6 posts / 0 new
Last post
Les Bubka
Les Bubka's picture
Learning model in dojo

Hi all

What is your model of passing knowledge to students? Do you focus more on advanced or on beginners?

How do you keep your black belts motivated and not bored?  My view about learning in article below.

https://shinaido.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/learning-model-at-shin-ai-do/

Kind regards 

Les

Marc
Marc's picture

Interesting article, Les. You point out an issue that is prevalent when dealing with groups of students who have different ranks from beginner to expert. How do you teach in a way that addresses everybody at their individual level at the same time?

You describe an approach of shared/distributed resonsibility of teaching students. How does this concept manifest in your regular training session?

Are higher ranking students (formally) required to be teaching lower ranking students (I understand you ment more than just helping each other)?

How is a standard of teaching quality, methods and skills maintained in your system?  

Les Bubka
Les Bubka's picture

Hi Marc

First thing I would like to apologise if I will be not very clear, my written English is not perfect and my wife who is normally editing my article does not have time to check all my forum posts. I will try to be clear as possible.

Marc wrote:

Interesting article, Les. You point out an issue that is prevalent when dealing with groups of students who have different ranks from beginner to expert. How do you teach in a way that addresses everybody at their individual level at the same time?

In uk I have mostly beginners at the moment so they are on the equal level, with few higher grades, I will try to explain the process on mawashi geri gedan,

Whole group does the same exercises but different grades have their objectives. For the beginner safety is first with basic a technical point that means they will focus on turning the supporting leg in order to protect the knee and try to use appropriate touching points in this case for us it will be shin not the foot. Also they will be trying to follow correct trajectory of the kick. Next stage for higher grade will be adding the plane of the kick and maximising the rotation. Meaning that they can test which one will work better, horizontal, upwards or downwards. Next step for the advanced will be adding the body drop while executing the kick which is giving more power. The entire group does one technique but different students do specific work and training.

Marc wrote:
You describe an approach of shared/distributed resonsibility of teaching students. How does this concept manifest in your regular training session?

Are higher ranking students (formally) required to be teaching lower ranking students (I understand you ment more than just helping each other)?

Helping out is not a requirement for the students, in my dojo I’m focused on one core value caring, so I care about others and help as much as I can, my behaviour is shaping the group and it filters the students. Attracting people who are caring and pushing away others, who do not share same values.

I think it is natural for one human to help other, my students do this naturally I don’t have to tell them. In our regular training more advanced students give pointers to the lower rank, I rotate people around so on every session everyone is training with everyone.

I’m not pushing people to become teachers not everyone is suited for this, but I try to explain that through teaching we have different perspective and we expand our knowledge.

Marc wrote:
How is a standard of teaching quality, methods and skills maintained in your system? 

In our organisation we have fixed seminars in my dojo we have 3 annual seminars with leading sensei in our organisation to have different views on how organisation is developing, we encourage people to go and experience other sports, arts and systems and if we like something we adopt it to our training. We run black belts clinics to keep our students and teachers busy giving them more knowledge. Most senior Sensei in our organisation are still attending seminars of all sorts, main thing is to keep learning with open mind. I guess we are tiny association so we can do that. Big thing for us is that we don’t allow students grade till lead instructor is not happy, for higher grades as black belt, student have to have approval of other sensei outside of the dojo to not be bias. I think it is working fine, as I don’t have to be ashamed of my students on seminars with others.

Hope that this is answering your questions, I hope that it all makes sense

Kind regards 

Les

Marc
Marc's picture

Les, thanks for your answer. It's an interesting topic.

Leszek.B wrote:

Marc wrote:

Interesting article, Les. You point out an issue that is prevalent when dealing with groups of students who have different ranks from beginner to expert. How do you teach in a way that addresses everybody at their individual level at the same time?

In uk I have mostly beginners at the moment so they are on the equal level, with few higher grades [...]

The entire group does one technique but different students do specific work and training.

Yes, that is a good way to do it: Everybody basically does the same thing and gets their individual hints and objectives depending on their skills.

Still, sometimes we need to spend some time on beginners with basic stuff that just doesn't offer anything new to advanced students (read: boring). Then we can either give more complicated tasks to the advanced students to work. Or, if we're lucky, we have another instructor in the room so we can split the group and tailor the training to each group.

Leszek.B wrote:

Marc wrote:
You describe an approach of shared/distributed resonsibility of teaching students. How does this concept manifest in your regular training session?

Are higher ranking students (formally) required to be teaching lower ranking students (I understand you ment more than just helping each other)?

Helping out is not a requirement for the students, in my dojo I’m focused on one core value caring, so I care about others and help as much as I can, my behaviour is shaping the group and it filters the students. Attracting people who are caring and pushing away others, who do not share same values.

Instructors creating this kind of caring environment is probably the reason why there are so many nice people to meet at karate events and so few of the other kind. Or to put it another way: The art choses its students.

Leszek.B wrote:

I think it is natural for one human to help other, my students do this naturally I don’t have to tell them. In our regular training more advanced students give pointers to the lower rank, I rotate people around so on every session everyone is training with everyone.

I observe and encourage the same and it works well.

Leszek.B wrote:

I’m not pushing people to become teachers not everyone is suited for this, but I try to explain that through teaching we have different perspective and we expand our knowledge.

Now this is the point that I'm curious about (as in I want to learn), because in your article you write:

There is another mechanism in place at our organisation that is different when compared to some others. A lot of western dojos have their Sensei focus most of their attention on beginners. This can lead to higher grades not learning anything new due to lack of support, which can result in them quitting.

