This is going to be a tough post. To be perfectly honest, it sounds like you've been put into a position that you're not yet ready for. It sounds like you're taking it seriously, and you want to do the best by your students, but it also sounds like you haven't been properly prepared to do that, and don't have the proper support system to perform this role right now.
There's nothing wrong with spending time working on basics. Sometimes it's about fun, sometimes about reps, sometimes about details, sometimes about strategy. My Cardio kickboxing coach would often do a routine on Mondays that is: 100 jabs right side, 100 jabs left side, 50 kicks right side, 50 kicks left side, 100 cross-hook combos right side, 100 cross-hook combos left side, 50 switch kicks right side, 50 switch kicks left side...and so on. These classes were bland, but far from useless, and far from a waste of time.
If you run a class where you just run through the curriculum, that's still a good class. It gets folks ready for testing. It allows them to get reps and feedback.
If I'm wrong about what you mean by bland and useless, please correct me. If you're getting people to learn and sweat, then you're doing a good job.
I thought I should put these two parts together, because they're asking similar questions. You should teach what you've been trained in, and not just ideas from the internet. What concepts do you know that your students don't? What is in the curriculum at your level, and what do they struggle with in that curriculum? For example, if your curriculum has a combo with a spinning hook kick and folks struggle with that, then focus on drills that help with the spinning hook kick.
As for self-defense, KKW/WT don't really specify a required self-defense curriculum. You could do no self-defense and be fine. You could include everything from Hapkido and be fine. Or even include other ideas. For example, when I open my own school, whether or not I go with Kukkiwon, there will be a lot of groundfighting from my BJJ experience. If you know a lot of the Hapkido stuff, you can include it. If you don't know any self-defense, I wouldn't teach it until you learn it (and learn it from someone other than random advice on a martial arts forum).
Different schools do it different.
- When I was a kid, we had tape stripes that we tested for, and then belts that we tested for. Typically the stripes were earned with Exercises (what we called mini-forms) and belts were earned with full Forms.
- The school I attended as an adult did not have tape stripes. Some belts were striped, but they were mainly there to extend the duration of that belt.
- The school I recently attended had tape stripes, which were earned for knowing different things, and each color meant something different. I don't remember exactly, but it was something like yellow = form, green = kick or sparring, red = self-defense, black = time-in-grade requirement met, etc. (I didn't like the way he did this, because if you got the yellow stripe, you didn't do your form anymore until testing day).
- My BJJ school gives you a stripe primarily based on mat hours, but also on the Professor's opinion. He uses kicksite to keep track of how many mat hours people have. The application is programmed with the requirements for each belt. For example, last time I logged in, it said I was at 51/65 hours towards my next stripe. When I hit 65/65, he will start to assess me and see if I'm ready. Sometimes I get a stripe right away. I was at 150/65 for my first stripe on blue belt.
The BJJ one is actually the one I may recommend. If you keep attendance (especially electronically) you can more easily keep track of who is ready for a stripe.
This isn't your school, so you should really find out the standards from whoever is in charge. If you are in charge, then you should use a standard that's easy to manage.
Personally, I don't plan on doing stripes when I open my school. If I do, it will be only for a specific group of people: the toddler's beginner class. That class is likely to need more reinforcement, and to take longer to progress through the curriculum. Stripes are just a lot of overhead that I would rather spend on teaching.
If I were to do stripes, it would either be:
- Partial completion of a form. For example, the first 5 steps of Taegeuk 1 = 1st stripe, the next 5 steps = 2nd stripe, and the rest of the form = 3rd stripe.
- Stripes for traits and curriculum items. For example: 1st stripe for good attitude, 2nd stripe for the basic techniques, 3rd stripe for knowing the form.
I love how detailed this reply is, all of this is very valuable information. I
really appreciate the time and effort you put into it.
To be perfectly honest, it sounds like you've been put into a position that you're not yet ready for. It sounds like you're taking it seriously, and you want to do the best by your students, but it also sounds like you haven't been properly prepared to do that, and don't have the proper support system to perform this role right now.
You are pretty spot on.
If I'm wrong about what you mean by bland and useless, please correct me. If you're getting people to learn and sweat, then you're doing a good job.
You are correct in how you interpreted "bland and useless" at the time I wrote it. However, in reading my original post back, I don't think that it is entirely accurate. Especially after your "conditional encouragement" if that makes sense. There are definitely a few classes where I don't think I've actually taught anything nor did enough in class to sweat. The kids class is easier to come up with things to do, though I still face the same challenges I have mentioned before from time to time, It's the adult class that I have issues with the most. In this class I have people with injuries, a person who is old, and people who I'm not sure if their "excuse" is valid or if they are just being flat out lazy. I try to stay encouraging and uplifting as possible but sometimes they just either don't listen or they actually physically can't do what I am telling them to do, which is ok, being physically unable I mean, I just don't know how to navigate that either. Thankfully, the ones who are injured are advanced enough belts to be able to figure out what works for them and how to modify the drill into something they can do, but there are times where they still look to me for guidance and often times I don't know how to help them. The other issue in the adult class is that most of them are around my age, and with that being the case as well being someone who doesn't want to "rule with an iron fist," It's hard to be a leader when I am a peer to most of them.
