Salome

So, I had an email from a visitor today that I am sharing below. I omitted her name, names of teachers etc. As I'm sure she was not intending her email to go on a public forum...

My first thought is that a rating system would be too vulnerable to a host of things that would perhaps skew a teacher's rating. On the other hand there are practical aspects...

How helpful would you find it to have some sort of rating system in our teachers directory?

da Sage

Hmmm. We are supposed to rate our teachers in community ed, and that's always....awkward.

The problem with a rating system is that it doesn't account for the preferences of the individual student. T might have a perfectly good and effective warmup, but I would rate it low because I like to ease into class. Or I would rate C highly because I like working with zills and movement in class, but someone else might rank her low for the same reason.

So a rating system would have to be extremely complex to be useful, but still would not tell the whole story. Maybe we could randomly assign a "can-o-worms" rating instead?

jenc

My first thought was post some positive reviews only. Then I thought new teachers, or teachers of beginners may not have positive reviews because they don't have any reviews. Without mentionning names was XYZ in your directory of teachers?

da Sage

I think rating teachers would be sure to drive a lot of people (and sock puppets) to this site...

maariku

I am not very fond of the idea of rating. I do understand the need for information, but I think bringing it down to mere structured rating can also display information very wrong. Plus, what saSage said.

If someone needs info about someone, let them post the inqury. Then we can have different people present their different opinions + explain why.

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"[A good bellydancer] must express life, death, happiness, sorrow, love and anger, but above all she must have dignity." -Tahia Carioca,

Yasmine Bint Al Nubia

Maybe instead of a rating system, what about how many years one has been teaching and performing?
Since there are many teachers, ahem, who begin teaching after a year of classes. This may be a way to weed out the less experienced. However, this would present problems if you'd allowed the teacher to self-report his.her credentials. The same would apply to revealing comments from students.

I wonder how teachers of other genres are rated or even there's a rating system for them?
Yasmine

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www.visionsofthenile.com

kayshier

I think rating in itself is very subjective but it is a good idea to have some sort of standard applied when it comes to teaching something.
I mean if we are learning a musical instrument, we go to someone who has qualifications in teaching music..or at least credentials that indicate that they have experience. normally this is by certification from an accredited body.

is there accreditation for belly dance? *not even sure if there are for other forms of dance, but to be honest if i were learning another genre of dance, modern, jazz etc, i would probably more likely go to someone who was trained in Julliard or some other top rated school of learning.

are there such academies for belly dance?

Shanazel

There is such a big push in recent years to have JoAnna Q. Public rate everything from videos on YouTube to political candidates that the process has become meaningless- just one more game for people with lots of opinions to play.

Posting years of experience could be misleading. A person can go through the motions of instructing people for years without ever becoming a decent teacher.

Marya

Instead of rating teacher a survey might work. Questions could be simple and direct like did teacher show up on time, how many other students were there, how long did class last, were there handouts etc.

Other questions might just be to present information like what kind of music was used, what style is taught. what is the studio like etc.

Answers to questions like this would help me select a teacher.

Marya

lizaj

It's a terrible idea. Open to abuse by those hell bent on mischief.
Students rate their teachers by staying or going. They are also perfectly capable of making suggestions and complaining.
And one teacher may suit a student and another not like his/her approach.
Just as those who found belly dance is a mistake for them, they will either feel at home with a teacher or not.
I do wish students and employers would enquire as to the "qualifications" ( be they paper or based on long experience) and it would be useful if this were listed somewhere astudent could check on. The teacher, teacher has studied with and the nature of those studies. The styles taught etc. Teacher listings could be fuller...rating teacher mmmm...