At school we didn’t get to choose the teachers we liked. We were lucky if a particular teacher resonated with us and then we often thrived in the subject because the teacher brought life into that subject helping us to pay better attention. We all remember those teachers and more importantly the subject. The energy and presence a teacher brings to the classroom is everything. A good teacher can turn a monotonous, hard to learn subject into a lasting impression for life and even a love for that subject.
Why is it so important to make the right choice now as more informed learners and not get swayed by clever marketing ploys or the numbers game? A course that claims to have filled with hundreds or thousands simply means that, that many people have that kind of money to pay for the course. It is not necessarily an indication of the value of the course nor the quality of it sadly. Having put 2 children through school and University during Covid, it was plain to see that the popularity of the course had nothing to do with its quality. Teaching was almost reckless with little regard for student welfare and a ‘do it yourself’ approach with grading based on nothing more than a hunch and a whim. We all deserved our money back having learned nothing, with no lecture time, no one to one time but regardless, projects and assignments were submitted and grades and degrees were awarded. Later, we didn’t even bother to attend the graduation ceremonies which reflected our opinion of the whole experience.
My own experience with the yoga education market is skewed too. Some teachers strive to help and give of themselves to depletion and others have found ways to protect their energy and build strong boundaries giving very little of themselves. Surely there has to be a middle way or a way to deliver quality as well as abundance that serves and meets the students needs.
In my own time of teaching yoga these past twenty years, I began to realise that my capacity to retain all of the information at the tip of my fingers to teach an ever growing vast curriculum was going to becoming an increasingly tall order. I had to find another way. I admired teachers that had programs put together digitally long before it became a necessity during covid. But I didn’t know how they did this. I assumed they had a vast technical support group. I had no way to know how to begin to learn to do this. I was a yoga teacher after all with a very old skill set in technology. I began to feel the strain of teaching intensive trainings day after day and whilst many were saying teaching online must be so easy, no need to leave home etc, I knew that this simply was not the case at all. Sitting rooted to one spot within camera view and talking to a non responsive audience was far from easy. My neck ached looking at the camera, my knees and back ached sitting on the floor for hours.No amount of meditation had prepared me for this. After several weeks of this, my eyes started to twitch and I was getting blinding headaches post teaching. This was not sustainable. What was the solution?
My make shift green screen at the start of covid
Read the next blog for my continuing story.