# Having Students as Teachers?



## Hefeweizen (Jun 17, 2003)

Is it common in Kenpo to have brown or green belts acting as assistant instructors?  

Also, is this a REQUIRED part of your training?

I'm asking because I have little, if any, desire to teach and it seems as though once you hit brown belt you spend about half to three fourths of your classes teaching lower belts and rarely learn something at the brown belt level.  (no pay is associated with this either).

Is it part of the philosophy behind kenpo that one learns a lot pre-black belt by teaching?

Thanks
HW


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## pineapple head (Jun 17, 2003)

Personally....
I like it when my instructor asks me to go through techs and stuff with the lower belts, it is great training just getting to break the tech down and having to explain it aloud. 
I know im only a purple belt , but i have trained for over 3 years and attended class twice per week. But i have worked a lot with beginners as we such a small club, as this could go onto another thread about min belt times and so on. I think im a good purple belt and that makes me feel a lot better about myself rather than being a not so good blue or green.


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## Blindside (Jun 18, 2003)

Teaching is required for our upper level students.

Actually, now that I think about it, it is not.  But if you do not teach you will never get your brown belt.  

We consider our black belts to be instructors, not just people who can kick ***.  And you won't be a good instructor without lots and lots of practice, hence the requirement of teaching hours for brown.

Lamont


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## Black Tornado (Jun 18, 2003)

I don't think any of our instructors have ever outright said that teaching is _required_ for advancement, but at the same time I don't think our club has a single person above 6th kyu who doesn't spend at least part of their classtime teaching the lower ranks.  I can't imagine someone really understanding their techniques if they don't spend some time passing on the knowledge.


I'm not in a commercial school though.  Everyone, including the instructors, is there because they are learning.  Even the highest ranked instructors arn't getting paid, and they're teaching the whole time.  I assume they must be getting something out of it.


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## tonbo (Jun 18, 2003)

At our school, you are required to teach 50 hours in each belt, from brown up through Black.  This totals up to about 250 hours of teaching by the time you reach Black.

The main reason for this is twofold:  1)  you learn your material better, as you are having to explain it and work through all kinds of variations, and 2)  you are giving back a little something after learning your own material.

I dont' know that it is specifically a kenpo thing.  I just know I have seen a lot of schools doing similar things.

Peace--


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## Guiseppe Betri (Jun 18, 2003)

I believe that it is commonplace to have green and brown belts assist as instructors.  I also agree with this practice, my reasoning is twofold.  First off, this allows for running the kwoon in a more efficient manner.  Delegation of responsibilities to upper belts seems to be the wisest alternative when faced with several students who need instruction.  Secondly, the benefits these green and brown belts receive are outstanding.  I learned an incredible amount about the techniques, the forms, body styles, efficient and effective movement when working with lower belts, and continue to do so.  Its not just a review, several lessons can be taken from passing on the material.  
However, my school does not require that we teach.  It is encouraged to some extent though.


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## Touch Of Death (Jun 18, 2003)

First of all I'm not an instructor; however, I always volunteer to help the lower belt students because it is selfish opportunity to come away from the instruction with more than I gave the student. To articulate a concept is a must in understanding a concept. As each student reaches a difficulty in understanding you have to seach for a way to help them understand. That rocks! Plus you are giving back to the art by helping others. Which also... ROCKS!


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## kenpoevolution (Jul 26, 2003)

Teaching is an important aspect of the art. To be able to teach the material you know properly and in a way that is understandable represents a higher level of proficiency. As you teach more and more, you'll find yourself becoming more articulate and slowing down to think more about what you are doing (i.e. power factors and purpose of your motions).


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## MJS (Jul 26, 2003)

While it might seem odd to some, having a student teaching a student, by the time you reach the advanced levels--green, brown--you should start to have an understanding of teaching.  The asst. should be given certain things to do-  IE- warmups, basics (Punches and Kicks), if you break the class into groups, have the brown belt work with a group, but still continue to supervise him/her.  One thing that they should not be doing though, is teaching people that are close to their own rank.  Lower belts are one thing, but having a brown belt teach a green belt probably isnt the best thing to do.

