Teachers for community growth
Lonewolf had some good insights on how he chooses Tango teachers while he is in Buenos Aires. I agree with most of the points raised.
However, for me personally and from the community’s perspective, a teacher’s compassion and care for his/her students and generosity are the top priorities at the moment. While a teacher’s dancing prowess is important, given the overall level of dancing in our community, there is no doubt in my mind that most travelling Tango teachers (Argentine or otherwise) have something to offer technically. It’s really their willingness and patience to impart their skills which is even more critical. For such teachers (and we have been fortunate to have 2-3 such couples visiting Singapore in the past 6 years), I am quite certain that, just like me, they get a lot of satisfaction when they see their students improve.
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I agree with you. Heart is the most important thing.
But….Its hard to feel such compassion and care for such a small community. Especially for experienced visiting teachers. They have travelled around the world, what’s Singapore?
So in fact what makes a good travelling teacher then is his or her professionism. If he takes his work seriously and gives his 100% because its what he is getting paid for.
But anyway keep up the good work Louis, you and Janet have put in a lot of heart for the social dancing community. Maybe not a lot of people say it but I know they all feel that way! 🙂
After having invited overseas teachers to Singapore (for clarification: the travelling expenses were fully paid for by us the organisers) a couple of times this year, I can say that as long as their fees can be met, the visiting teachers are no better or worse off whether they go to larger or smaller communities. Nevertheless, I do agree that there are opportunity costs involved, e.g. travelling time, less exposure, teaching classes at a lower level, fewer private classes, etc. These factors can deter teachers from going to newer and/or smaller communities.
However, this is where the “heart” comes in. Is someone willing to play a part in shaping a young community, which may mean making repeated trips, and teaching “simple” things?
This was the case for Taipei in its early days (Lucia and Alvaro, based in Japan), and it has happened in Hong Kong (Kara and Matias, for example) in the last couple of years, and, to a certain extent, in Singapore during the first few years.