal development to do something for you. They, who really know nothing about you or your situation slam you down to nothing with that disdainful comment. Do they really think that you will be motivated to please them more and do better when they say that? Who cares about them!
Learning is about the individual pupil not the teacher. If a teacher doesn't try to understand how an individual in their class learns then they are not doing their job.
I know when I teach, that if a class isn't getting something, that I need to change my tack. Try and explain it differently or ask them what they need. Sometimes just working on something else for a bit, or having a water break is all it takes for the pieces of the puzzle to fall into place. And sometimes people need to go over and over something, again and again. It's just the way they learn.
I'm not a quick learner I never have been. I love videos as I can take things at my pace and not feel like I am irritating anyone by having to go over and over something. But other people just find they cannot learn from videos, we all have our own individual ways of learning.
The people that end up sticking with a subject and becoming masters, and therefore teachers are usually the ones that did learn quickly and easily. Many of them learned as kids so have no concept of what it means to come to their subject as an adult. This is not a criticism it is just something that both sides need to bare in mind. Being different is never wrong, understanding is what we go to classes for, we want to understand our subjects, but in order to do so you have to learn to understand the people that are around you in that process too, be it other students, the teacher or yourself. And if your teacher is not taking the time to try and understand you, and are always making the class about them, perhaps you need to try a different teacher.
For classes with Fulya; In all levels of Bellydance, Flamenco Beginners and Improvers and Middle Eastern drumming see www.fulyadancer.co.uk