In any case, it is important for them to start to get a feel for teaching portions of the class.  By the time they reach BB, they will be ready for a class of their own!

MJS


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## Les (Jul 27, 2003)

Here in the United Kingdom, there are regulations laid down that effect this.

If any person is using a local authority premises for martial arts classes they are required to prove that each instructor has the relevant qualifications and insurance.

You cannot teach children unless you have passed the 'due dilligence' check. This is a police check, designed to protect our little treasures from paedophiles.

I have one student who teaches the kids classes with me. She has tested for Junior Black Belt as the syllabus I teach my juniors is different to the adult one. 
She has had to fulfil the above requirements, PLUS she is undertaking a NVQ coaching course a child protection course, (These are National qualifications), and holds a First Aid Certificate. She is also required to hold Instructors Indemnity insurance. 

In the adult classes, I will frequently ask a student to work with lower ranks, but this is done under my supervision.

I would like to see more of my students taking an interest in teaching, as it takes a lot of pressure off me, but it'll only happen in the proper way.

I carry £10M insurance, but a student teaching does not carry Instructor insurance. Sadly we live in a lawsuit happy world, so this is an important factor when asking students to teach.

Another point is that knowing how to do something doesn't necessarily mean you know how to teach it. I don't believe being a Black Belt automatically makes you an Instructor.

I went to college to learn how to teach, and when I started I thought I knew it all, but I had a different perspective by the time I qualified. (I still don't know it all, but now I do know how to impart the knowledge I have)

Les


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## MJS (Jul 27, 2003)

Thats correct!  We do live in a world where people do not hesitate to sue you.  One would think, that by the time you reach brown belt, that you would have a good understanding of the tech. but you can't assume that.  Some people are good fighters, but they can't teach.  Some know the tech. but can't teach them.  Its definately very important to groom your potential Inst. to make sure that they know what they are doing and are able to teach the tech safely.  Having a weekly Inst. workout, where you can review the material and make sure that it is taught correctly is also very important.

MJS


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## Brother John (Jul 27, 2003)

It's been said that you really don't have a thing until you give it away. 
It's that way with Kenpo. I think that teaching gives you lessons about the art that you just can't get in any other way... and that ones education in Kenpo would be severely lacking if you've never taught on any consistant basis by the time you get to Brown. Thus I think that, for me, I'd feel negligent if I didn't have my upperbelt students teaching.
And it's not just Kenpo, This sentiment/practice is quite common throughout martial arts I believe.
Don't resent/dread it, Learn.

Your Brother
John


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## Kame (Jul 29, 2003)

I'm a month away from testing for my black belt and have never taught nor been asked to teach a lesson. The closest my instructor has ever asked of me was to take over group a couple times while he had to take care of some temporary matters. But I also attend a fairly small school with only two full time instructors and one 1st Brown that teaches only a handful of students.  I've taught snowboarding for several years so I know the benefits of having to be able to teach the same material to another. I don't think my own training has suffered at all or not been fully realized by not teaching.  I certainly feel that I could teach the material if it were necessary. Yet I've been reluctant to express interest in teaching because for one, I simply don't have the time, but I also don't feel that it's appropriate. Just my opinion but I feel that instructors should at least have a Black belt in their art to have the authority and appropriate knowledge to teach it. I just have a hard time taking instructors that haven't acquired that level seriously. Once I have earned my Black and have a more open schedule teaching is something I'd definetly like to pursue.


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## cdhall (Jul 29, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Hefeweizen _
> *Is it common in Kenpo to have brown or green belts acting as assistant instructors?
> 
> Also, is this a REQUIRED part of your training?*



Yes, the way I came up.



> _Originally posted by Hefeweizen _
> *I'm asking because I have little, if any, desire to teach and it seems as though once you hit brown belt you spend about half to three fourths of your classes teaching lower belts and rarely learn something at the brown belt level.  (no pay is associated with this either).*



The time you spend teaching will vary. If I'm not mistaken the IKKA used to require 300 hours of teaching prior to testing for 1st Black.  It was 100 hours in my original association.  I formally started acting as a "substitute teacher" at Green Belt.  I was 19, I often had older people in my class taking lessons from me.  It was kind of neat.

