Thankyou for your patience! It's been the biggest project I've ever taken on with DIRECTION in my 9 years at the helm. 19 training course directors interviewed, trainers, trainees and training schools. This issue, Schools of Thought is the definitive DIRECTION issue on training teachers in the Alexander Technique.
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Here are some article excerpts from the latest issue:
Generational Change:
In 1931 F.M. Alexander began training teachers. His four year training course ran until his death at the age of 86. Walter Carrington, with a group of teachers that included Peggy Williams, Frank Skinner and Irene Stewart continued to train students at Bainbridge Street (they were asked to move from Ashley Place). In 1960 the Carrington family moved to Lansdowne Road. Number 18 was formerly called the Isobel Cripps Centre, which housed various innovative health promoters. Charles Neil was among these and he taught the Alexander technique. As Sir Stafford and Lady Isobel Cripps were good friends and supporters of FM and his work and wished to continue it's promotion, they welcomed Walter Carrington who was looking for a home for both his family and to further the technique. The Constructive Teaching Centre(CTC) was founded and has continued for 50 years.
Hundreds of teachers have since qualified and moved around the world, opening training schools and continuing what is now known as the Carrington tradition of training teachers. In the early 90s, one of their closest and longest serving teachers, Ruth Murray, was asked if she would become a director. Murray at first said no, but Walter and Dilys prevailed because they had planned a teaching trip to Australia, and as they put it “could fall out of the sky”.
Building BodyChance:
We turn over around a million dollars annually, have 83 trainees registered in training and over 130 people signed up on annual contracts for weekly individual or group lessons.
Our teacher training school has three campuses (Tokyo, Osaka & Sydney), 15 different courses, 6 Associate Directors, 5 Training Directors and a supporting staff of 15 teachers. We run two websites, three offices and, aside from our three full-time management staff, have just employed another full-time staff member exclusively for Publicity, Marketing & Sales. Actually, as these things go, we are a rather tiny, insignificant company. However, I think we have a huge future. This is the story of how it all began.
Schools for Thought:
ACAT was founded in 1964 with the teacher certification program opening in 1967. Their 45-year heritage is interesting. Judith Leibowitz and Deborah Caplan built the school. Both studied with Lulie Westfeldt and her mother Alma Frank who was trained by F.M. Alexander and both had lessons with Alexander himself. ACAT claims to have trained more than a third of the country’s Alexander teaching population and with 11 faculty members is formatted to accommodate a maximum of 24 students in their current location. Brooke Lieb, ACAT’s current Director of Training, graduated from the school in 1989 and has worked her way to the top position over the past 20 years.
In Ireland, Richard Brennan runs the Alexander Teacher Training College (ATTC). His biography is jam-packed with publicity initiatives. Not only has he been featured in The Irish Times, The Sunday Tribune, The Irish Examiner and Cosmopolitan, but he has also appeared on numerous television and radio programs in Ireland and the UK, has written five books–four on the Alexander technique which have been translated into eight languages–and sold in excess of 200,000 copies. He knows how to get the message out. At the end of his first year of teaching as a fresh graduate, he was working 50 hours a week in a small UK town of 8000 people, even though there were 25 other Alexander teachers in the neighbourhood!
The Bodythought Centre in Tel Aviv, Israel, is run by Alexander teacher Galit Zeif and contains a teacher-training course as part of a working health centre. Zeif entered the body-mind world almost 30 years ago. Neck injuries as a dancer in 1981 led to study of the Pilates method and then qualification as an instructor after a long apprenticeship in Covent Garden, UK. Though she restored her “core strength” the neck problems persisted. By coincidence she was introduced to the Alexander technique, which solved her neck injury in 10 lessons. This inspired her to join the North London teacher-training course in 1987. She then went on to develop a close learning relationship with Miss Margaret Goldie, while at the same time exploring eastern disciplines such as Tai-Chi and Chi-Kung.
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Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 1:57PM | 
Rick Brennan
