Why do you teach?

[Bonhomme]

I looking for honest reasons why people choose to teach MA. More so if you are not a school owner (IE, you teach for someone else), but opinions are welcome from everyone.

What motivates you to teach? How does it support your personal goals? What do you get out of it?

Whether it's altruistic or purely self serving (and anywhere in between), say so - I'm not judging.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

教学相长 Teaching and learning go hand in hand

When you teach, you will get free sparring partners.

 

[Holmejr]

I am an assistant instructor at the class i attend. I also have a small student base that meets at my home. With my own students, I teach to better my ability in preparation for my next testing. Also, I’m creating a curriculum for my own classes when the time comes. So my current students are really guinea pigs. They seem to enjoy the classes and also seem to be progressing nicely. I don’t charge for the lessons.

 

[Dirty Dog]

Martial art training played a major role in my youth. I think it's something virtually everyone can benefit from. I have never been paid for teaching, not a dime. Because there are plenty of commercial schools, but there are also plenty of people who cannot afford them.
But mostly, I enjoy teaching.

 

[skribs]

Free grappling dummies.

 

[Kung Fu Wang]

There are 2 requirements to learn my MA system.

- You have to compete in tournament.
- You have to teach to the next generation.

 

[Simfers]

I used to teach, back when I was doing Can-Ryu JJ. I was doing it because there was a need (lack of staff) and also because my dues were waived. I enjoyed the teach, as long as the students made an effort. I was quite famous for once inviting a couple of teenage girls who clearly didn't want to be there to leave. I also despised teaching kids. Aside from that, I enjoyed it.

I think I made quite the positive difference in the live of some people (thinking of one in particular, I may have literally saved his life), and the ones I coached for the black belt test did REALLY good, so I guess I must've been pretty good at it.

Gave a small seminar earlier this year to a karate class, standing chokes. It was interesting to teach them something new.

 

[Buka]

I had a knack for teaching at an early age. It started by gambling with baseball cards as a kid. That was big in our neighborhood.

We played “farsies” - two kids flip a card, closest to the wall wins, “kiss” take turns flipping, first one to have a card land partially on top of one takes them all, and “leaner” which was from a longer distance - lean a card against the wall, knock it down and take them all.

I use to lose all my cards. Then I asked some of the older kids how to do it better.
They showed me and it worked. Won a lot, then taught younger kids several years later. They won, too.

Ran track in high school. Track coach retired the year before. Coach from another sport took over for the extra fifteen hundred a year. He knew nothing about the sport. Made us run up and down the stadium stairs, never mentioned stretching.
We developed strong quads and weak hamstrings - which led to everyone getting muscle pulls.

So, I went to college meets and asked coaches. A lot of them took the time to answer questions and show me what to do. I became the captain of the team and taught what I had learned. No more muscle pulls and we started winning.

Same thing happened in Martial Arts. First teacher was a fraud, so I started asking other teachers, and learned. Brought it back to our dojo. My fraud Sensei had me teach all the new white belts when I was a white belt myself.

I had no idea what I was doing, other than teaching movement of the body, but thanks to a half dozen legitimate instructors throughout Boston, they taught me.

I’ve taught dozens of kids how to drive. (Then had them take Drivers Ed.)

Had an instructor in Driver’s Ed who didn’t care, then a good one replaced him. Stayed friends for years, he taught me how to teach.

I’d take kids to big empty parking lots on Sundays. Put up cones and trash barrels. Take them through the paces. Taught them all how to change a flat tire, too.

Took a lot of psychology classes in college. Learned a lot about teaching there. We had a great teacher. She taught me how to keep students engaged in what they were learning, how to not have them compare themselves to other students. How to allow them to enjoy the process. It translated well to Martial Arts.

I teach because I’m good at it. Made a living doing it. Not in dojos, hell, I gave that away.
Became a DT instructor in Law Enforcement.
They actually pay you and the checks didn’t bounce.

 

[Gyakuto]

Coming from the opposite angle, I avoid teaching for few reasons:

1) It prevents one from practising. I need every opportunity to practise I can get.
2) The frustration of students making the same mistakes, over and over again despite one’s best efforts.
3) The disappointment of investing a lot of time and effort into students who then disappear without a word.
4) The shameful, ego massaging effects of teaching. Holding court. Showing off.

