Over the last month or so I’ve started taking some classes for one of our instructors over in Falmouth. It’s new to me, this teaching lark, but it’s slowly getting better.
I think it’s fair to say my first couple of lessons in charge weren’t as good as they could’ve been, and I’ve already started to see the things in my teaching I need to correct and make better. I talk WAY too much when I’m stood in front of the class, and I’m not nearly as concise as I could be when I’m trying to get an idea across, but I think that’ll come with practice. I went to the first couple of sessions with a very definite plan of what i wanted to do, and when, but I’ve found so far (and remember we’re only talking about 4 or 5 lessons so far) that I do much better when I go with only a couple of ideas in mind, and to see how the class evolves.
The last couple of lessons I’ve used that principle and, last night especially, it felt a lot better. It’s been a long time since I went to lessons that last an hour and a half, and filling that time as someone with very little teaching experience can feel daunting. You don’t want to bore people, nor do you want to get to an hour through and realise you’ve got nothing left. It’s fair to say that I was glad I was working on forms a couple of times as they can take up a lot of time, but last night I went in with the idea in mind to avoid forms altogether.
After my previous blog post I had punching on the brain, so I built the lesson around that. From making hand basics look better, breaking down a punch into its component parts to focus mitt drills and some one-step work. Working on a particular ‘thing’ (God, you’d think I could come up with a better word than that after years of writing here…) seems to be a nice way to build a lesson, and it gives me a lot of flexibility once I see which pieces need work.
I always thought I was going to enjoy teaching, as I love doing small parts of classes or helping people one-to-one and I like teaching people in non-martial arts related things, and as the lessons are ticking by I’m starting to realise I was right. It’s daunting to be responsible for peoples’ progression in something I feel so strongly about, especially as I’m not as young or as fit as others (I’m staunchly of the mindset of ‘don’t teach what you can’t do’), but when I make a suggestion to improve someone’s technique and I see it work and see how it ‘clicks’ with them, it’s enormously satisfying. It’s also really good to find that I’m not forgetting some of the most simple things when I’m trying to demonstrate something. Well, not as often anyway ;).
(In hindsight, perhaps I shouldn’t have picked those particular lyrics as a post title…)