For us, the highest graded students get the most attention and instruction to make sure that they are continuing to advance their knowledge.

It is not that the Kohai is left alone to blindly copy Sempais and Sensei, they do have some of their attention, but they mainly benefit from being facilitated by all of the higher grades.

In our club all of our students and teachers have responsibilities. The Sensei passes on knowledge and Sempais are absorbing and passing this knowledge on to the Kohais. With time and grade responsibility grows.

This seems to me like there is something more going on than just students helping each other while they're paired up during training. Which would be, as you said, something that people do naturally.

I'm very much intrigued by the method of spending more instruction time on the advanced students and how the knowledge trickles down the grades.  How is the knowledge passed on, and how does the idea that "with time and grade responsibility grows" manifest in day-to-day training sessions?

Does this also apply to teaching children?

Leszek.B wrote:

Marc wrote:
How is a standard of teaching quality, methods and skills maintained in your system? 

In our organisation we have fixed seminars in my dojo we have 3 annual seminars with leading sensei in our organisation to have different views on how organisation is developing, we encourage people to go and experience other sports, arts and systems and if we like something we adopt it to our training. We run black belts clinics to keep our students and teachers busy giving them more knowledge. Most senior Sensei in our organisation are still attending seminars of all sorts, main thing is to keep learning with open mind. I guess we are tiny association so we can do that. Big thing for us is that we don’t allow students grade till lead instructor is not happy, for higher grades as black belt, student have to have approval of other sensei outside of the dojo to not be bias. I think it is working fine, as I don’t have to be ashamed of my students on seminars with others.

Hope that this is answering your questions, I hope that it all makes sense

It does, and it does. :) Thanks for taking the time.

All the best,

Marc

Evening artist
Evening artist's picture

Hi Les,

I enjoyed your article. With regards to the club/Association I attend, we pretty much follow the models you have outlined already i.e Chief instructor passes information onto instructors, who feed that down to Students.

In terms of keeping motivated, I am encouraged by Peer to Peer learning, where groups of students get together to share what they have learnt. I think that this model is not without it's barriers, but I see more and more people are keen to feed off others (both from inside their own martial art and from others). The increase in the number of forums and social networks is making this a lot easier to facilitate and it's something that I would like to see develop.

Hope that helps,

Omar

Les Bubka
Les Bubka's picture

Hi Marc

Marc wrote:
Still, sometimes we need to spend some time on beginners with basic stuff that just doesn't offer anything new to advanced students (read: boring). Then we can either give more complicated tasks to the advanced students to work. Or, if we're lucky, we have another instructor in the room so we can split the group and tailor the training to each group.
Sure there is no way all of the trainings will be exciting.
Marc wrote:
This seems to me like there is something more going on than just students helping each other while they're paired up during training. Which would be, as you said, something that people do naturally.

I'm very much intrigued by the method of spending more instruction time on the advanced students and how the knowledge trickles down the grades.  How is the knowledge passed on, and how does the idea that "with time and grade responsibility grows" manifest in day-to-day training sessions? Does this also apply to teaching children?

I try to describe the process on very simplistic example Kihon, we have one row of students from white belt through green belt to Brown belt. I have to manage them all within certain time, I will give instruction to all.

White belt will get basic information how to perform let say tsuki. Their job will be to maintain the structure of the arm and trajectory, green belt will have same plus addition of use of the hips, and for the brown belt it will be addition of kime and trying to find his own most efficient way of punching for him/her. This is done to not over stimulate the white belt with too much information to process, as they get confused and not doing any of the points correctly, if we start from simple tasks they take them better in my opinion. Time is also shared between the students, but my focus is on the higher grades, for example I will correct white belt 3 times, green belt 5 times and brown belt 8 times. 

I noticed that new students want to have more time with me and this is driving them to try harder to be better, this kind of works like a motivation. If we work in pairs (most of my classes is focusing on working with the partner) then I shift people to make sure that the white belts train for some time with higher grades, this way they copy their technique plus higher grades give them tips how to do things better.

How it looks day to day?, I have no problem with people, it seems to be that the core group of students who have seen helping behaviour, and they are adopting it willingly, and then others copy it. It was the same when I started in my dojo I just copied behaviour of our senior grades.

I don’t teach kids at the moment as I don’t believe that I can teach karate to kids. For me teaching kids it is a play, so we focus on good time and games with basic elements of karate, but I would not call it Karate. 

Back in Poland I had a group of kids (karate & wrestling) and putting them in teams and making one of them a team leader for one session worked that they have been responsible. Getting higher grades they have been informed that they need to take care of the younger ones. But it is more difficult then with adults as they are just kids so you can expect anything.

I think that maybe Sensei Ryan Hayashi will describe t better as our model is nearly identical. https://youtu.be/-TiCY-SNpK4

Hi Evening Artist

Evening artist wrote:
I enjoyed your article. With regards to the club/Association I attend, we pretty much follow the models you have outlined already i.e Chief instructor passes information onto instructors, who feed that down to Students. In terms of keeping motivated, I am encouraged by Peer to Peer learning, where groups of students get together to share what they have learnt. I think that this model is not without it's barriers, but I see more and more people are keen to feed off others (both from inside their own martial art and from others). The increase in the number of forums and social networks is making this a lot easier to facilitate and it's something that I would like to see develop.

That’s great, I see the same change, now day’s clubs and associations are much more open, so there is no problem to meet the best people and learn from them. Not only Karate or martial arts but all kinds of sports, where we can fish for most useful training methods or solutions.

I hope that my post is not too confusing.

Kind regards Les