A teaching tandem: how Serhiy and Yuniia turned "The Samurai" into champions
A case study: how a tandem of two teachers — Serhiy Banko and Yuniia Furman — takes the children's project "The Samurai" to first place.
This year IDC finally established a format that used to be an experiment: instead of one teacher, a tandem of two. One of the most visible examples is Serhiy Banko and Yuniia Furman's work on the project "The Samurai".
What "The Samurai" is
"The Samurai" is not an ordinary group but a separate project formed through auditions: the strongest children were gathered from different groups and directions — from Serhiy's Dance Mix and beyond. It was put together as a distinct team that worked on one large routine over the course of the season.
The result: first place at a serious competition, at the first attempt. Serhiy and Yuniia had already worked together before on the routine "Secret Mission".
How the work is divided
There are no agreements "on paper" — according to Serhiy, everything is settled as it goes, in the moment: "We don't even negotiate it specially — we just work out as we go who is working on what, and we complement each other."
The practice that settled in over the season: three sessions a week. One day Serhiy takes the group alone, the second day Yuniia alone, the third both together, to bring their work together and align any changes. "I've worked through my part and cleaned it up — and at the joint session we check what changes either of us has made. And from Monday I'm already working with the updated version."
Why it works
The main advantage of the tandem, Serhiy says, is not saving time but the quality of the material itself: "If I've staged something and I'm unsure how it looks, the other one will always add to it. We never hit a dead end: every session we moved something forward."
His conclusion is unequivocal: "Honestly — nothing but upsides." And the project's curator on the management side adds another observation: children in this format give everything differently than in an ordinary group — because a place in the project has to be earned again and again, and the tandem's result is an order of magnitude better than the sum of two separate efforts.
For parents this means something simple: if a child gets into a project like this, there is not one teacher behind them but a team — with two visions that constantly check and reinforce each other.