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.