reletionship between instructor and student

[jthomas1600]

OK, so I know a few here are instructors and many are long time martial arts practitioners. Is it common for instructors and students to be friends outside of the dojang? Do most instructors feel there needs to be a degree of separation?

 

[Gorilla]

I think that you need to have separation! When you become friends it adds emotion to situations. The professional distance needs to be maintained! A lesson that I have had to learn over the years.

 

[dancingalone]

I do not teach friends and have turned down requests from a few to join my dojo. For the usual reasons... A teacher occasionally needs to be tough with his students and friendship can get in the way of that.

For the same reasons I generally do not socialize with my kyu/gup students outside of dojo/dojang occasions. I do have a trusted black belt student who has trained with me for over ten years and we do have dinner at each other's home from time to time. He's an exception however since he had advanced to a level of skill close enough to me to where I no longer feel the need to use all the tools at my disposal as a teacher to make him better... he has largely become self-correcting at this point.

That said I am being somewhat hypocritical myself. I met my wife when I enrolled at an aikido school as a complete beginner. She was a senior brown belt who took her shodan shortly after I began and she definitely spent a lot of time in class helping me. If she had held to the same rule I do today, we would not be married.

 

[Omar B]

My first Sensei and I still have a great relationship all these years later, growing up I had a lot of admiration for him. I went to class after school 3 evenings a week and his dojo was literally on the same street as my mother's house so I was there all weekend non stop.

My second Sensei and I were not that close, truth be told I couldn't even tell you his first name. His two sons and I were really close though (even though one of them led to my broken knee, but kids will be kids). We hung out all the time, on Saturday between classes we would go to the strip mall and get lunch, after second class we would go get more food, after evening class we would go to the comic shop. Hell, they used to have some raging parties at the dojo on Saturday nights.

 

[bribrius]

i think there could be something awkward or even wrong, about sleeping with your students but suppose if you are not elevating there rank based on what happens in the bedroom you are still maintaining some order.

 

[WC_lun]

I'm friends with my instructor and have been friends with students of mine. I do tend to keep new students at an arms length. I also am a firm believer in an instructor not using the position to get things from students other than tuition, for example money or sexual favors.

 

[StudentCarl]

Speaking as someone who has taught professionally for 25 years, it is not appropriate. The perception of your integrity is the foundation of everything you do. If there is a perception that you are biased, it will erode the climate of your school and will affect your retention/recruitment. The danger of fraternizing, even innocently, is that you cannot control other people's perceptions or the rumor mill.

I do think there's room for an exception with a very senior student, as the relationship is perceived as collegial, or master and apprentice.

Carl

 

[Tez3]

It sounds all very well if you are teaching professionally to students who train with you for hours every day. Most instructors don't, they only teach the students for a couple of hours a week so while it sounds admirable all this detachment etc, the students are doing it as a hobby so being friends outside the dojo is fine. It has to be real, we aren't in ancient Japan/Korea/China where 'grasshopper' is the norm, it's a sport for most and like all other sports the coaches and 'students' can be mates.

It's good being highed minded about this but it can come across as sounding snobbish. We are teaching a sport, we're not religious gurus. We teach people to fight/defend themselves not how to live their lives.

 

[Carol]

It sounds all very well if you are teaching professionally to students who train with you for hours every day. Most instructors don't, they only teach the students for a couple of hours a week so while it sounds admirable all this detachment etc, the students are doing it as a hobby so being friends outside the dojo is fine. It has to be real, we aren't in ancient Japan/Korea/China where 'grasshopper' is the norm, it's a sport for most and like all other sports the coaches and 'students' can be mates.

It's good being highed minded about this but it can come across as sounding snobbish. We are teaching a sport, we're not religious gurus. We teach people to fight/defend themselves not how to live their lives.

Yes, but teaching a sport can also be very big business. There are TKD schools in the US that gross over $1,000,000 per year in revenue.

The bigger the business, the greater importance of distance. A savvy business person knows how to preserve their profit centers, which, clinically, is what the students are.

 

[chrispillertkd]

OK, so I know a few here are instructors and many are long time martial arts practitioners. Is it common for instructors and students to be friends outside of the dojang? Do most instructors feel there needs to be a degree of separation?

The relationship I have with my instructors is friendly. But we're not friends, really, not in the same way as I am friends with people I've known since high school or college or who I work with. Which isn't to say I don't respect them or that they don't respect me. I have trained with them for almost 25 years. I view them closer to how I view my own parents than how I view my friends.

If you read the things Gen. Choi wrote about the relationship between a teacher and his students you can see that it's based on a fairly familiar model (which isn't surprising given the Neo-Confucian influence on Korean culture). The same can be said about my experience in Praying Mantis. In Kung-Fu your relation to the teacher, as well as to the other students, are more than implicitly modelled on familiar relationships ("Sifu" is a term related to "father," after all). These things don't mean you can't, or shouldn't, have a close relationship with you instructor. Quite the opposite, I'd argue. But the type of relationship isn't the same as you'd have with a "pal."

Martial arts inherently have a link to self betterment (I'll avoid the term "self improvement" because it has too many Dr. Phil/Oprah-ian connotations for me). Part of your instructor's job is to model behavior they expect to see in their students and to foster such behavior in them. This doesn't mean they're latter day monks or speak entirely in fortunate cookie aphorisms. It means they are travelling the same Do, the same way, as you and they happen to be some distance further down the path (this can be a substantial distance or a shorter distance depending on the length of study of the student in question, as well as the personal development of the instructor in question). Part of their role is to periodically check to see how you're progressing on the way and offer direction when needed.

