Glad to hear your problem is solved however I'd caution you to be careful as she sounds like a nasty piece of work and may try something as a payback. Maybe that you smacked her about of something? or caused mental anguish... I can see a possibility of a court case or something similar occurring

Do be careful Sharon, we dont want you to wind up as another statistic.

cheers
Jane

Thanks for the warning Reiki and Xerxes.

I had already thought of it because she is very small minded.

I think the "revenge" will be two fold. I think firstly she will tell anyone who listens what a bad instructor I am. Big deal, to be honest I would not want anyone that would listen to her in our club and I am not short of students I have a waiting list. My existing students would definitely back me up as would the parents of the juniors.

Secondly, she owes me quite a bit of money for training fees whilst she was allegedly having financial difficulties. This turned out to not be true. Whilst she owed the money, she bought herself a brand new laptop in addition to the computer she already had for £800 plus a very expensive digital camera. Again, this does not bother me at all. Teaching is not my primary source of income and money does not really bother me either way anyway. I would like it back, but if she chooses to keep it, it's her karma not mine.

I really can't think of anything else that she could do that she would have the guts to do.

I will watch out though, just in case.
Sharon

Re. the "Advisemeandy" situation and your obviously troubled student: Could the problem with these sorts of incidents be that people are not training for any reason other than some sort of ego boost? Insecure teenagers and reality-challenged liars are not in the dojo to help anyone else. We had a student in our dojo a few months back who was obviously mentally retarded in some way. He was hard to train with because he was taller than anyone else- all bones and angles- and did not like being grabbed. During randori or any sort of one-step drills he would clench up and throw wild, panicky techniques that often connected. Because some of our teenage students often work out with us, concerns were raised over possible injuries. Worst of all, he had a very strong dislike of our sempai, who happens to be a woman. Whenever she got tough with him and nailed him for trying to muscle her around, he would complain to other students afterwards. He was obnoxious, but everyone put up with him (and busted lips, knees in groin, etc...) for several months. Then one day during randori he slammed his knee into hers at full speed and blew her knee out. She was in a brace for almost three months and is still dealing with the damage. Everyone assumed that it was an accident, but there was something about the way that he acted afterwards that gave me the chills. He stopped comign to class a few weeks later and then had the nerve to imply that sensei was trying to cheat him by not refunding his money. We initially thought that our dojo would just have to accept his disabilities and work with his other "quirks". It's easy enough now that he's gone, but was it worth a derious injury?

oops...derious=serious

Insecure teenagers and reality-challenged liars are not in the dojo to help anyone else.

Does anyone else notice that whenever a proble arises, insecure teenagers need to be mentioned whether they caused the problem or not.

See post blaing insecure teenagers for the Shotkan. Jkogas, CXT flme wars (tried but can't find it, just remember getting into a big agism rant about it [IMG]http://www.fightingarts.com/forums/ubb/smile.gif[/IMG])

I must back kiwi up here.

The ex-student I am talking about in this thread was 37

Advisemeandy aka Jagman is 23


The other student I refered to who had a bad attitude when he failed a grading is 46

I have many teenage students and they don't give me any trouble.

People with a bad attitude can be any age.
Sharon

Sharon, I hope you have a good lawyer available. If you don't need one this go round, it still never hurts to have one. Did you document her previous misconduct? In the future I would reccomend it. I'm not an instructor, but I have done my share of firing folks and brushing off psycho customers. I doubt you've heard the last of this chick. P.S. the concept of courage does not apply to those too stupid to recognize danger.

[This message has been edited by Jamoni (edited 02-28-2004).]

Jamoni

I have kept a record of her conduct and I have many witnesses to it. I also saved her emails.
Same goes for any incident like this, thanks for the warning.
Sharon

A sociopath believes their lies. Should you teach her how to harm others when her distorted reality may cause inappropriate response to situations? If you increase pressure she may have a nervous breakdown.

Hi Sharon,

This account was a perfect example of why you should never sacrifice your standards!

I've had a couple of students push for rank when they weren't ready ( although I've never had them lie about a rank they've never held ). Prior to testing, for any of my students, I hold a Pre-Test where all those going for the same rank get a chance to participate so that everyone sees where they match up against one another. I also ask for some more senior students to attend so as to provide additional feedback.

No one who's failed a pre-test gets to test & by doing it in this fashion, it has always served as to pointing to the difference in skill & proficiency between those who were ready & those who weren't.

Never give in to pressure, one of the hard things I had to do was when I went to Puerto Rico to visit one of my friends dojo's and to put on a seminar while I was there. Adalberto had a student that he said wanted to have tested for his Nidan...not having sufficient rank himself to promote him, he asked me to test him.

Julio-Sanchez is one of the nicest guys you could hope to meet...I set up a pre-test where all of the Black Belts & Brown Belts could attend so as to run a pre-test that would both measure his skill & inspire his peers & juniors.

Sadly he failed miserably, he just wasn't anywhere near ready. To the Juniors this showed that standards mattered, otherwise the rank associated with advancement means nothing. His peers later commented that he had slacked off of his training and hadn't been focusing on it & it showed. One of them confided that he was surprised that their instructor had put him up for testing.

To my friend Adalberto, I told him that I was very disappointed that he would try to send someone forward who clearly wasn't ready. I told him that while Julio-Sanchez was a great guy, he lacked the proficiency necessary to get his Nidan, let alone begin working on Sandan.

Don't sacrifice your standards.

Eric