Teaching is hard!

I'm partially writing this post because I've had this idea in my head for a long time and haven't gotten around to writing it...and partially writing it because I'm not actually attending our last class of the day right now, like I normally do, and I miss it. I have a stomach bug, so I'm at home. I'd like to be there, but stomach problems and training don't go well together. So I figure blogging about martial arts sort of counts as training, even though it's not physical.
At any rate, it makes me feel a little bit better about missing class.

Sensei has been letting me do a lot of teaching lately. It's really fun, but is also really hard sometimes! Last Wednesday during the first class I got to teach the white belts their cat-stance and a few other things like the roundhouse kick and side-kick. I distinctly remember it being very difficult to teach cat-stance because sometimes I get my hands mixed up and I'm not one-hundred percent sure which hand goes in front and which one rests beneath the front elbow¹. 

I've found that if you're teaching a technique, you have to be one-hundred percent sure of how to do it correctly because if you're lost, your students are going to be even more lost than you are. I've also found that it's really easy to start teaching a concept only to find that you're not getting your point across for whatever reason and then to automatically want to move on to something else. Teaching takes a lot of patience. Not only patience for your students, but also patience for yourself, as the teacher.

During the second class, I taught both the white belts and beginners how to do the inside-block, shudo combo. That was also challenging in its own way because our newest student is a middle-aged adult and the other two students in my group were young children. As a teacher, it's difficult sometimes to switch back and forth between pedagogy [Pronounced: PED-uh-go-jee]and andragogy...that is, teaching kids and teaching adults. They're very different. An adult will usually respond well to straightforward, technical, detail-oriented information while a kid will respond better to information when it's delivered in more creative ways...such as being able to relate the movements of a technique to something familiar to the child.

For example, doing a reverse-shudo is like serving a dinner on a silver plate! To do an inside-block, stick your hand in your ear and then bring it across your face. To do a rising-block, make a roof over your head with your arm. Make a windmill-motion with your hands for the Aikido side-step. Both adults and children respond well to those previous associations, but kids respond extremely well to them.


Also, you have to take into account your style of teaching versus the size of the class you have. If you're like me and you enjoy working one-on-one with people, a large class can be kind of difficult to work with. Sensei is a great example of the one-on-one teacher. He likes to make sure that he's teaching each student as thoroughly as possible and does an excellent job doing so. Questions are asked and answered frequently, demonstrations abound, and techniques aren't drilled; they're refined. That said, Sensei is also very good at teaching groups. I remember him telling me once, though, that he prefers each student to get a chance to really work on their skills with him, one-on-one. Our classes are growing large enough that this can be difficult for him by himself, so he often asks Zak and I to help him teach. Hence this post.

Anyway, bottom line is, there are a lot of details that go into teaching that someone on the outside might not notice or even think about. Here's a good one. How do you measure progress? In karate, this is often done with belts and ranks. We have a belt system at the Refinery. It works well in showing where students are at in their technique. But there are other things to measure as well. Attitude is one thing. Improvement is another. Both are part of progress, but it's hard to measure those things. Especially attitude. Not to undermine belts, because I enjoy the physical representation of my progress, but they are not all-telling. Most of the time, a blue or brown belt has developed not only skill, but attitude as well, whereas a yellow belt is still learning those things, but sometimes you find a yellow belt with incredible attitude and swift improvement. Likewise, sometimes you find a blue belt with great skill and technique, but mediocre attitude and little to no improvement.

I'm way ahead of myself, here.

Teaching can be very difficult...but it's also very fun and rewarding. Watching somebody improve and learn has to be one of the coolest things to experience. Also, as the students learn, so does their teacher. That seems to fit in really well with the whole "Martial arts is a journey" theme. We're always learning. Always improving. Even as a teacher.

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1. My excuse for not knowing my cat-stance well enough to teach it was that lately we've been doing much more advanced techniques (most of them involving ground fighting) and I had forgotten the details of cat-stance, since my mind is in Jiu-Jitsu mode most of the time. Still not a good excuse. I'll practice more.

Sensei said

On Wednesday, I had some trouble focusing in class. I'm not sure what was the matter with me; perhaps it was just an off day. I don't have many of those, so I suppose I might have been due for one. Anyway, for whatever reason I was having trouble staying on task...and I couldn't shake it off.

This went on until the end of the first class, which is the class that I usually help Sensei teach because of its size. Afterward, I felt like I was more in the zone. I was sure that I was ready for the 6:30 class.

Well, 6:30 had a lot more people in it than 5:30 did. It kind of threw me for a loop because usually 5:30 is the larger class. Not only were there more people, but there were two complete beginners that required my full attention during striking practice and one slightly more advanced student that I could tell REALLY didn't want to be there.

It was very difficult to get said student to cooperate with me, and since he was working with one of the new students, they kind of fed off of each other and ended up getting very off-task. If I wasn't watching them constantly, they would trip each other and play around, like children do. It could've been dangerous to the other students. I told them this, but they only obeyed when I was watching.

Eventually, I had to help two other students who were having notable trouble with what we were teaching (osoto gari), and leave the other two alone. I hadn't been watching these students because Sensei had been working with them and I had been working with mine. When Sensei moved on to help another pair, I noticed that the older student, whom I could tell also didn't really want to be there, was being unnecessarily rough with the younger one. When I went over and told him to be a little more gentle, he said,

"But Sensei said this is how we're supposed to do it." And then he shoved his hand into the other student's face. I could tell that the younger student didn't know what to do to block the motion, so I told him to put his hand in front of his face so that the older student wouldn't hurt him, but the older student kept on doing it, before the younger student could protect himself.

Again I told him to be gentle and not hurt his partner. I even gave him an alternative. You don't have to push your opponent's face when you're doing osoto gari. You can push their shoulder instead and still sweep them all the same. I suggested this to him and he got very distressed and said,
"But Sensei said this is how you're supposed to do it! And I want to do it how Sensei showed me!"

I didn't know what to do because I'm not Sensei, I'm Becky. When it comes down to it, I'm only a senior student. Sensei has the final say in all techniques and situations. It kind of really hurt me when my classmate wouldn't listen to me because I'm not Sensei, but I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me. He was frustrated and didn't want to be in class, so that didn't help matters, but even so, he should've been more careful and respectful of his classmate.

Since I didn't know what to do, I asked Sensei to work with them and went back to work with my other younger classmates. I'd never been confronted with a situation like that before, where my friend wouldn't listen to me. It upset me, obviously, or I wouldn't be writing about it. It was just an off-day.

Anyway, I think I did the right thing asking Sensei to work with them. I was starting to become frustrated and when that happens, I'm at risk for saying things that are counterproductive and mean. As a senior student, I want to help the little ones, so I want to encourage and build them up as much as I can. It was just an off day, I guess.

I'm sure things will go back to being fine by the next class.