Teacher rating - criteria?

[shutterbox]

My criteria.
1. The instructor has to be a great tango dancer and a milonguero/a.
2. He/she has an extensive knowledge of Argentine music and culture (in my book, actually, that is included in #1).
3. He/she has already produced a number of adequate social tango dancers.
4. In his/her classes he/she stresses the basics rather than teaching patterns.
5. He/she explicitly encourages his/her students to aspire to all of the above.

I share mostly the same views. Another point I look out for, is to see how his/her students dance.

What he/she should not be:
-A ballroom dance instructor/show dancer who has never set foot to a milonga. That means:
-Anyone who does not regularly dance tango socially is not considered.
- How many students attend the classes is not a criterion. Some instructors seem to attract crowds of perpetual beginners, walking horrors, crazy and unpleasant people. I believe there is a reason for that.
Yes, teaching tango is a business, but I will not go to those who primarily interested in money, and who ends up encouraging mediocrity and lack of etiquette in their students.

I agree to these too, especially the last point.
Some see AT as a commerically viable venture, and depends on how the organisers(themselves not necessarily AT dancers) put things together, its very profitable business and also a way to reach out to rich and effluent.

 

[opendoor]

Re: five- or six-count-basics

1. The instructor has to be a great tango dancer and a milonguero

2. He/she has an extensive knowledge of Argentine music and culture

3. He/she has already produced a number of adequate social tango dancers.

4. In his/her classes he/she stresses the basics rather than teaching patterns.

5. He/she explicitly encourages his/her students to aspire to all of the above.

Very good list ! I do agree in all, but the first point: My experience is (and the data base is not small), that good dancers are less good teachers. May I add:

6. He/she helps beginners to put up a social network and peer group.

OD

 

[Dave Bailey]

So true.... often because of their nationality or performing experience rather than their ability to nurture students as individuals.

Which is exactly why I'm trying to identify objective criteria.

And the larger the class, the more likely it is that step patterns will get taught. Ironically, of the privates I mentioned above, I did not enjoy the GROUP classes of some of those same instructors.

Good point.

There's different skills involved in managing a larger class. Crowd management, clarity of speaking, class design, and so on.

At some point, with large classes, you almost have to simply demonstrate a pattern, and hope that you can impart some technique into that pattern.

 

[Dave Bailey]

Very good list ! I do agree in all, but the first point: My experience is, that good dancers are less good teachers.

I think "natural" dancers can make poor teachers - in the same way that natural-language German speakers (for example) can make poor German teachers.

I think you need your teacher to be able to relate to your own experience, because they'll then know what sort of problems to fix, and will be able to explain the fix in terms that make sense to you.

 

[bordertangoman]

I think "natural" dancers can make poor teachers - in the same way that natural-language German speakers (for example) can make poor German teachers.

I think you need your teacher to be able to relate to your own experience, because they'll then know what sort of problems to fix, and will be able to explain the fix in terms that make sense to you.

I would also say that can be true of professional dancers; if you have a ballet or contemporary training you will have everything in your head in an eight count and you will have worked very hard and long on technique to acheive your skills.

which your average social student just isnt going to do.

 

[opendoor]

.. your teacher to be able to relate to your own experience..

But it seems, that some good dancers cannot abstract from their own experience, nor can they slip into another person. Second problem: you must have the ability to put anatomical or movement concerning stuff into real words!

 

[Joe]

I actually went to one milonga that was very sparsely attended (less than a dozen people!) with about a 4 to 1 ratio of followers to leaders, and the instructor who had taught workshops all day did not dance with ANY of the followers sitting out... not even the ones who had attended the workshop. He only danced with his partner.

So, you expect the man to teach all day, AND dance all night with people who may be uncomfortable for him to dance with?

 

[Dave Bailey]

So, you expect the man to teach all day, AND dance all night with people who may be uncomfortable for him to dance with?

Well, yeah. I mean, he's the teacher...