Someone who knows for sure about the IKKA requirements should jump in and say so.  I don't know if they may have changed since 1991 or whenever I learned of them.



> _Originally posted by Hefeweizen _
> *Is it part of the philosophy behind kenpo that one learns a lot pre-black belt by teaching?
> Thanks
> HW *



Yes, as above.  You will also notice this as soon as you are "paired off" with a lower belt to work on something.  They will invariably have a question for you and frequently they won't believe you until you can make it work. Perhaps because you are "not a Black Belt."  But of course this has a benefit of its own.  Your stuff must work.  You will discover that some of your stuff has always worked "until now" and you may have to figure out why it is not working while the lower belt is looking at you like "Where is the Black Belt who knows the answer?"  And sometimes you will be paired with a lower belt who "won't cooperate" and you have to "make them" cooperate.  Recently I also have noticed a student doing something wrong but I could not pinpoint it. It was an exercise for me to try to first figure out what they were doing wrong and then correct them.

As a new teacher, on your own with a class and so on, I think 50% of what you are actually doing may be learning.  All kinds of things come up, and you will notice these if your instructor pairs you up with a lower rank to work drills or whatever as mentioned above.  

P.S. I am also not a Black Belt. I am Brown Belt and I teach everyone who comes in on Saturday monrings, Beginning kids through Sparring Adults.  So this is my perspective so far as I am climbing out of the well so to speak and based on observations of mine and other things I've heard and been taught. :asian: 

P.P.S. I think I remember feeling as you do, but later on, you will find it is very fun to help the lower belts along and that is really what you are doing as a fully qualified instructor.

I hope this helps. I could not resist but chime in.  PM me if you like.  I left out some examples to keep this under 100,000 words.


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## MJS (Jul 29, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Kame _
> *I'm a month away from testing for my black belt and have never taught nor been asked to teach a lesson. The closest my instructor has ever asked of me was to take over group a couple times while he had to take care of some temporary matters. But I also attend a fairly small school with only two full time instructors and one 1st Brown that teaches only a handful of students.  I've taught snowboarding for several years so I know the benefits of having to be able to teach the same material to another. I don't think my own training has suffered at all or not been fully realized by not teaching.  I certainly feel that I could teach the material if it were necessary. Yet I've been reluctant to express interest in teaching because for one, I simply don't have the time, but I also don't feel that it's appropriate. Just my opinion but I feel that instructors should at least have a Black belt in their art to have the authority and appropriate knowledge to teach it. I just have a hard time taking instructors that haven't acquired that level seriously. Once I have earned my Black and have a more open schedule teaching is something I'd definetly like to pursue. *



Having some teaching experience prior to BB is a good thing to have.  When you have that BB around your waist and students ask questions, they are expecting an answer, and sometimes the answer that they expect has to be detailed.  By getting your feet wet, so to speak, by working with the lower belts, it will give the confidence to stand in front of the class and be able to teach and keep everyones attention without any problems.  

Keep in mind, that you should not be getting inst. from someone that is close to your own rank.  If you are a brown belt, getting taught from another brown belt is wrong.  However, by you teaching a lower belt class, that will give the exp. needed.  

Mike


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## Kirk (Jul 29, 2003)

Is it wrong for a yellow belt to "teach" a white belt how to bow 
in?  How about a pledge?  I say "teaching" can be done at the
first site of color on a belt.  

In addition, someone of the same colored belt as I, that's learned
a technique that I haven't yet will teach it to me, and then my
instructor can come along later and fine tune it.  He spends less 
time having to teach me the tech, and can just jump right down 
into the nitty gritty.


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## MJS (Jul 29, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Kirk _
> *Is it wrong for a yellow belt to "teach" a white belt how to bow
> in?  How about a pledge?  I say "teaching" can be done at the
> first site of color on a belt.
> ...



