[Callers] Re: "Assigning" roles in the beginners' lesson?

I start intro lessons in a circle, partner people off as soon as it becomes necessary, and teach them both sides of the swing (by asking them to shift their arms while swinging; this is partly about teaching them not to drag on each other). Then I say, your partner might have a preference so you should always ask — and I explain that the preference might be about an injury, about how they were taught to dance, or about balancing out their experience over the course of the evening. Obviously I can’t listen to every couple on the floor but from the mic it appears to me that new dancers do then ask those they’re dancing with and over the course of the first half the outcome reflects the character of the crowd more than individual new-dancer preferences. Perhaps also obviously to some people I do all of this without reference to role terms except to alert new dancers that they may hear a variety of role terms from experienced dancers on the floor. If I’m at a L&R dance I say explicitly that they might hear larks and robins, and here’s what that means. (New dancers were not born yesterday and they figure out the gendered role terms quickly if there are dancers using them.) Incidentally, I find the claim Maia cites about the robin role being easier extremely questionable. Do people truly generally say/believe that? Louise. [the rest snipped for brevity]