Teach me

Teach me. Teach me? Teach me!

Teaching is easy, teaching is difficult...

I feel most people believe teaching is easy, like teaching addition. 1+1=2. Yep, pretty damn simple. Try teaching integrity or self control, yep not so easy.

When I first began my training in the martial arts, it was a simple matter of punching and kicking. Years and years of just punching and kicking. It wasn't til i met my Sensei, that I learned more. He had the knack of nurturing people's talents.

What he saw in me, was the ability to "not teach". It took him a long time to explain teaching and not teaching. The gist of it is pretty basic. Any moron can teach a person to punch. Any idiot can link punches and kicks together to make Kata.

Teaching is easy anyone can do it. Not teaching is more about guiding, leading by example. A person has to train hard to be good. A teacher has to master their movements to be able to demonstrate and explain what they are doing. A step up from this is to help guide a student through their obstacles.

Now multiply this by ten students, twenty students. They all have different hurdles to overcome. You can teach them all the same punch, but you have to guide each one individually past their stumbling blocks.

This is the major stumbling block for most teachers, they see the students as a whole and not individuals.

So, now let the debates rage over whether I am a moron, or just an idiot.

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