I don't know if others will identify what my husband and I do as "teaching folk music" but I have some thoughts to share as a learner and as a partner in others' learning.

We jam with people who are starting out, we play what we like and what they like, we encourage them to try things. We let them see our own learning process. Our monthly jams, more and more, are workshops followed by playful effort. (There's about an hour and a half of hard work and then about 45 minutes of free sailing.) We sometimes make appointments to get together with these people as individuals to focus on helping them reach their own goals in musicianship, and we expect pay in money or barter for this.

We point them towards things to listen to, to develop their ear and keep their horizons open... we tell them the truth, always.   

Rather than teachers, we are mentors I suppose, who are still learning ourselves, all the time, and we model getting out there and playing with people, in front of people, and so forth. We present them with our band when they are ready, or on their own when they are REALLY ready (they never FEEL ready but they copy our chutzpah nicely).

We do all this instinctively, backed with clear and increasingly specific intention. It doesn't just "happen." We make deliberate choices that keep the focus just as I have described, and we look back often to see what causes went with which effects, in people's progress.

I can see what this has to do with the folk process; can you? Part of it is that whatever we sing or play, we play it our way, which is made up of all that we have heard and tried up to that point, and our own fresh, flexible creativity.

I would rather be doing this than what I can identify as teaching. And I would suggest, as a hypothesis, that most people who will become folkies don't like to be told what to do, too much, anyhow-- they want to make it up as they go along, if they get the slightest encouragement. I know several who will practice skills for hours, just because he wants to.... when they run into a block they always know who to call to get another piece of help; and then they go off and practice some more. But they keep jamming.

I think when people are in this kind of adult, active-learning mode, it's the music that's doing the teaching. We don't operate the folk process unilaterally... it operates US, just as much.

YMMV. My 2 cents are worth about 2 cents, subject to your local exchange rate.

~Susan