The simple things as bowing in, showing them around the school, etc. there is no problem with that.

If you have someone who has only been learning for 2 months, starts teaching a brand new person, who has never done anything like this before, what is the quality of Inst. going to be like?  Now, I don't want to speak for everybody.  Maybe there are some people that would be very good at this.  True, it might make less work for the Inst. later on, but if the materail was taught wrong, then it makes for more work for the Inst. because he now has to go back and re-teach the orig. tech, as well as make the corrections.  I'm only speaking on what I have seen in the dojo that I attended.  Different rules apply to different places.

Mike


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## Michael Billings (Jul 29, 2003)

I think it is neccessary and prudent to have students begin teaching early in their career, if so inclined.  Nothing forces you to THINK as much as your having to correctly articulate, evaluate, and begin to correct other student's Motion.  It retains your interest longer and increases familiarity with the material.

That being said... the down side is having to "fix" what they were taught.  Remember the old *"Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect."*  If the instructor reviews the student's material in a timely way - they can correct, if needed, any errors.  This is not the same as refining the technique, but I am talking about basically being taught something incorrectly.  

Trust me, your teacher knows what he/she is doing when they ask you to teach someone something.  They accept the possibility of having to remedy anything that is not quite right.  It also gives them feedback on how they taught you ... or at least it should!  My instructors initial the technique charts by whatever they taught that night.  This way I can go over the material that needs work with them in advanced class or individually.  A mixed blessing, but I think essential for a student's development into a teacher.


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## rmcrobertson (Jul 29, 2003)

Speaking as a teacher, I tend to get annoyed when anybody but the head of my school teaches anything serious to my students.

In the first place, there's a lot of ego rattling around--and I've repeatedly seen people "teach," in ways that aren't teaching, but assertions of how much they know. I've seen occasional unconscious sabotage, too. And then there's the common getting the tech wrong--or, worst of all, teaching the tech prematurely.

Commonest problem, technically? Students teaching students to do techs from the shoulders up, because they've no idea of stance-work.

It's much too easy to get teaching confused with the mere imparting of technical knowledge. Leave it alone for awhile; worry about your own training.


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## theletch1 (Jul 29, 2003)

When I studied kenpo it was standard practice for anyone of the rank of green belt and above to show those of lower rank how things were done.  As a brown belt it became required to get some teaching time under your belt.  This was a good thing for most of us as it made us focus more on the details.  Now that I have moved to an aikido school a new tech is shown to the student by the instructor first and then a higher ranked student is allowed to work with the student learning the tech.  Once you reach the rank of I-kyu (brown belt in our system)  you are required to have one year of teaching before you test for shodan.

The upside:  As I work with classmates to help them get a new tech I get the opportunity to work on the details of the tech that I may have been overlooking and often get a new perspective from questions asked from a new point of view.

The downside:  I hope this is a rare downside... shortly before I left my kenpo school the students became responsible for teaching more and more to the point that the instructor would go into his office for the entire class or leave the school all together.  Students stopped looking to the instructor for answers and began looking almost exclusively to other students for their training.  As a result, many of the techs were taught incorrectly or at the least without details that could have been added if they were taught by the instructor.  Those of us put in the position to "teach" eventually hit a point of stagnation in our own training.

The wrap-up:  If you are graced with an instructor who truly understands the good points of allowing students to assist with the training then having students help out can be a very useful tool in your training arsenal.  If you hit a worst case scenario like I did then you can do a lot of damage to the training system.  I suppose the answer here is, as with all things in the martial arts, balance.

Simple input from a simple man.:asian:


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## Brother John (Jul 29, 2003)

> I tend to get annoyed when anybody but the head of my school teaches anything serious to my students.


