Rateh

Ive found that constant feedback to the students and parents as to what the child needs to work on can help. Once a month i take each kid aside and ask them to show me all of their techniques required for their next rank, and mark their progress. Then i decide off of there who is going to test and who isnt. I am always willing to tell any student who is not testing, what it is that they need to work on, before they can test. The parents like to see that you are paying specific attention to their child, and they are given clear reasons for the students nontesting status, as well as what the child needs to improve on to be able to test next time. In summing up, ive found that giving honest feed back, and letting the parents know what exactly is holding the child back, and what can be done to improve that, helps the parents to understand your decision.

I teach beginner and intermediate kids. Beginner classes are 30 mins and Intermediate are 45 mins. Generally, i have some idea beforehand what im going to focus on for class. I tend to spend about 10-15 mins with warmups, followed by the main lesson, and end with about 5 mins of a game. As a rule, all students must stretch out before class starts. Occasionally i will teach them stretches as their main lesson in the beginner class, and i usually ask the more experianced students to help the newer ones. However, i always teach the new student some main stretches first... As far as "winging it", ive been teaching for 4 years and i wing it 99% of the time. At first i used to have a structured plan, but i found that once i got in front of the class, the plan was never followed, as i taught more with the flow of the students. As far as i know, none of the instructors at my school uses a lesson plan. I like it that way, i think it makes the class more flexible to the particular students needs. On another note...I also teach the 3-6 year old class With them i prefer to constantly change up whats going on, and never spend more then 5 mins doing any specific thing. However, as they get more and more acustomed to the dojo environment, ive found that i can teach their lessons with the same structure as the older students.