A certain amount of distance (or perhaps "space" would be a better term) is helpful in the student-instructor relationship so that this role can be better performed and this advice given in a manner in which it is more likely to be accepted.

Pax,

Chris

 

[Tez3]

Yes, but teaching a sport can also be very big business. There are TKD schools in the US that gross over $1,000,000 per year in revenue.

The bigger the business, the greater importance of distance. A savvy business person knows how to preserve their profit centers, which, clinically, is what the students are.

I think I must be going wrong somewhere! I'll have to look at this especially as I may be made redundant after the upcoming Strategic Defence Review!

Everyone I know who does martial arts does it as a hobby, a serious one but still a hobby done with a class of like minded people so yes most classes are people who are mates outside. Even the couple of people I know who do martial arts for a living are mates!

We don't teach martial arts for self betterment or for any other reason other than teaching people to fight/defend themselves. what they get out of it is what they put in, we encourage good sportsmanship and self discipline. Any spiritual issues are up to the students themselves, nothing to do with us.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

By 'relationship', I presume you mean 'friends' and not something else.

In my dojo, we're very much a 'family' type atmosphere. Nobody is forced to be pals outside of the dojo, and of course no one is ostracized if they don't socialize with each other outside the dojo, but many of us choose to get together or hang out. My wife and I are having a house-warming party on Sunday and we invited the dojo - they're more-or-less the only people we know here in Michigan anyway.

I was invited to a wedding up north in MI for a dojo-mate and attended with my wife; my sensei was there also.

I see nothing wrong with this; it seems perfectly natural and normal. These are my friends; I like them all very much.

 

[Tez3]

By 'relationship', I presume you mean 'friends' and not something else.

In my dojo, we're very much a 'family' type atmosphere. Nobody is forced to be pals outside of the dojo, and of course no one is ostracized if they don't socialize with each other outside the dojo, but many of us choose to get together or hang out. My wife and I are having a house-warming party on Sunday and we invited the dojo - they're more-or-less the only people we know here in Michigan anyway.

I was invited to a wedding up north in MI for a dojo-mate and attended with my wife; my sensei was there also.

I see nothing wrong with this; it seems perfectly natural and normal. These are my friends; I like them all very much.[/quote]


There's a large thread on the 'something else' on the Women in Martial arts section.

This is how we all are, it's just a natural thing.

 

[DMcHenry]

I'm friends with my students (which are very few). I don't know if I'd enjoy teaching so much if I weren't. I care about them, and believe they care about me. In fact this weekend one of my students has invited me & my wife to spend the weekend with him and his wife at his get-away place. We plan on doing a bit of training there too since we missed class last night.

I love having my students as friends.

 

[Cirdan]

OK, so I know a few here are instructors and many are long time martial arts practitioners. Is it common for instructors and students to be friends outside of the dojang? Do most instructors feel there needs to be a degree of separation?

It is very common. Relationships happen too, but they are often keep discreete.

 

[Fat Cat]

I have found that some instructors who try to be friends are too busy being friends to be instructors.
Its really important that a line can be drawn in the sand, and where (in the case of most) such a line can not be drawn, then it's better friendship be avoided. Friendship, afterall, is not the reason the student came to the instructor for.

 

[Tez3]

I have found that some instructors who try to be friends are too busy being friends to be instructors.
Its really important that a line can be drawn in the sand, and where (in the case of most) such a line can not be drawn, then it's better friendship be avoided. Friendship, afterall, is not the reason the student came to the instructor for.

You don't 'try' to become friends, you are or you aren't. Most people who instruct as well as train are not one dimensional. It's perfectly possible to be friend, instructor,boss, employer, employee, relative whatever and train together as instructor and students. In the dojo one leaves one's ego and in our case rank outside the door. We are martial artists when training, outside we are normal ( well relatively lol) people.

There is no line in the sand, that's over dramatic, there is commonsense which does the job nicely.

 

[Gemini]

While I'm friendly with my students, I'm not friends with them.

Anytime you have two types of relationships with a single individual, those relationships are going to bleed over from one to the other. It's human nature. Being friends with your students is the same as being friends with your direct reports (work term). Almost always, it's going to alter the definition of the relashonship from its primary purpose, which usually degrades both instead of enhancing either. Very few people can really do it successfully. Sometimes it leads to good things, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.

People need to see you as a role model, not a peer.

 

[jthomas1600]

Thanks for all the good insight. I guess I should have clarified I just meant friends. In my 30's I took BJJ for a few years and we were a really tight group from the top to the bottom both in and out of the gym. It just seems the more traditional (maybe I mean Asian) martial arts approach this differently so I was curious as to what ya'll thought.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

As a side note;

When I was a boy, my dad used to host card games at the house on weekends, and all his work buddies would come over and smoke cigars, drink beer, and play cards. I don't really know more than a couple of my coworkers well, and only one of them well enough to invite over to my house.

When I worked in South Korea, I noticed that when work was done for the day, all the workers in the group met up for drinks and dinner afterward. Not all of them, not all the time, but often enough that there was always a group of a few going somewhere to do something. I was told it is very common.

Now, on the downside...

Also when I worked in South Korea, I noted that the engineers were nearly all men. The one woman I knew who worked in the department said that it was just the way it was - all the women she went to college with were now working janitorial jobs; she had to fight to be accepted into an engineering position and people still didn't know how to treat her exactly. When we went out to eat as a group, often one of the men would bring along his girlfriend or wife and she would cook for us at the restaurant table (each table had a small grill at it). The men did not generally cook for themselves ever. So some good, some bad.