Teaching children: My journey into madness

Teaching children: My journey into madness

I have trained in Karate since I was six, I have been doing Karate my entire adult life and most of my child hood. I have trained in other sports and forms of martial arts but all of them tended to lean towards helping me understand Karate better. So, at sixteen, after 10 years of training I taught my first beginner how to kick and punch…and it was a rush. Sensei Dingman took me aside in the down town club and asked me to teach some new people Karate. I was so stoked…but how and what would I show them/

A year later I had gotten a routean laid out in my head and was actually getting fairly good at teaching Karate to new people, but I moved to East St. Paul and found a new teacher to work out with. I have to say that most of my “teaching” was limited to when other seniors were not available but basically I got to teach once a month because of new people constantly coming in to the club and every once and a while I got to work with them.

My experience at my new club was good, the instructor was great and I was having fun, but everyone was a lower rank and new people were simply thrown into class to learn. My teaching was limited to a few friends that wanted a taste of Karate. Then I got the teaching bug bad and when I was in my last year of high school I began a class at the school. I had what I would say were some really talented students, some even graded and got their yellow and orange belts.

As time went on I taught some of the new people at the clubs, transferred back to Dingman Senseis club and began traveling with Dingman Sensei from one club to another, studied teaching under my Sempai, Sensei Brian, and taught at one of four of Dingman Senseis clubs when new students came in. It was fun learning from these men, the very originator of our style of JKA Karate and one of the most decorated sport athletes in our organization.

Years went buy and I took over a class teaching at the Sergeant park club. I was still learning how to take the knowledge that Dingman Sensei and the many masters had passed on to me and present it in some kind of half intelligent way to students. Dingman Sensei saw I was way to hard on people and taught like a drill Sergeant most of the time, not very much explaining and simply barking out orders. He told me that he had a plan to teach me patience. I had served my country as a 2^nd Lt. In the armoured division and most of my teaching was drilling like when I went thru basic, mixed with the ideas that he had taught me. But he knew that had to change. He had a group that would teach me patience and also weed out any thoughts of pushing people to hard.

We had this summer camp on a island, Sensei used to joke that no one could run away unless they could swim well! I had gone out pretty much every year to train three times a day with Dingman Sensei, Dell Sensei and any other instructors that were teaching. But he had a plan, this year….I would teach the kids class! I did not think much of it, I was up for it and I was ready to give out my brand of over the top strict training and these kids were going to listen, pay me the right kind of respect and push themselves to work hard in my classes, I was the teacher…they were my pray….or so I thought!

I got to the island all primed and pumped up and with in the first five minutes of being on the island and being the childrens instructor…I realized that I was not in control….and if I wanted to get out of this alive I needed to learn how to teach kids! Teaching teens, adults and family Karate is a lot different than just teaching kids classes! They were in control and they let me know it! ½ hour into the first class half of them were in full rebellion, they were rolling on the floor and aiming their kicks at each other and basically running their own class! I had NOTHING!

My plans were to whip the kids into shape and give them a great eyeball full of how “real Karate” was done. I had done NO research or thinking of games ext. I basically wanted to have them all line up in a perfect straight line and react to anything I barked out with out a sound! We were going to Kiai and show great spirit, so much so that we would shock the adults training in the big club across the path! Yah, we were loud, but not the way I thought…the kids were screaming and going crazy, mayhem was about the only way I could describe my first class.

We finished and the kids went to eat dinner, and I was confused, upset and felt like I had learned nothing in my years of training and teaching beginners. The kids were a good variety of ranks and the worst ones to control were the purple belts. It was not like they were all beginners, in fact most were orange and up! I felt like a fraud, I had no control over the classes and they were eating me alive!

I went to dinner and then skulked around wondering what the heck I was going to do the next day when I had THREE classes I had to run with them. And the worst part was we were on the first day and I had four more days to go! That’s twelve more classes of me not having control, the kids running over me and my depression was starting to set in. I was getting ready to throw in the towel and tell Dingman Sensei I had no clue what I was doing, it was later now and even the four coffees I had were not picking me up!

It was dark and we had two fires going on the beach and higher up near the paths. The higher up fire had Dingman Sensei, Del Sensei and one of the other instructors sitting around the fire chatting and staying warm on the cool night. I remember walking up to Sensei and he just knew by looking at me that I had no energy left and was beat, and of course he started laughing. He asked why I looked like I just lost my best friend and I let it all out. I told him about the chaos and the anarchy that was the first class and how all the kids hated me and thought I was mean, they were not having any fun and they were not enjoying Karate. He started laughing even more and asked me to repeat myself.

I told him again “the kids hate me, are not enjoying Karate and I had no idea what I was doing”. He waved his finger in the air and said, “They are not having any fun, they need to have fun”. He told me that kids train for different reasons than adults, they want to enjoy themselves so we have to teach them the basics of Karate in a way that they will respond to. They need to play “Karate games” and you need to have fun. He would not let me ask what kind of games, but I set out right away to my cabin to start thinking of games.

I was bunking with the kids to make sure they were having fun but not destroying the place and give the adults some time to relax. I sat up for about two hours thinking of games and working on ideas. It was at that time that I figured out a good split would be about a 60/40 split with them, 60 percent games and the rest solid Karate. I worked on different games in my head and also set my mind on the fact that you have to be a different kind of instructor with kids, fun but strict/ firm but friendly. I started teaching the next morning and from that time on I became every kids best friend, but still pushed them to work hard…during games and I even set up basics as games so that the kids would learn their Kihon, Kata and Kumite while doing it as fun games.

By the end of camp I had started to figure things out a bit more and after hat first horror of a class I promised myself not to be so serious when teaching kids, in mixed groups I would also lighten up a bit. I had to learn the hard way that the best way to get thru to kids is to remember that they are kids! To make them do things that they find fun as well as push them to do drills and exercises that were specific to Karate. It was a lot of fun and I can truly say that I no longer fear teaching kids…with the right attitude all instructors can get a great amount of satisfaction seeing them grow up thru the ranks.

My thoughts on teaching kids now is that all seniors should look at teaching kids and anyone that thinks they want to be a Karate instructor should start off with kids, if they have the ability to connect with them, you are sure to be able to do it with adults as well!