Teaching style of your school?

[Spook]

This is mainly a question directed towards students/instructors whose schools are rather large with multiple students (10 or so at each level/rank) at many different stages in their training.

I'm curious to what approach your school takes to teaching a large group of students at multiple levels? Does your school focus on drills where everyone participates and then open class at the end, does your school take a mainly open class approach where several instructors individually teach groups at different ranks with some class drills at the end, or another approach? Obviously a healthy balance is needed but what does your school focus on? Any tips?

Thanks,
Tom

 

[Shane Smith]

The senior students and junior Instructors each simultaneously teach students of one particular skill level and walk them through drills and the like on various sections of the floor and then the class is brought back together for sparring and self-defense instruction under the head Instructor.

 

[Sam]

Our school has 250-ish students, and (I believe, at last count,) 12 instructors. Let me count real fast... Dan Dave H Steve L Steve A Karen Aimee Tommy Joe Tim Tommy... oh, and Ben. So that''s 11 instructors. Our group classes are open to everyone, and we work basic drills. Kicks, punches, combos, bag work, and sometimes self defense techniques. It is ONE instructor per class, and as many students that show up. The fewest students that have come is 4 and the most is about 25. It depends on which class on which day what the 'regular' amount of students are. However, 12-18 is the average I'd estimate.

 

[Adept]

A typical class would be:

Whole class warm up and basics for 20 minutes.

Whole class patterns (forms, kata, whatever) performed from white belt to black. Once students have completed their pattern, they fall out and work on their basics.

Whole class sparring/self defense, with rotating partners to ensure the senior students can help the junior students.

Split class patterns. The class splits into it's belt level groups, with senior students each taking a group and working on patterns.

A lot of the time senior students will seperate and work 'up the back' on more advanced/hardcore stuff when the rest of the class is doing patterns or basics.

 

[Kamaria Annina]

At where I teach, there levels are pretty spread out. There will maybe 2 white belts, 4 yellow, 3 green, 2 blue, 3 red belts. Since this is the childrens class, the older red belts, take a group of children and work with them, sometimes mixing different levels, such as taking yellow and green belts. Usually we have white belts stay within their own level so we can make sure they aren't over whemed with anything else. One thing at a time

 

[Spook]

Thanks for the input everyone! Its always helpful to see how other schools organize thier classes.

 

[TigerWoman]

Our school has many branches so there are a lot of students but most of them are spread out amongst numerous classes in six towns. Most of the colored belts come in the evenings to our now "family" classes. That means all ages, 4-50 so the teaching is done by the master to the average of the class. He doesn't submit control to other black belts to teach while he is in the room. So not much reason for black belts to attend family classes.

So all the black belts are going at noon unless they have a child in that evening class. Once in a while we have a few adult colored belts or a mama brings a child but the child does a black belt workout then and doesn't come back. TW

 

[searcher]

While teaching large classes I try to drill basics heavily and then break into groups of 5-7 students to work self-defense and on forms. The problem I run into is space for sparring. It seems that there is never enough room to get every students plenty of sparring time. I try to pair up a higher ranking student with beginners for 1-2 months so they can get down the way we run class. It has been my experience that if you have alot of structure and discipline in the class the number of students has less effect on the quality of the class. With large numbers, structure is the key.