 

[kitkatninja]

I teach for several reasons including:
1. Improving my own knowledge - intrinsic motivation
2. Supporting my association and our head instructor
3. It's part of my promotion and future promotions (next one is 5th Dan) - extrinsic motivation.
4. The development of the students under me, it's actually a great feeling.

Why I don't particularly like teaching:
1. It reduces my own training time in class, although I do practice outside of lessons
2. Planning the classes can be a pain if people don't turn up
3. Having to deliver the general syllabus, rather than how I have developed the art for my own self.

 

[hoshin1600]

I was 15 years old. White belt classes were separate from mid grade classes. When I got my green belt I wanted more floor time so I asked if I could help with the white belt class. I would do all the warm ups and kihon exercises. I am forever grateful to my first teacher for actually teaching me HOW to teach.
I have always taught. Why? Because martial arts changed my life for the better and I belive the universe (God if you will) gave me a gift and with that gift the universe also gives the responsibility to pass that gift to others. Along the way I found teaching really makes me think about MA on a granular level and depth that I wouldn't of had otherwise.

 

[J. Pickard]

It's the only thing I'm good at.

 

[HighKick]

I looking for honest reasons why people choose to teach MA. More so if you are not a school owner (IE, you teach for someone else), but opinions are welcome from everyone.

What motivates you to teach? How does it support your personal goals? What do you get out of it?

Whether it's altruistic or purely self serving (and anywhere in between), say so - I'm not judging.

I will try to keep this short as possible.
I started teaching as a 'head instructor' when I was a red belt. My original instructor/school owner had all but disappeared, which left me and another red belt teaching all the classes and taking care of the office stuff. With approval from our GM and the class contingent, I found the cheapest place to rent with enough space, relocated the school, and with a Lot of sweat equity from students and family, we started, with a slight name change. Things went very good from the beginning. As you can see, I did not start from scratch student-wise which was a huge benefit.
I was young in my 20's and had worked hard outside of class at my 'regular' job and also had/have a good-sized cattle operation. I had great credit and great backers/financiers. An opportunity came along to purchase the small strip mall the first school was located in, so I bought it. In a nutshell, it allowed me to operate the school with almost no overhead. Five years later, I did the same thing in another part of town and opened our 2nd school. I cannot overstate how many good things and opened doors fell my way in our early years. But to be very clear, it took a LOT of work.
That is a bit of explanation of how our schools got started out.

More to your question, I started out teaching out of necessity and discovered I am pretty darn good at it. In my early years of teaching/learning, I was extremely competitive. I had a crazy busy schedule with a very fulltime job, cattle operation, family, and teaching/owning a school. On top of all this, I had a four-year run of working out with a trainer 5 days/week, 4-5 hours/day to make an Olympic run. It was an insane schedule where I averaged about 4-5 hours sleep per day.
I still had a partner in the school (other original red belt) and he was good at the background office stuff and did a very good job of keeping things going and organized which helped tremendously while I was training.
I would say I absolutely fed off of teaching/training back then. No matter how tired I was from the rest of life, I always looked forward to classes. I have always been self-driven and quite competitive at Everything (my wife can attest). After my competitive days and after I had become quite seasoned in my original style (4th Dan if memory serves) I trained to green sash in Kung Fu, black belt in Shotokan, and 2nd instructor in Kali. I never have been 'tired' with my base style, but I knew there was more to martial arts than my base style, so I wanted to learn more. This also helped keep me engaged in teaching.

I hope I answered your question somewhere in there.

 

[Gyakuto]

I’m surprised at the level of grade that students are permitted to teach (although it’s hard to tell what grade a ‘colour’ signifies). If even shodan (first Dan) is considered a relative beginner, is it acceptable that kyu graded students teach others, completely unsupervised, in the class?

In anatomy dissection classes we did have ‘peer teaching’, but an academic was always present at the table to ensure they were saying/demonstrating the correct things. Incidentally, the other students hated being peer taught as they felt it was inferior to an academic member of staff teaching them.

 

[Dirty Dog]

I’m surprised at the level of grade that students are permitted to teach (although it’s hard to tell what grade a ‘colour’ signifies). If even shodan (first Dan) is considered a relative beginner, is it acceptable that kyu graded students teach others, completely unsupervised, in the class?

I don't think I've ever seen that happen, although it's certainly possible.
In our system, 1st Dan is considered a teaching rank, but every student is expected to be able to teach lower ranked students. If they don't know the material well enough to teach it properly, we wouldn't have promoted them. Colored belt students teach under supervision.