I was not expecting this to be a whole other paragraph of issues. All that being said however, there have been a lot of classes, especially that last few weeks and including today, where it was both very educational and a good work out. That trend usually dies down though and I go back into a rut of having the same class, basically, over and over again. I guess maybe "bland" isn't the correct word in hindsight, maybe "boring" because of how repetitive the class are.
it usually goes something like this:
1. Stretch
2. Warm up
3. Deeper stretches
4. Forms
5. Kicking drills on free standing bags (that may or may not use the same 2 or 3 kicks) (This is also where the injured and old struggle)
6. More Forms (If there is time left)
7. Cool down stretches (if there is an extra 5 minutes to "waste")
8. Bow out of class
The general feedback that I get from both classes is that it gets too repetitive. Although reading this part of the reply has given me some relief that maybe its not
as bad as I thought it was. I am also an overthinker and can be pretty self-critical especially when other people are not only involved but directly affected by what I am doing.
I thought I should put these two parts together, because they're asking similar questions. You should teach what you've been trained in, and not just ideas from the internet. What concepts do you know that your students don't? What is in the curriculum at your level, and what do they struggle with in that curriculum? For example, if your curriculum has a combo with a spinning hook kick and folks struggle with that, then focus on drills that help with the spinning hook kick.
Up to this point this is what I have been trying to do, and they are the ones that I am proud of when I reflect back on it. I can come up with some things on my own, however it is usually built off of something I have seen or done before. Not always, but usually. I try to remember drills we did at my old school and I don't remember most of them because even at first degree I never thought would nor did I want to be a teacher, now that I am here I can appreciate it, however at the time it wasn't something I even considered, and because of that I was not really paying attention to the drills we were doing. For this reason, I was doing research to try and expand my own knowledge for myself to still learn new things, as well as learning new things to teach. A lot of the advanced belts (in the adult class) have always had a lot more knowledge than their rank would suggest throughout their journey because they looked for things online. They would jump ahead in forms, sometimes for competitions, and sometimes because they just got bored of their form and wanted to learn a new one before they got to that level. So in order to keep teaching them new things I would look up other drills, different kicks, and combo kicks that I would break down and teach. At his point I don't know what they don't know. I also don't know how many more variations of the same things I can come up with on my own. Hence why I am reaching out for help. Not necessarily for exact lesson plans, but for some things for me to play with and build off of.
As for self-defense, KKW/WT don't really specify a required self-defense curriculum. You could do no self-defense and be fine. You could include everything from Hapkido and be fine. Or even include other ideas. For example, when I open my own school, whether or not I go with Kukkiwon, there will be a lot of groundfighting from my BJJ experience. If you know a lot of the Hapkido stuff, you can include it. If you don't know any self-defense, I wouldn't teach it until you learn it (and learn it from someone other than random advice on a martial arts forum).
Introducing some Hapkido has crossed my mind, but what I want to do is to learn how to specifically use TKD for self defense, then later if they want to join Hapkido they can learn Hapkido there. I know in TKD there are open hand strikes specifically to be able to grab easier, but I also here a lot of "TKD can't be used for self defense," and if that is true fine, but I also see a lot people saying how it is actually useful. Obviously it would be better to have more than just one practice for self defense, learning how to box and grapple are very useful and probably more useful than kicking is, but the practical tools that TKD has to offer is something I am interested even though it isn't required.
The BJJ one is actually the one I may recommend. If you keep attendance (especially electronically) you can more easily keep track of who is ready for a stripe.
I have considered something similar to that, but it was asking if the person who owns the school now (one of my old instructors, I explained this further in post #4) If they are able to see when everyone got their belt and send or share the document with me and then, somehow, from there, track around when each student should be ready for a stripe. But counting classes might be better. Thank you for this, I will bring it up as an Idea to the other instructor and the owner.
This isn't your school, so you should really find out the standards from whoever is in charge. If you are in charge, then you should use a standard that's easy to manage.
My master instructor, who used to own the school, didn't really have a set standard. As the instructors we have a lot of freedom in what and how we do things so really, I could do it however I want and no one would be upset unless they see something with the student that makes them think the stripe is unwarranted. However under new management, I would like to have a standard we are all on the same page with. The instructors now have a bigger say in how we want the school to be ran so long as it doesn't stray away from what it stands for. So I will probably review this as well as any other ideas that come through, get my thoughts together on it, and then bring the idea(s) up to them and see if its something we all want to standardize.
Thank you again, skribs, for this well thought out and, I'm sure, time consuming response. You've given me a lot to think about and I'm sure I could probably add a lot more to this already lengthy reply back, and there are probably some areas where I didn't put my thoughts into words very well. But in any case, I do really appreciate this a lot.
