How to Assist Another Teacher
The purpose of assisting is three-fold:
- To develop the qualities relevant to becoming an inspiring and effective yoga teacher, such as, communicating clearly; creating a safe and positive atmosphere; teaching at a level appropriate for students; responding usefully to the unexpected; and providing depth of knowledge, compassion, dedication, and experience for your students.
- To help the main teacher with whatever they need to keep the class running smoothly. Assistants should help students get set-up prior to class, help clean-up after class and assist the teacher with any other necessary tasks.
- To reinforce the information being taught. Be humble. Listen and observe the main teacher. Make adjustments and help students according to the teacher’s instructions. Assist in demonstrations when asked. For example, if the teacher tells students to ground the outer heel, you circulate among the students and manually press their outer heel down to reinforce his verbal cue. Try not to confuse people by focusing on other aspects of the pose. Keep your manual adjustment linked to the teacher’s verbal cues.
A few tips:
- Adjust safety issues first. If a student is doing something that could be harmful, attend to them at once.
- Keep a close eye on new students and beginners and help them set up their body alignment and props.
- You can also go around to people that have good alignment and move them deeper into the pose.
- Keep your voice low when helping students. Try not to let the student you are adjusting talk too much. Sometimes the student will try to engage you in a conversation about some issue they have while the main teacher is trying to teach. You need to gently abbreviate the conversation so they don’t distract from the class. This happens a lot and it can get annoying for the teacher to have a discussion going on while she is trying to teach.
- Circulate throughout the entire room so that you have adjusted everyone in the class in some way. Do not play favorites and do not avoid people.