Itinerant Students

[dancingalone]

An itinerant is a person who travels from place to place with no fixed home.

As some of you know, I teach at a TKD school on a couple of nights a week, and I experienced my first set of itinerant students. Apparently there is a family with teenagers who spend most of the school year doing other activities like football, basketball, and baseball. During the summer school break, they get into swimming and back into taekwondo.

It was a bit frustrating for me, since they were advanced color belts, but they were VERY rusty and needed a lot of remedial correction. This was supposed to be an advanced class I was teaching.

Thoughts? As a guest instructor in my friend's school I didn't kick them out of my class although that was certainly my first inclination.

Hmm, I suppose I should have listed lack of patience as one of my flaws in that personal flaws thread.

 

[jks9199]

All you can do with students like that is work with them when they're there. With adults who are coming on their own, just have frequent problems getting to class, you can at least push them to train on their own. These kids... You can encourage them to practice, but it sounds like it's more their parents putting them in the class either for "day care" or just a "keep 'em busy & out of trouble" activity. Not much you can do... If they were really more interested in TKD than the other sports, they'd be around more.

I wouldn't be shocked if they develop a bit of an attitude problem as they look at people who started after them move up, and they stay in place...

 

[terryl965]

All you can do is your best at teaching them, remember not your school so you must go with the flow.

 

[StudentCarl]

They're still sampling, and their parents are doing something healthy by keeping their kids active. You have an opportunity to shape those kids ideas so maybe they'll stay with TKD. How many of those other sports they play have organized activities for middle-aged and older folks?

I think it's wise to keep the experience positive and help them understand that TKD is an activity you can do for a lifetime, not just a school sport. It would be great for them eventually to stay with TKD when the other sports go by the wayside.