Throwing children
I've been taking a fairly active role assisting in the kid's classes this month and I'm finding it's getting a tiny bit easier in understanding how to teach them. Some of the kids are around 7 years old, some are early teens, and just a few are about 4 or 5, so I have to try to be flexible enough in my teaching style to reach all of them while also realizing that my expectations of results needs to be appropriately scaled.
As the human brain develops during our childhood, aspects of perception, coordination, etc., eventually start to mature to a point where complicated or subtle nuances in physical movement can be seen and understood. As adults, we can see the difference between a hand placed at head, neck, or solar plexus height; young children can miss the difference in height completely when performing a move because they can't perceive the difference. Expanding on this, then, teaching young children a specific stance, leg motion, turning direction, block angle, punch height, speed, timing, and much more for just one form can become a Herculean task depending on the development of the student's mind. Girls, developing faster than boys, swiftly learn most of the core material and tend to progress at a faster pace. Boys... they take a bit longer, but eventually come to understand.
Yesterday's class was a good example of this. SBN decided that it was a good time to go over forward and backward rolls, so he pulled out the mat, looked at me, and told me to instruct the kids on how to do it.
I don't think I've ever dropped face that quickly before. Aside from the two teen red belts in class, I had a row of 6 students no higher than green belt and all were less than 7 years old. Getting them to roll correctly (AKA, not rolling on your head and landing on your neck) worried me, but I did my best to succinctly verbalize and demonstrate how to do it. After my roll, I had them line up and try it out.
It didn't go so well. They tumbled, flomped, collapsed, and writhed in chaotic, giggly masses of flesh. I tried to point out (again) how to lead with the hand and arm, tuck the head, and stay in ball form, but it was all for naught. They were still having fun, thankfully, and no one was hurt, but the exercise wasn't going well. SBN, who had hung around just outside of my field of vision, gave me a bit of a break and took over. Starting with the youngest, he molded her into the correct position while talking, grabbed the back of her belt while he held the back of her head, and gently tossed the child-ball onto the mat. She rolled in the expected manner, emerging with an excited "WOW!!" and ran back to her spot.
"You have to help them get used to the motion at first. Use a more hands-on approach." A large part of my learning here is coming to terms with the fact that I'll need to physically handle the children to get them to do what we need them to do. I've generally kept a stern hands-off approach with any kid; parents can be FAR too protective these days and a misunderstood touch can result in an ugly lawsuit. Any manipulation of any student by me is always done so that the parent can clearly see what I'm doing and, yes, it is a bit excessive on my part. The parents are putting their kids in a martial arts class so they expect that the kids are going to have physical contact by teachers or other students, and I need to realize that it's an integral learning method. Still, I'd rather err on the side of caution for the school.
Anyway, after he tosses a few more children to the mat, he leaves it to me to continue. I work following his lead (minus the child throwing), and the kids have a better time at it. We work to correct a few things and move on to back rolling, which is a bit trickier. The older girls grasp it easier (our "Green Belt Assassin" lands with an audible "ow" and complains not of the pain of her landing, but rather that she pulled her hair during the tumble), the younger girls get it half right and giggle as they flop, and the boys... well, they never actually emerged from ball form. They just tumble through the motion, keep tumbling as they roll off the mat, and somehow manage to roll back into their place in line. Well, at least they got somewhat better.
After class, I'm reassured that this is part of the teaching process and that I'm still doing a reasonably good job with the kids. No one has been injured, there haven't been any arguments, no meltdowns, and I haven't run away screaming, so it's going pretty well. After changing and just as I was about to leave, he catches up with me to let me know that one of the parents of the kids had given some positive feedback on my class, saying that I had a good attitude and teaching style. This shocked me; I still feel like a shabby intern and a rubbish instructor, but here's a parent who says that he's impressed with my work.
I might be able to do teaching thing after all.
As the human brain develops during our childhood, aspects of perception, coordination, etc., eventually start to mature to a point where complicated or subtle nuances in physical movement can be seen and understood. As adults, we can see the difference between a hand placed at head, neck, or solar plexus height; young children can miss the difference in height completely when performing a move because they can't perceive the difference. Expanding on this, then, teaching young children a specific stance, leg motion, turning direction, block angle, punch height, speed, timing, and much more for just one form can become a Herculean task depending on the development of the student's mind. Girls, developing faster than boys, swiftly learn most of the core material and tend to progress at a faster pace. Boys... they take a bit longer, but eventually come to understand.
Yesterday's class was a good example of this. SBN decided that it was a good time to go over forward and backward rolls, so he pulled out the mat, looked at me, and told me to instruct the kids on how to do it.
I don't think I've ever dropped face that quickly before. Aside from the two teen red belts in class, I had a row of 6 students no higher than green belt and all were less than 7 years old. Getting them to roll correctly (AKA, not rolling on your head and landing on your neck) worried me, but I did my best to succinctly verbalize and demonstrate how to do it. After my roll, I had them line up and try it out.
It didn't go so well. They tumbled, flomped, collapsed, and writhed in chaotic, giggly masses of flesh. I tried to point out (again) how to lead with the hand and arm, tuck the head, and stay in ball form, but it was all for naught. They were still having fun, thankfully, and no one was hurt, but the exercise wasn't going well. SBN, who had hung around just outside of my field of vision, gave me a bit of a break and took over. Starting with the youngest, he molded her into the correct position while talking, grabbed the back of her belt while he held the back of her head, and gently tossed the child-ball onto the mat. She rolled in the expected manner, emerging with an excited "WOW!!" and ran back to her spot.
"You have to help them get used to the motion at first. Use a more hands-on approach." A large part of my learning here is coming to terms with the fact that I'll need to physically handle the children to get them to do what we need them to do. I've generally kept a stern hands-off approach with any kid; parents can be FAR too protective these days and a misunderstood touch can result in an ugly lawsuit. Any manipulation of any student by me is always done so that the parent can clearly see what I'm doing and, yes, it is a bit excessive on my part. The parents are putting their kids in a martial arts class so they expect that the kids are going to have physical contact by teachers or other students, and I need to realize that it's an integral learning method. Still, I'd rather err on the side of caution for the school.
Anyway, after he tosses a few more children to the mat, he leaves it to me to continue. I work following his lead (minus the child throwing), and the kids have a better time at it. We work to correct a few things and move on to back rolling, which is a bit trickier. The older girls grasp it easier (our "Green Belt Assassin" lands with an audible "ow" and complains not of the pain of her landing, but rather that she pulled her hair during the tumble), the younger girls get it half right and giggle as they flop, and the boys... well, they never actually emerged from ball form. They just tumble through the motion, keep tumbling as they roll off the mat, and somehow manage to roll back into their place in line. Well, at least they got somewhat better.
After class, I'm reassured that this is part of the teaching process and that I'm still doing a reasonably good job with the kids. No one has been injured, there haven't been any arguments, no meltdowns, and I haven't run away screaming, so it's going pretty well. After changing and just as I was about to leave, he catches up with me to let me know that one of the parents of the kids had given some positive feedback on my class, saying that I had a good attitude and teaching style. This shocked me; I still feel like a shabby intern and a rubbish instructor, but here's a parent who says that he's impressed with my work.
I might be able to do teaching thing after all.