"I Make Little Kids Cry" Take 2
So we have an exercise called a dragon circle, where basically one person is in the middle of a circle and has to spar with everyone in the circle for a time. It's pretty much an endurance test. At first, I had everyone with sparring gear get ready and then divided them up into the "big 'uns" (most notably, the guys who are taller than six feet and/or weigh more than 200 pounds) and "everyone else". Seemed like a good idea at the time.
I should have realized that I was right when I thought that maybe I had bitten off a bit more than I could chew.
I had positioned myself to be able to watch both of the matches at once, and just when I thought that the big guys were getting a little too rough, the other match ends abruptly with an expletive. I come over to find that one of the guys lost control and clocked the other across the face hard enough to bend his glasses (which I should have made him take off before the match) and draw some blood from the frame of it scraping his nose. I tried calming everyone down, but he stormed off in a huff.
I did my best to salvage the situation and had the sparring stop shortly thereafter. The rest of the class went, as Yamamoto Tsunetomo would put it "without incident".
I talked with the clocker in this matter and he was taking it pretty hard. I tried to basically say that this was a learning experience and that he should, in fact, learn from it, but he was still really broken up. It's like we were saying "you made a mistake, but it's not the end of the world", and he was only hearing the first part.
On Sensei's advice (no blame or shouting, just a game plan for how to handle the situation) we later called both parties and the clockee was fine, apologetic about his conduct, and saying that there were no hard feelings. I had to leave a message for the clocker, but I did my best to try to reassure him.
This is a carbon-copy of the first incident where one of the students in a workout I was running accidentally kicked the other in the groin and I gave the kicker a stern talking to and made her cry. That incident earned me the button on my bag that vaminion, pvtzombi, and fletch02 have seen whot reads "I make little kids cry".
It was a learning experience all around, and there's no major upset, but it was still my fault for not catching it before it escalated and making it difficult to watch both circles at once. I suppose there isn't a martial arts instructor around with a nonzero injury rate, but it still bugs me that it happened on my watch.
I should have realized that I was right when I thought that maybe I had bitten off a bit more than I could chew.
I had positioned myself to be able to watch both of the matches at once, and just when I thought that the big guys were getting a little too rough, the other match ends abruptly with an expletive. I come over to find that one of the guys lost control and clocked the other across the face hard enough to bend his glasses (which I should have made him take off before the match) and draw some blood from the frame of it scraping his nose. I tried calming everyone down, but he stormed off in a huff.
I did my best to salvage the situation and had the sparring stop shortly thereafter. The rest of the class went, as Yamamoto Tsunetomo would put it "without incident".
I talked with the clocker in this matter and he was taking it pretty hard. I tried to basically say that this was a learning experience and that he should, in fact, learn from it, but he was still really broken up. It's like we were saying "you made a mistake, but it's not the end of the world", and he was only hearing the first part.
On Sensei's advice (no blame or shouting, just a game plan for how to handle the situation) we later called both parties and the clockee was fine, apologetic about his conduct, and saying that there were no hard feelings. I had to leave a message for the clocker, but I did my best to try to reassure him.
This is a carbon-copy of the first incident where one of the students in a workout I was running accidentally kicked the other in the groin and I gave the kicker a stern talking to and made her cry. That incident earned me the button on my bag that vaminion, pvtzombi, and fletch02 have seen whot reads "I make little kids cry".
It was a learning experience all around, and there's no major upset, but it was still my fault for not catching it before it escalated and making it difficult to watch both circles at once. I suppose there isn't a martial arts instructor around with a nonzero injury rate, but it still bugs me that it happened on my watch.