Today though, something is changed, there seems to be a different energy in the room. You can't quite put your finger on it but it is there hovering like a dark cloud. You smile at the students, especially the one who is always so glad to see you and you get nothing back, just a blank stare. Suddenly you realize that something is wrong so you try to make a witty comment, anything to bring those familiar smiles back to the faces and it falls like a lead balloon. Has this type of situation ever happened to you? I know that is has happened to me and I also know that it is a miserable feeling when a good student suddenly turns bad.

So, what makes this happen?

Really it is usually caused by a variety of different things that somehow cause the student to feel resentment and almost anger towards you. It could be caused by something that is happening at home or perhaps they are not getting on with their parents or siblings. Maybe there are pressures at school that the student is unable to cope with and so who do they take it out on? You, their dance teacher, the person that they had a great rapport with. I had one student who felt pressured by the other students in the class because they received a good amount of corrections.

Of course, all the teachers gave this particular student a lot of feedback because they knew, as did, I that she had something special, a unique talent that only needed to be nurtured and cultivated in the right way to project this student to future success. I was unaware at the time that the other students were giving her a hard time because of course they were jealous of the attention she received, they wanted more notice taken of them and less of what she did. Consequently, this student started to withdraw in class mentally and stopped working to her full potential just to get the other students to leave her alone.

At the time, I couldn't understand what was happening, the only thing I knew was that when I asked this dancer to do the simplest thing all I got back from her was defiance and lack of cooperation, it was as if it was a completely different person. To be honest it made me feel very sad because it took all the enjoyment out of teaching this particular group of dancers and it was something that before all of this happened had been a highlight of my week. I couldn't understand how a kind and generous student had suddenly turned into a rude and almost belligerent person.

I knew that I had to get to the bottom of what was happening and I enlisted the help of those around me to find out what was going on with this student and how we could turn things around to get her back on track. We did manage to find the reason and the solution for what was going on but it took a lot of patience working with her and coming up with ways to instill that passion and fire back into her.

Most teachers work for either a studio or a school and it is important if you have a student who used to be fantastic to work with and now is just a pain to go to whoever is in charge to try to reach out to the student's family, friends and the student themselves to discover what is going on and how it can be fixed. When a student has, a drastic personality change there are several avenues to explore to find out why. You may not be in the position to get these answers and that is why you need to let the person who can get them for you be made aware of the situation. Perhaps the student is taking drugs or using alcohol, this can be typical in a teenager.

There may be issues amongst the dancers that need to be addressed so that everyone can move forward in a positive way.

Does the dancer have problems at school?

Are her parents experiencing the same bad attitude?

We always find that it is helpful to sit down with the student and the parents and very often include the teacher who is having the problem in this conversation because very often the truth of what is going on will surface and once you know what it is, it is much easier to deal with it.

Kids go through changes all the time but as teachers we have a responsibility to all of our students to get the best out of them and it is impossible to do that if you have one bad apple who is standing in everyone's way. Take action, don't delay in getting to the right person to fix the problem as quickly as possible so that once again you will be able to enter the studio and get that great energy from the students that you did before.