Managing the Class

My Sensei did not come to the Dojo yesterday. She had gone to Tehran for a seminar on refereeing. Our 'Sempai' was a 9 year old black belt and quite incapable of managing the class, so it was up to me and my friend (who is a brown belt and 23 years old) to do so. We had 7 orange belts, 2 purple belts, one brown belt and two black belts. The brown and black belts didn't need much supervision, the purple belts were easy to handle because there were only two of them, but it was a really tough job managing the orange lot. One of them was a five year old who knew hardly anything. He's in the class only because of his older sister (the 9 year old black belt I mentioned before). Three of them already knew the kata Heian Yondan. One of them had learnt Sandan quite recently and another was trying to learn it through copying others. After about ten minutes I started pulling out my hair! For the first time, I fully appreciated how difficult a Sensei's job is. Right now I respect all MA instructors more than ever.