.jpg)
The belief that we possess enough content to teach a lesson leads us to make the decision for transition from student to teacher. This is, obviously, the result of innocence.
There is no internationally valid academic certificate nor prestige enough to inspire other tangueros’ trust, everyone starts their path with good choices, mistakes and uncertainty.
Arise, then, an urgent need to connect the contents, to put them in order according to difficulty, so that students can assimilate them better. This path is full of potholes, because those who stand opposite a group of students for the first time (in my opinion, naively or not, everyone who stands in front of one or two people to transmit what they know becomes a teacher or wants to be one, whether they like it or not) have relatively little background in the contents, and there is no teacher nearby to consult if we are teaching well or not.
In short, we start teaching badly and with little knowledge.
Only those supported by prestigious teachers have security and truthfulness about what they teach. However, as Tango is a genre that evolves constantly, even the prestigious usually have gaps in their teachings.
In my case, when I began teaching, there were already those content gaps in my first lessons, when I could not explain to the student the reasons for some of the movements I was teaching. At that moment, I realized what I had to face.
I am not going to discuss if, not being a professional dancer, a person should make the decision of teaching, because we all started at some point, and in the same way.
There are teachers who, after years of experience, grumble when a courageous one starts teaching at a club, peña or dance institute. They do not remember that they started teaching in the same way.
The premature teachers are necessary to plant the seed of Tango within people’s hearts. I think these teachers do a very important job. But I also believe in the constant evolution of the method, in questioning the teachers’ reasons and approaches to their teachings, even if it is not the students who ask.
Beginners are faithful by nature. They will believe or do whatever you say.
In this sense, they will acquire logic of movement exactly as taught, with all the good and bad aspects. This is the reason why, for the teachers' benefit, there are not so many students' inquiries in the first classes.
This situation can last for a long time. And without regular questioning, teachers’ development and improvement depend on their own intention of researching, investigating, changing, including new aspects or knowledge, etc.
Some teachers’ stagnation derive from clinging to some basic movements that may be efficient up to a certain point and some indisputable theories which, when challenged, display a deep gap that is the limit of our knowledge.
There should be an inner voice which asks teachers for explanations, which leads them to improve, to go further than what previous teachers said as the truth.
The excuse that we transmit what we know with our best intentions, with the peace of mind that we will do no harm to anyone, it's not enough
It's true that is not open-heart surgery, either. We do not deal with educational or moral values. We do not run the risk of developing students’ bad habits for life. We are not in danger, supposedly, of anything. We protect ourselves with an aura of innocence and lack of danger.
But, we have to take extreme care in the firstest classes, not only because of first impressions and feelings to be provoked in the beginners, but also because a beginning without logic of movement and precise explanation of the reasons for doing this or that, leaves many gaps for doubt and leads to mistakes that remain in dancers for a long time and which are difficult to resolve when they become bad habits in posture. For this, when you think, as we said before, that you do no harm to the student, it is relative.