Better Pay For Teachers Means More Arts, Music, and Physical Ed for Youth
Graduada Toninha (Erica Hemenway) has five years of experience teaching capoeira, and our youth students look up to her. She says of her teaching:
“I’ve been practicing capoeira for so long that it has influenced the way I think, move, and process information. Being able to share this experience with kids and help them become the best versions of themselves—versions that will support them throughout their lives—is truly incredible.”
Graduada Toninha is able to teach only two capoeira classes per week. She commutes to work and puts in over 40 hours at two other jobs: a physical therapy assistant and a payroll manager. She can’t reduce her hours at either of those jobs to teach more capoeira classes, as these positions are essential for her to afford living in San Francisco.
“My motivation for teaching has never been financial,” she says. “But if it were financially possible for me to teach more, that would be incredible—to be able to teach in schools, to be able to reach out to more populations that don’t necessarily have the resources.”
“Each of my jobs is located on different quadrants of the city: the Mission District, Downtown, Alamo Square, and Japantown. The time that it takes to bike from one place to another has an cumulative effect.”
If Graduada Toninha alone were able to double her teaching load, she would go from teaching 30 students to 60. We have six part-time instructors who teach at multiple school sites and at our Mission District Capoeira Arts Center; if we doubled their current teaching load, we estimate that we could go from reaching 250 students to more than 500.