Teaching karate!!!

Throughout this month I've done a lot of research on teaching karate. After putting my research to the test, through observation or simply trying it out myself, I found that there's a few things that all teachers/ senseis should do in order to be really good teachers/ senseis. Some of these basic things are:

- Patience! I cannot say this enough. Patience is one of the most fundamental things you need in order to teach anything. When teaching karate, especially little children, you need to be able to explain things over and over and over again with out being aggravated or getting stressed. At times, some kids are bound to mess around not pay attention and just play around. This is when patience needs to kick in for you to be able to put order to the class with out being too upset. Unfortunately, rowdy young students are very common.

- Know your stuff! This is very important. You can't go and try to teach karate if you don't know the techniques. If you're confused about how to perform a kick, you can't go and teach it to someone else because you'll just wind up confusing them and yourself. In order to be successful you need to be able to teach in a concise way that students really understand what you are trying to convey. The only way to do this is if you've taken the time to not only learn the techniques, but to master them. At first, even if  you know all the techniques very well, you'll find it hard to teach. The reason for this is because you need to know everything so well to the point where you can put it in the simplest terms possible.

- Be nice but not too nice. This especially applies to teaching large karate classes to small children (ie kids 5-13 yrs old). The reason for this is because you want your students to respect and listen to you. If you are too nice the kids will start seeing you as their friend and they will stop taking you seriously. So, you want to be nice enough for the kids to feel comfortable coming up to you and asking you things about the techniques, but not the point where you're buddies.

- Different learning styles. Believe it or not this actually plays a very big part in teaching karate. You want your teaching style to hit as many different learning styles (auditory, visual, and kinetic). A way to do this is to explain a technique in a way that they can understand it (compare a knife hand strike to throwing a baseball) and show them step by step. Then have them do the technique with you step by step until you thing they understand. This hits all three different styles because by explaining it you get the auditory learners, by showing them you get the visual learners, and by having them do it you hit the kinetic.

- Do things for the benefit of the student not yours. Although this is a peculiar concept, it's actually pretty important. It's not the same when a sensei pushes a student to their limit because they want the student to reach their full potential for the benefit of the student, as if they do it for the benefit of the academy. When a sensei has the best interests of the student in mind they are bound to do everything in their power to show that student everything they can in a wise and kind way. When a sensei does it because they want the academy to look good or because they want to make themselves look good, students are more bound to be resentful. Usually mean, greedy senseis like that don't prosper so much. Believe it or not a student can tell if the sensei is pushing them to their limit for their own benefit or for the sensei's benefit. Actually they are bound to want to come back if they see that the sensei cares enough to push them for their (the student's) benefit.

Blog 8: Research and Working EQ

1. What is your working EQ?
      - What is the most important factor to effectively teach karate?

2. What is a possible answer to your working EQ?
      - To get parents more involved and more interested in helping out their kids in learning karate.
      - Having effective ways of explaining techniques in a way that students can easily understand and
        follow.
      - Practice! Practice makes perfect. If you can get students to get motivated enough to practice
        regularly, they are bound to be good at karate, or at least improve.

3. What is the most important source you have used that has helped you come up with an answer to your working EQ?
      - The most important article/source that has helped me the most would have to be "The Art of Teaching" by Peter Lindsay. It explains how important a good teacher is and what exactly constitutes a good teacher/sensei. Also, I'm not sure if this counts as a source, but my mentorship has been instrumental in reaching my EQ and its answers. I can read about what a good teacher is and how they teach, but I think that being able to work under a great sensei has helped me the most.

4. Who is your mentor, or where are you volunteering, how does what you are doing relate to your working EQ?
       - My mentor's name is Fabian Villalobos and I'm volunteering at his Friday night classes. They are from 5:30- 9 pm. I basically help him out in demonstrations, in doing the stretches with the students, occasionally teaching, and in whatever else I can help with. Since I lead the class a great deal and I'm perfecting my teaching skills, I'm coming closer to getting concise answers to my EQ, not through reading research, but with experience. By teaching, I get to observe what helps students the most and that is basically what my EQ is all about.

Independent Component 1 Approval

1. For my Independent Component 1, I plan on beginning to teach with a higher frequency. Also, I will begin working with students one on one and help them with their techniques. So basically, I will work on my teaching abilities by working with students so I learn how to better word things and how to make students understand better. Then, I will start teaching whole classes more often to test my newly learned skills.

2. To meet the 30 hour requirement, I will continue to work under my tutor. The only difference now is that now I will just focus more on teaching, rather than helping him out in the class doing demonstrations and other such things. So, to show this, I can just take pictures of me teaching and tutoring students.

3. My topic has been karate from the start, but I've decided to narrow it down to teaching karate. I think that once a person can successfully teach anything, it shows true mastery of the subject. So working with students one on one will help me learn what works best in trying to get a student to understand any given technique or stance. Actually teaching class would help me test our my new skills in teaching and it will show if my teaching style has improved.

4. My log is right there =>