Mr. Robertson
Are you  refering here to a person who takes it upon themself to teach someone something w/in your school? At least that's what I'm getting from your post. 
I agree. If a person wasn't asked to teach a thing/element... they shouldn't teach it. An instructor should be appointed to teach. 
As THE instructor at a school I'm responsible for the instruction given in the school... whether it comes from me or not.
Now... Advice giving is different. If student A asks senior student B "Sir, what should I do to really make my execution of Thundering Hammers better." Then by all means, I'd hope that B would offer their opinion/advice and answer questions, refering them to myself only if they get stumped. BUT if student A asks student B "Hey, I've not learned Thundering Hammers yet, could you teach it to me?" I'd hope that Mr. B would tell him to be patient and that the lesson would come from me or whomever I appoint at the right time... or tell him to ask me about it.
What would be worse is if senior student B went about asking his juniors "Hey have you learned Thundering Hammers yet? NO... Ok, let me teach it to you."
It's not a pride thing really, I'd hope that some of my students would aspire to teach (several do already), but when this desire comes it should be shaped by that persons instructor... that's what my teacher did... and that's why I teach now.

Your Brother
John


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## MJS (Jul 30, 2003)

> _Originally posted by theletch1 _
> 
> The downside:  I hope this is a rare downside... shortly before I left my kenpo school the students became responsible for teaching more and more to the point that the instructor would go into his office for the entire class or leave the school all together.  Students stopped looking to the instructor for answers and began looking almost exclusively to other students for their training.  As a result, many of the techs were taught incorrectly or at the least without details that could have been added if they were taught by the instructor.  Those of us put in the position to "teach" eventually hit a point of stagnation in our own training.
> 
> ...


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## MJS (Jul 30, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Brother John _
> *Mr. Robertson
> Are you  refering here to a person who takes it upon themself to teach someone something w/in your school? At least that's what I'm getting from your post.
> I agree. If a person wasn't asked to teach a thing/element... they shouldn't teach it. An instructor should be appointed to teach.
> ...



I've seen this alot too.  You will have 2 yellow belts.  If A sees B doing something that he does not know, I've seen A ask B to teach it to him.  That is wrong and needs to be stopped ASAP!!  If student A who is a yellow belt goes up to student B who is a Brown belt and asks to learn something or for assistance, then as long as the Brown belt is teaching it properly, then I see nothing wrong with that.  Just because the yellow belt thinks that they know the tech. and thinks that they can teach it, does not mean that they can do it effectively.  

Mike


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## Ender (Jul 30, 2003)

my feeling is that you should always be a teacher and a learner.


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## Brother John (Jul 30, 2003)

> _Originally posted by MJS _
> *
> Yup-seen this way too many times!  After a while, the Inst. get tired of doing all the teaching, and find that they themselves are not getting their own learning time.  Its one thing to teach a few classes, but when you find yourself doing more teaching than learning, you need to draw the line somewhere.  It is not your school, it is the Head Inst. school, and it is his/her job to be on the floor to supervise, assist, or whatever, not be in the office, while you do all of the work!
> Mike *



That's an unforntunate circumstance isn't it. I've seen it in my community too, and from men who were fine instructors... well known and very highly ranked in their respective arts. It's like they want to run the school by remote control and enjoy all the perks of being the 'instructor'. 
I don't care how long a person is in/at the art, what rank they have or who taught them... this is not "being an instructor", it's resting on your laurels and being a poor example. 
If you're an instructor.... Instruct. 
There's a difference between "this is my instructor" and "this is the guy that owns the school I workout at". 
Having said all of this, I still say that it's a valuable learning experience to teach/lead well before your black belt. But by NO means should it be the norm... it should be overseen by THE instructor......unless there are mitigating circumstances. 

Here endeth my sermon.
Your Brother
John


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## tkdcanada (Jul 30, 2003)

My instructor gets us to do supervised teaching in groups divided by color usually and I've found that the techniques stick with me much better when I'm teaching it and he comes along and corrects what I'm teaching.  I remember being corrected and then I can be sure never to forget that certain thing again.  You also learn that teaching is not at all as easy as it seems and just because it's clear in your mind, it doesn't mean that you are conveying it that way to those you are trying to teach.  Yes, I believe that teaching (in a controlled environment) can only make you a better Martial Artist.


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