Need Help Teaching Kids

Hello Dobbersky:

Thank you for responding. I understand the concept, merely trying to understand the particular details of your words.
I accept talking with them, encouraging questions... as valuable and often helpful, if ~directed~ slightly. Not monitered and you get all kinds of bizarre cross-chatter, or completely non-applicable statements, stories. ("Johnny... thank you" (sic. what's that strange, rambling story have to do w/ anything we were talking about)... )

"Militancy" (ie talking down to them) I find typically silly.

Jeff

If you want to be a really good instructor I would suggest doing some research into teaching and learning theories as it applies to both adults and children. I have found that martial arts instructors tend to attempt to treat everyone the same regardless of the student's age or learning ability. Simply put, everyone learns differently especially children. Most adults have a slightly combined learning style but they tend to have a dominate learning style that they emphasize more than the others. It might be kinesthetic, auditory, or visual. The key to teaching is to learn how to recognize the student's dominate style then modify your lessons to best suit their style of learning. As for children, their classes should not be structured like the adult classes. As was mentioned, they tend to have a low attention span and most children require multi-sensory activies to fully enage their brains and maintain their attention. I have seen some martial arts schools fail miserably when attemtping to teach children like they do the adults. The children get frustrated and eventually ask their parents to drop out. The key to teaching children is to make the classes fun, while still maintaining some discipline. However, at no time should the children be struck because they didn't listen or did something incorrectly. All that does is teach the children that you (the instructor) have no discipline yourself and it teaches children to fear making a mistake rather than using mistakes as learning tools to improve performance. Children's classes should emphasize life skills (calling 911, learning their full names, learning their address, improving confidence, controlling anger, bully awareness, etc, etc.) as well as functional fitness. You should use fun interactive drills and games that not only teach the children aspects of the martial arts but helps them gain coordination, mobility, agility, quickness, etc. One such game is "karate dodgeball" which teaches evasion, natural reflexive footwork, improves agilty, etc. The class should be no more than 30-45 minutes in length and should at least 70% drills and games, and only 30% or less of static practice like stances, and blocking, punching, or kicking practice. Again the key is keeping it FUN while making sure the objectives are covered.

Hope this helps,
Steve Zorn, ICPS

Very nice Mr. Zorn, couldn't agree more. I once taught like most do, until I took some education science classes.

OK, I'll trot this one out again. I always keep a bag of balloons in my gear bag. Every once in a while, pull the balloons out and pass them around. If you have parents watching, press them into service blowing. Every kid gets a balloon. The name of the game is "Keep the balloon off the ground, and NO HANDS". Then you can start some relay races. Have some of the teardrop kind for the advanced belts. A balloon is truly humbling.

I came out of a school where any mistake a child made ended with some form of punishment. Ether it was a hour of PT or standing with a stick across you outstethed hands or something along that line. I can't say it ever seened to me to help with the behavior. In fact in most cases the one's that needed someone to work with them the most just quite. When my wife and I decided to try out on our own we decided to drope that type of behavior. Forget you Gi, at lest they are there to train. Not paying attention or acting up {4 to 6 year olds} go sit at the wall until they are realy to rejoin class, that kills them. If a student is in trouble take them in the office to talk to them, If they did something well praise them in front of the class.
In older kids so far I haven't had much of a problin. The one that I did have the boy had to write a paper about his actions and tell those involed he was sorry. That was the easy way out and I made it plain he wounldn't like the other way one bit.
As far as older people I don't expect trouble or they are in the wrong school. Older teens and adults I expede them to behave and not act like children. If they are not there to train why are they there. One last thought, unless it's a older student trying to fight me, I would never strike a student. I am very much against corperal punishment, if that needs to be done it' s the parents job.