About Our School
The hallmark of our school is team teaching. Our method of team teaching provides our students with a setting where the emphasis is on the clarity of the work. When two or more of our instructors work together in a single class, the students always have one instructor’s movements to follow while another instructor helps guide the class and follow up on specific needs of the group. Team teaching is also our approach to avoiding the distraction of an ego trip, a potential drawback in a school run by a single teacher.
Our teaching method comes from the Tai Chi Foundation
The Tai Chi Foundation (TCF) is a not-for-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting, funding and teaching programs relating to the embodiment of Tai Chi. The School of Tai Chi Chuan (STCC), as a subset of TCF, exists to continue the teaching of the Cheng Man-Ch’ing style of Tai Chi Chuan (Yang style short form) as passed down through Patrick Watson.
Our School today is composed of over 200 instructors teaching Tai Chi classes in 30 cities around the world. Each teacher follows the curriculum and team-teaching method developed by Patrick Watson. All teachers are apprentices of the school who have gone through the school’s public curriculum and entered into an apprenticeship, learning to teach the sequence of Tai Chi coursework. We gather together regularly to learn from Patrick’s senior teachers, the Legacy Holders, practicing Tai Chi Chuan form, push hands and sword.
As a Tai Chi teaching school, our School prepares our apprentices through a sequence of intensive trainings. This continued study helps our apprentices maintain a consistency in the method: Students can study at any of our branches and receive the same careful attention to the principles and details of the art of Cheng Man-Ch’ing’s Yang-style Short Form.