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Our Teaching Staff Before Dec 31, 2024
Dear Community,
This fall, a representative from an elementary school called Mestra Márcia to ask if we could start teaching capoeira to 30 kids once a week. Mestra asked our teaching staff if anyone was available to handle the request, and no one could—they all had to be at their second or third jobs at what would have been the class time. We had to tell this elementary school no.
We consistently receive more requests for classes, performances, and residencies than we have artists to fulfill them. While this sounds like a good problem to have, the reality is that, despite our teachers being committed and highly skilled, they all have other jobs to make ends meet in San Francisco.
If we could pay our teachers more, they could do more of what they do best: share the magic, discipline, athleticism and community of capoeira. This is why we’re asking for your help in raising $40,000 by the end of 2024. With this funding, we can increase the wage we pay our teachers and make it easier for them to contribute more time to their work as capoeira teaching artists. Can you help our teachers teach?
How many children could we include if we paid teachers a living wage?
Instrutor Papagaio (Elias Gonzalez) has 16 years of experience teaching capoeira, and our youth students especially connect with him. He says of his teaching:
“The fact that I can pass on knowledge to the next generation of youth, and see them do moves that I used to do when I was younger, and teach them through the years—it’s just great. It’s priceless. I believe any teacher will tell you the same thing: Seeing what you taught being done by those you taught, it’s just so rewarding.”
But Instrutor Papagaio can only teach one class per week. During that week, he works 50+ hours managing the restaurant where he started as a cook. Between this and his other full-time job as a father, he can’t get the time he wants to dedicate to capoeira.
“I do day shifts and also night shifts,” he says. “I have to be there for 10, 12 hours per shift . . . . An ideal world would be that I can teach maybe three, four or five classes a day, five days a week, and then, also, I would have time to be at home with my family.”
If Instrutor Papagaio alone were able to double his teaching load, he would go from teaching 15 students to 30. We have 6 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.
Make a Gift Now. Help Us Raise $40,000.