On our tango school’s team business card, we had titles that included assistant, instructor and teacher. While such a division of roles was done for one reason in that case, it was something that remained in my thoughts. The more I thought about these titles, the more I started to notice how they related to one’s personal roles both in tango and in other activities:
We are currently a bit more than tango assistants: This means that we have a certain amount of responsibility in class, but nowhere near as much as our teachers who run our school and all the classes. When we’re tired, we can take a 10 minute break, but they must always be present in body and mind.
In other areas of life, being an assistant would be akin to dabbling in something: You certainly like it, maybe even love it, but you don’t necessarily put in a significant and consistent amount of time and effort into it. You can skip it if something else comes up, drop it for a few months or even completely.
The next stage is being an instructor. Both in tango and in other areas, this means that you take what you do a lot more seriously. You are proficient and maybe even continuously work on yourself, and you certainly have more responsibility: In a tango school, I would say that this would be running one group. In other areas, this is something important to you: Not the most significant thing, but present enough in your life to continuously influence you as a person.
The final stage is being a teacher: What you do is the most important thing to you, your true passion. It defines and influences you profoundly and you invest a lot of yourself in it as a person – it is, in fact, such an integral part of you that you can hardly imagine yourself not doing it. Here the highest amount of responsibility is needed – through your work you are creating something of value that will last and grow, and you with it. This demands wisdom, experience, courage and complete dedication to your work, because now it is not only about you – you also want to share your passion with the rest of the world and help others not only start on their way, but remain on it as much as they can. When you’re an instructor, you can have a group that you know will run for only one or two years, but as a teacher, you know that you are doing something that, at least for now, seems like it will never end.
When I said we’re a bit more than assistants, this is because we’re actually apprentices – we’re slowly learning how to become instructors, and we have a lot more responsibilities because of this. Like I said in that post, I don’t know if my next step is to become a tango teacher, or even if I should be an instructor, though now it seems to me like I really want to. I’ve learned enough to know that it takes time and effort to realize how much you actually love what you do.
Besides, right now I am much more qualified to be a teacher in something else entirely. More on that tomorrow.
Lessons from tango 
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