 

[Heather2007]

So, you expect the man to teach all day, AND dance all night with people who may be uncomfortable for him to dance with?

Quite. Also, he dancing with his partner only maybe his way of switching off from the class and just enjoying the (milonga) moment.

I actually went to one milonga that was very sparsely attended (less than a dozen people!) with about a 4 to 1 ratio of followers to leaders, and the instructor who had taught workshops all day did not dance with ANY of the followers sitting out... not even the ones who had attended the workshop. He only danced with his partner.

Did any of the followers bother to go and ask him for a dance? I suspect not. And so who one chooses or chooses not to dance with works both ways.

 

[Dave Bailey]

Did any of the followers bother to go and ask him for a dance?

In Tango? Beginner followers? Asking a teacher? I'm not sure I've ever seen that happen...

Anyway, can we get back on-topic? Any more suggestions for objective assessment criteria for "teacher ability"?

 

[bordertangoman]

In Tango? Beginner followers? Asking a teacher? I'm not sure I've ever seen that happen...

Anyway, can we get back on-topic? Any more suggestions for objective assessment criteria for "teacher ability"?

iN y experience of teaching tango, a good teacher has be like a zoo keeper; you have a multitude of different animals in your class each with its own interpretation of what you say and with its own way moving; eg the giraffe likes to move elegantly along; the rhino wants to plod rhythmically and the hippos wallow;the seals want to tricks; the orang-utan are after connection, and the jackals are trying to score, whilst the monkeys have Attention Deficit Disorder and will start monkeying around after 2 minutes of doing the exercise. So the zoo keeper has to figure out what each animal needs as well as what all the animals together can cope with.

 

[Zoopsia59]

So, you expect the man to teach all day, AND dance all night with people who may be uncomfortable for him to dance with?

Oh good grief... if he was all that tired, he could have bowed out of attending the milonga. He was a guest teacher after all, not the organizer.

At the very least he could have struck up conversations with the people sitting around. He didn't do that either.

Remember, we're talking about someone who did dance quite a bit at the milonga (so... no, not that tired) and couldn't bring himself to dance even ONE tanda with a local follower even though there were less than 10 of them there. Given the attendance, he could have danced one tanda with every follower there and still had at least 1/2 the night left.

He spent the entire night with his partner and did not interact with any of us. That's very noticable when you have less than a dozen people in a room, most of whom are NOT dancing.

/end off topic

 

[Zoopsia59]

the giraffe likes to move elegantly along; the rhino wants to plod rhythmically and the hippos wallow;the seals want to tricks; the orang-utan are after connection, and the jackals are trying to score, whilst the monkeys have Attention Deficit Disorder and will start monkeying around after 2 minutes of doing the exercise. So the zoo keeper has to figure out what each animal needs as well as what all the animals together can cope with.

What a great analogy!

 

[Zoopsia59]

I think "natural" dancers can make poor teachers - in the same way that natural-language German speakers (for example) can make poor German teachers.

I think you need your teacher to be able to relate to your own experience, because they'll then know what sort of problems to fix, and will be able to explain the fix in terms that make sense to you.

This is a good point. I don't think natural dancers are always going to be bad teachers, but I do think they have to spend time breaking down and analyzing stuff in a way they might not have had to do when they learned it themselves.

There are some things that come very naturally to me and I have had to give a lot of thought to them to be able to explain or teach them. FAR more thought and analysis than I had to spend to just do it. It certainly has been easier to teach things that I had to work at myself to "get". I can see in others both the issues that I had and the issues I didn't have myself. But its harder to explain the correction of something that wasn't an issue for me.

One of the benefits of continuing to take lower level classes is to see how other teachers explain various things and to take note of what they notice in students that I might have missed. (That is, when I can find a class that isn't all about a step pattern)

Still a long way to go to become a great teacher...

 

[bordertangoman]

What a great analogy!

yeah you need a sackful of peanuts bananas, cabbage leaves, etc to keep them all happy