[Tango-L] Beginner to Intermediate

[Christopher L. Everett]

Tom Stermitz wrote:
> What vanity and pseudo-self-esteem these people have!? "Oh, I just  
> want to challenge myself" What about the other people in class?
Every old hand I've ever spoken to has a story about this.
> This is a problem all over. Many teachers or workshop organizers are  
> unable or unwilling to set levels or enforce levels. It gets so bad  
> sometimes that you have intermediates who can't do ochos learning  
> volcadas or ganchos in a class labeled advanced.
The best solution is for organizers to stop asking teachers for stuff 
like "Invoking and Executing Linear Boleos", "Turbo Ganchos in Giros",
and the like.  At the Chicago Festival, for the intermediate classes 
I took, 75% of the people in the classes did not have the fundamentals 
required to execute what the teachers taught in even a halfassed way.

Every once in a while you hear about teachers that rebel against the 
status quo.  In that very same Chicago Festival, Javier Rodriguez and 
Andrea Misse canceled a class on "Boleos and Ganchos" on the spot, 
and instead taught a class on walking in the embrace.  Why?  Because 
the people in the class were blatantly not ready for the material.

> Some teachers welcome anybody into an advanced class or workshop  
> under the philosophy that people can learn fancy steps and build up  
> technique later. I think they are just trying to build attendance,  
> without any concern for the quality of learning for the individual or  
> the other students.
Agreed.
> I'm of the opposite philosophy, i.e. that with good technique you can  
> easily learn fancier steps, and reversing the order embeds bad habits  
> that slow down your progress. We've all seen women who don't have  
> balance and can't even do an ochos smoothly being thrased through the  
> tango turn. They're just learning that thrashing is a lead for the turn.
Agreed again.
> If you layer the learning process properly (strategically), then  
> people progress more quickly and feel more successful at each  
> stage... this boosts retention at each stage.
The best way to teach is in terms of things people already know. 
Then students are functioning at the outside boundaries of what
is familiar to them, which is hallowed educational ground. 

How you break material down doesn't matter too much so long as
you follow that rule.

Christopher