Curiosity Captured the Cat

How do you capture a student’s attention in the first minutes of a class? Capture their curiosity. Some beginning students of T’ai Chi Chih (TCC) may be fully engaged and curious from the start, but others may be skeptical or tired or only present to accompany a friend or spouse. A teaching tool known as “set induction” can help pull your students into the moment.

Set induction refers to the use of a thought-provoking statement, fact, or audio-visual item at the beginning of a class to gain student attention and introduce the day’s focus. My first memory of set induction takes me back to a college French class. The professor would walk into the classroom with suitcoat pockets bulging. What was in those pockets? He’d slowly pull items out and begin to discuss them… in French, of course.

It could be a slinky toy (demonstrating weight shifts), a marionette (demonstrating posture), or an empty tissue box (facilitating arm placement). Like Sister Becky, I frequently use small placards. With a nod to April Leffler, I’ve outlined my foot on cardboard and strategically placed three dimes to encourage focusing on the feet and “all dimes down.” To help beginning students focus less on the minutia of movements, I took inspiration from an article by Marcella Levie in the February 2022 Vital Force, entitled “TCC Meets the Dancing Letters.” As Marcella wrote, “While reading a book, we don’t focus on every letter, but rather flow with the story.” I made the placards pictured here to help beginning students appreciate the holistic essence of a movement and to minimize their focus on individual details.

Developing set inductions can be fun. How will you begin your next class?