who recieves more attention?

blindsensei · White Belt

I do the following in my classes:

1. I teach calsses where all ranges of rank are included so that I can Accomodate times.

2. I limit my class sizes so that I can give better individual attention when needed. (this may not be an optio for you if you have a great deal of overhead, you may have to take in larger classes to keep your doors open).

3. For the students' sake, I make them start learning to help one another with things once they have been in my class for a while. You can learn a great deal from teaching.

4. If I have to make a choice of who gets the attention (which is also difficult for me), I take interest in the ones who seem to want to be there. If they seem bored, I try to gage that. I have, on occaision, talked to a student who seemed to make excuses for why he was not coming to class and found out he wanted to discontinue his lessons. When I can find that out, there is more room for those who want to be there, thus I can give my attention to them.

Just some suggestions. Hope it helps.

gcav · Blue Belt

There is a difference between a student that is honestly trying and just "doesn't get it" and a student that just is'nt enthusiastic about the training. In the classes where all ranks are training together, I often let a senior student "take over" the class while I give a little extra attention to the student that is really trying. I still control the direction and pace of the training, like have them line up and do basic strikes, kicks, etc, while the senior student counts and watches. If I want to cover something new, or something with contact in it, I will have a senior student break off and help the lower student train. IMO, its more important that the newer student learn the basics correctly than to have the senior student "refine" his/her technique. The newer student will take notice of the one on one time you give them and feel that you actually care about them and their training. Hopefully, this will make them want to come back and continue their training instead of quitting out of frustration.
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blindsensei · White Belt

I hadn't really mentioned those who just don't get it in my last post but there are those who have that problem as well. I've seen plenty of examples of that. ven with that, you can still tell if they want to be there or not. It's not like being a drill instructor shouting "do you want to be here maggot?" will help you find that out, you just have to watch them and look for signs of disinterest. Like I said, one of those signs is continual absence and making excuses each week. One of my favorites was "I was playing too much intendo and now my legs are too stiff to come to class", OK I think coming to class would have done that kid a world of physical ggod but he would rather have stayed home and played his video game. he would not have enjoyed himself, therefore he was wasting my time and his.
Actually placing a "senior" student at the head of the class to count and issue warm up instructions is a good method for freeing up instruction time. That also begins to gie individuals time to develop poise in front of others. Now, what I mean about students helping each other is that we, for example, have a series of recommended stretching exercises that we do during the warm up phase of our classes. We like for students to help new students learn these things before they actually do them in the line up so that they will know how they are done. Also we have some of our higher ranking students show newer ones etiquette in the dojo, where the necesseries are like the bathroom, water fountain etc. To me, this promotes an overall friendly atmosphee in the school. In my opinion, a martial arts class is a hard working group of people trying to better themselves but they are a group and a strong group has a good internal support structure. I agree that a strong caring leader must guide the class and give attention to all his students but a new student sometimes feels as though those with more experience are laughing or comparing themselves to them. A feindly hepful atmosphere has always been, to me a sucessful way of keeping more students and keeping them coming back.

SiluntSoul · White Belt

You can always do what we do at our dojo. You can get an assistant, or a sempai, to watch the other group.

dinesh · Yellow Belt

If a student doesn't show interest, isnt making an effort , they are simply allowed to sit down and not continue.
My sensei has a very short temper for lazy people and I am tending to pick up that habit.
No matter how "bad" you are, if you are interested and listen , you are helped.

I find myself gravitating towards the more "seasoned" students than the ones that show a low skill level.
Although it really should be the other way around...

Upasik · White Belt

Teaching tech. will vary based on the size of the class. Its great when you have the opertunity to work with each student on there individual questions of hangups.

The way i was brought up was that the pace of the class is always set by the "slowest runner". What is advanced for a novice will be basic for the experianced, but we all need to go back to basic now and then and plug in all of our advancements.

Also everyone in class should be encoureged to help those under them to assist the development of the student body as a whole.
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It breeds great perfection if the practice be harder then the use.

Learn by teaching

TSDforChrist · Yellow Belt

Here's something to chew on:
What do you do when you start up brand new, and you are the only one who can instruct because all 80-odd of your students are 10th Gup white belts? Oh, wait, it gets worse, they all want to come every chance they get because there is literally nothing else to do (small town, not even a Wal-Mart), and 90% never get out of the house or stop doing chores otherwise? (not my real situation, just a hypothetical expectation taking the area I am in....and it is probably only not my real situation because I haven't officially started yet.)

SloMo · Orange Belt

I feel for you. I have a couple of students who have different degrees of learning disorders. It's easy to get sucked into spending a lot of time with those few ( especially if they are working really hard ) than with the rest of the class.

When I have a student that is having problems I will have them work on one thing. Have them work with the rest of the class but have them focused on one aspect. For instance, if we are doing forms, I may tell them to just work on their stances. Give them a lot of encouragement. Don't try to correct everything at one time. Since they are focusuing on one thing you can spend more time with the other students.

I hope I'm making sense.

Mo

Dojo Dan · White Belt

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