Friday night’s teaching practice session was good for me, but ended up being a little controversial among the group as a whole. We began when N told us that she and J had talked it over and created a list of what each of us ought to practice, so we’d go through and take turns teaching when called upon. I was really excited when I heard this: I’ve been wanting to challenge myself, and it sounded like fun to hear “Teach Pose X. Go!” and then have to go teach it on the spot.
Practice started off well, and my turn came when we got to balance poses. I was asked to teach Dancer (Natarajasana), Eagle (Garudasana), and seated forward fold. I hadn’t taught either of those balance poses before at the yoga center, so I was psyched, and thought I’d try moving from one directly to the other. Dancer pose went fine, but Eagle got a little complicated because we couldn’t figure out the correct arm position. Turns out that, if the left leg is over the right, then the right arm is over the left. Which I’m still not sure is totally clear in my mind. But we had a little debate about it and laughed and then I tried teaching it again on the other side and it went more smoothly. I taught forward fold next and that was easy. After I was done teaching, I got good comments from my classmates on my teacher voice again and on my sense of humor, and N complimented me on a few things I said (encouraging students that, in a balance pose, it’s okay to fall out, just come right back up again – which she said is important in a beginner class when people might be nervous).
As we got toward the end of our practice class, I did notice that we were almost out of poses to teach and some people hadn’t taught yet. But those people included some who I knew were pretty experienced teachers, so I just inwardly shrugged and moved on, figuring that N & J wanted to give the rest of us more time to practice teaching. Class ended with a really nice guided relaxation taught by Trish. (You can tell that it was a good guided relaxation because I relaxed but didn’t fall asleep, and it was 10:30 at night, way past my bedtime!)
After we were all dismissed for the night, I headed out the door to find a group of my fellow trainees were upset that not everyone had been called on to teach. When N had described the teaching practice session, it had seemed like she’d meant all of us would teach what we most needed to practice (although thinking back I can’t remember if she said the word “all” or not), and so the people who taught felt like the people who didn’t teach were privileged in some way, like they didn’t need to practice, or like the people who were called on to teach were being singled out as bad teachers who needed more practice. Some people felt hurt and angry over this.
It might be surprising that a group of aspiring yoga teachers would get upset over something like this, but yoga teachers are regular people too and we get our feelings hurt like anyone else, and issues of talent and ranking are tricky to handle in any venue. I didn’t feel angry or upset, but I certainly don’t blame the people who did.
For me, like I said, I did notice toward the end of class that some people weren’t called on to teach, but it didn’t bother me: two of those people I know to be very good teachers who have already subbed and taught full classes at the studio, and the others usually attend N’s classes – maybe she already feels familiar with their teaching abilities and just wanted to see more from the rest of us. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I would have felt hurt and disappointed if I hadn’t been called on to teach. I learned a lot by screwing up Eagle pose! I want to take advantage of every single teaching opportunity I can get, because I want to be a good yoga teacher. For me it’s not important to compare myself to others in our class, because we all have different levels of yoga experience and teaching experience. I want to learn from my classmates, and watch them grow, and steal good stuff from their teaching vocabulary, but I’m trying really hard not to compare my teaching to anyone else’s. For me, I want to take full advantage of this training course that I’ve paid for and looked forward to for so long, and put in the work I need to do to become a good teacher. I hope that my friends who were upset on Friday night were able to think this over and come to the same conclusion.
Rox Does Yoga 