Thread: Teaching Standards – Empowering Potential Students with Information

Hi Everyone!

Sorry to be jumping in a little late on these threads.

The subject of what we expect from our instructors and what we expect from each other as fellow instructors is a really important conversation to have, and have often.

During the past decade of teaching, I’ve gone through various cycles/phases of frustration over (what I hate to admit) is a pretty large percentage of bellydance instructors lacking in the many areas of expertise that a qualified instructor should embody. There have been times when I’ve tried to suppress my frustration, let it go, ignore it, or tell myself that it’s not my problem to expend energy on, but ultimately it does affect everyone in the bellydance community. When potential students or an audience writes off bellydance as a novelty or writes it off completely, it has a profound effect on us all. When new students come into our classrooms with years of experience and an elevated view of their level and then find out that they need to go back to square it can be heartbreaking for them… we’re often left to pick up the pieces or in many cases they never return to class .

I think a certifying organization is a good idea, but it may only function the right way if almost all instructors join in, which could be an impossible feat. Cat herding, anyone? 

Many years back I was really gung-ho on the idea of basic to advanced Certifications and Teacher Trainings, but I’ve noticed the end result is often just a certificate of participation. Especially for Teacher Training certs where there should be a pretty high bar of accountability, I’ve observed quite a few cases of dancers certified to train in a format, style, or school where the end result has left me with a question mark above my head.

I think the most effective way we can improve standards in teaching is for dancers/instructors to work together to empower potential students with information on how to choose a class that's right for them and how to recognize when they might be in a less optimum classroom situation. Education and information is key and this would put responsibility in the student's court for doing their research as well as the instructors for providing the student with realistic information about their classes.

Most everyone has a web presence now and on my website, my class faqs page has detailed info on my class structure and focus, as well as good questions to ask if a potential student is looking around for a quality class/instructor. http://zanbaka.com/faqs.htm

Even though we may have some minor disagreements on how we can improve teaching standards, I don’t think we’d all be posting here if we didn’t care deeply about the subject and our artform.

Originally Posted by zanbaka

I think the most effective way we can improve standards in teaching is for dancers/instructors to work together to empower potential students with information on how to choose a class that's right for them and how to recognize when they might be in a less optimum classroom situation. Education and information is key and this would put responsibility in the student's court for doing their research as well as the instructors for providing the student with realistic information about their classes.

If you want to talk about herding cats... There's a particular strain of ignorance running through certain segments of our student population that has proven very resistant to enlightenment. The problem isn't a lack of information, it's a lack of interest in accessing and processing the information. Even among the membership here, how busy are the shopping forums compared to the dance and music traditions forums? For every one dancer on the top half of the forum page, how many are on the Swap Meet only? How many students take no initiative to practice outside of class, much less go online and try to do their own research? There's already a lot of information online about what constitutes a good class, ethical conduct, sensible dancing in terms of ME culture, etc., but how do you reach the people who don't understand why they should spend time reading it?