- George Chung
- Aug 13, 2024
- 4 min read
If you, as a martial arts teacher, give a student a single correction, and at the next training session, you find that he hasn’t made the change and shows no sign of trying to do so, that’s the student’s fault.
THE STUDENT isn’t listening — or isn’t hearing what you’re saying. If he expects to make any progress in the art, how- ever, he must adjust his attitude.
If, on the other hand, you’ve made five or six corrections and the student doesn’t implement any of them in the next class, the fault is yours. You need to examine your attitude and behavior and institute some changes.
OVERALL, one of the most significant challenges in the dojo — and one that’s often overlooked and under- appreciated — is the matter of effective teaching. In too many martial arts schools, there exists the notion that technical competence is all that’s necessary to teach. Why this notion has become accepted is a mystery.
Consider: How many great or even very talented boxers work as train- ers in a boxing gym? Lots of people can speak fluent Russian, but does that automatically make them good teachers of the language? No one would make such assumptions, yet the idea that a black belt wrapped around one’s waste is suddenly, automatically, a sign that the wearer is a teacher is widespread in the martial arts.
IF YOU’RE A SERIOUS TEACHER, when you contemplate training a student who might be a good candidate for becoming a teacher himself, you carefully begin the process for creating a new teacher. There are many lessons here, many subtleties. If the prospective teacher immediately gets a big head and assumes he’s on the path to becoming a “master,” you quickly knock him down. You watch him teach — and promptly criticize him in front of others, demonstrating just how many mistakes he’s making and how much he has to learn.
(The teacher who tells one of his students to “teach the class” and then goes into his office or leaves the dojo is depriving both the teacher candidate and the class. When a student has reached the point in his training when you think he’s ready to teach, your attention must be ramped up considerably.)
What you need to look for most in the candidate is the tendency to “over-teach.” The desire is to explain it all to a new student when introducing a technique or concept. Some- times this happens because of ego: The teacher candidate wants to show the student just how much he knows.
Other times, it’s a sincere desire to help: “I remember how hard it was for me to learn this — let me show you how I managed it.” The sentiment is understandable but almost certainly useless. The student will learn exactly as the teacher candidate did: slowly, with long and committed repetition. There’s no shortcut any teacher can provide for him, just as there wasn’t any for you.
That’s why over-teaching is not just pointless; it can be counterproductive for students. It’s also important to understand that such an approach can be unproductive for you, the established teacher. Your job is to bring students along, to show them the way — not by holding their hands but by gently directing, offering advice at just the right time and in just the right way.
I know, incidentally, that “gentle” is not a term we associate with the traditional dojo, and there will be readers who laugh out loud at that word when they think of their own harsh train- ing. Here, “gentle” means “indirectly.” In spite of tough training, the intent is not ever to brutalize; rather, it’s to patiently inculcate in students the correct mindset and personality to be able to assimilate the art’s techniques.
IN BRINGING ALL STUDENTS along this path, you must be judicious. And critical in your thinking. Yes, you can see half a dozen mistakes they’re making. As their teacher, you can correct each one — which is tedious and will probably just further confuse and frustrate them. Or you can analyze the problems and determine first, which is most important at this time, and second, how they all might be related and more efficiently corrected with attention to just the factor they share. You can try to patch a dozen different holes in a garden hose, or you can shut off the water at the spigot. Finding that spigot in terms of a student’s problems is at the core of good teaching.
It takes intense concentration to make these analyses for students.
Often, even an experienced teacher will look at a student and see some- thing that doesn’t seem right but cannot put a finger on exactly what it is. That’s when you might want to call over a senior student and ask, “Do you see something off here? What is it?”
This approach puts fresh eyes on the student. It also prepares the senior student for his own future as a teacher. In any event, you must be careful how and when you correct. A poor teacher believes the numerous corrections he makes are proof of his talent and understanding. A good teacher understands that just a word, well-timed and carefully chosen, is far better.
