Getting Ready to Teach

There is a belief that earning a black belt automatically qualifies folks as teachers. If one has been trained to teach along the path to earning a black belt, then that may very well be.  Let’s take a closer look at successful strategies to build instructors and some classic examples to underscore their importance.

Technical excellence can help, but is not always so easily explained. One of my drill instructors in the Marine Corps was ranked #11 out of 250,000 Marines in marksmanship.  That put him in the top .004% of the Corps at that time. Was he a good shot? Oh, yes.  Could he explain how he did it? Not back then, and he openly admitted it. Hence, we had another instructor teach us marksmanship at Parris Island. Did my drill instructor eventually learn to teach marksmanship? Yes, and he went on to become a Scout Sniper Instructor at Quantico later in his career. Teaching had to be taught to him like anyone else.

There is a very commercially successful Taekwondo association with a standardized program to train future instructors. It requires 300 hours on the floor as an assistant instructor, and there are three proficiency exams at 100-hour intervals to test knowledge of content as well as the ability to deliver it effectively. With over 300,000 students worldwide, this organization has succeeded in delivering content consistently across continents over the last 50 years. Building successful instructors takes much more than time on the floor, paying money, and passing certification exams, though. Along the way, one must learn instructional strategies, identify learning styles, and deliver results through the evolution of successful students.

Teachers are here to help their students self-actualize. That means becoming the best human beings they can be.  If we want the martial arts to grow and stay relevant to the current threats our students face outside of the training hall, we’ve got to stretch and evolve as teachers. Traditions can be very positive. However, beware of training instructors only because “this is the way my instructor did it, and this is the way his/her teacher did it.  Therefore, you will learn it this way.” If you miss the chance to optimize content delivery, then everyone misses a key opportunity to grow together. History will repeat itself, and not necessarily in a good way.

Henry Knox learned to use cannon artillery by reading a book in the 18th century. He would later defeat professional, more experienced artillerymen from England during the American Revolution. There are classic strategies to be learned from Henry Knox and his adversaries from centuries past. Still, you won’t see armies lining up with muskets and facing off in the open with brightly colored uniforms on today’s battlefields. Teaching our future instructors the key lessons of the past can safeguard their students in the future. We must help them keep the proper context as they go through. 

So, train our future teachers in many methods of how to teach and why they work. When we build better leaders, they can build better students. If we don’t, then the martial arts may stagnate or regress into irrelevance, and none of us wants that future.