Let me admit up front that I only walked into the last 15 minutes of this workshop this afternoon (at the Old Time Music Gathering), so I cannot vouch for the first 45 minutes. However, the part that I walked in on seemed to present a pretty good example of a pretty bad example of how to teach a calling workshop.

When I walked in, the teacher was calling a simple dance, and a group of students were dancing. The dance was done in pairs of couples, with some circling, some stars, some swinging, and then couples promenading around the room to find a new set of partners to repeat. Alright so far (though I personally would not have chosen a random mixer for a beginning calling workshop). They danced that for a while while the teacher called. Then he started the same dance over again and asked them all to call along with him while they danced.

Now, I've been dancing for a few years (okay, fifteen), and maybe I just don't have a caller's brain, but it is not easy for me to coherently call (rather than point and briefly direct) while I'm dancing. However, by the end of that dance (it lasted a very long time), I could hear some improvement in people's calling - more on time, more consistent, more coherent, and mostly correct. I thought they were doing pretty well (for total beginners).

Then came the kicker. The teacher told them that they were going to do the dance again...