These are our SW 2025 Teachers.
Janet Johnston
Janet Johnston was brought up in Fife before moving across to Edinburgh to start her training
to be a nurse.
She and her sisters were taught Scottish Country Dancing initially by their parents. They also attended
Highland Dancing classes.
Janet attended Summer School in St Andrews in the mid 1980s and obtained her Teaching certificates there.
This is where she also learned her step dancing.
Janet has taught widely around the UK and Europe and has travelled further afield to the USA, Canada, Hong Kong
and Australia. She is looking forward to this trip to Pennsylvania.
Harry Khamis
Harry started international folk dancing in 1978 and fell in love with Scottish dancing in 2008.
He received full certification in 2016 at St. Andrews. Since then he has taught Scottish dance at
Mainewoods Folkdance Camp, Kentucky Dance Institute, Northwest Folklife Festival, and the National
Folk Organization. Harry teaches a weekly class in Seattle and just completed his 3-year term as
Chair of the Seattle Branch RSCDS. While living in Uppsala, Sweden Harry started a Scottish dance
class in 2018 which is still active.
Marjorie McLaughlin
Marjorie was born in Glasgow and first learned country dancing in school in Scotland.
After her family emigrated to the United States, her father, Tom Easton, began a SCD class
in Cleveland, Ohio, and she danced in that class throughout her teen years. In 1973, after moving to
California, she became a member of the San Francisco Branch and served in various capacities on the
Branch Committee and as Chair of the Asilomar Weekend. She took her Preliminary Certificate in 1985
and earned her Teacher's Certificate at St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1987.
In January of 1992, she married a fellow dancer, Richard McLaughlin, and moved to San Diego, where
she teaches for the San Diego Branch. She maintains an active interest in the Teachers' Association of
Canada and chaired the local arrangements committee when TAC held its AGM in San Francisco in August
1991. From 1998 to 2003 and again from 2017 to 2021, she was editor of the TAC newsletter, TACTalk.
Being a glutton for punishment, she has just taken on the editor’s position for the RSCDS Scottish
Country Daner magazine.
She has had the pleasure of teaching workshops in many North American Branches and enjoys the
opportunity to teach and learn from dancers in other areas. She lectured on SCD history as part of
the Tokyo Branch's 10th Anniversary celebration and traveled to New Zealand to teach at that Branch's
Labour Weekend Workshop. Her dance travels have taken her to places such as Austria, Nova Scotia, and
Greece! It's the most incredible and rewarding hobby she can imagine.
