The trouble with instructors...

[masterphoenix]

In our Karate school we have 5 independent classes every week. (Classes where the head instructor does not attend)

Well, we have caught a senior instructor with his hand in the til, it's really concerning and it's impossible to know how long he has been stealing or even how much over the years.

We have several options.

We can keep him on and pretend nothing's wrong...

We can try to find someone to go to each of his classes and do his books..

We can fire him outright...

We can give his class to someone else...

As you can imagine there are problems with each option.

He has quite a loyal following, I'm not sure how many students we would lose if we fired him (if any) but I do know our members would whinge a lot if he was forced to leave.

He also has a daughter and son who instructs - I guess we'd lose them all if we kicked him out... They do all teach the same class where the theft has occurred so perhaps it's better to fire them all...

Has anyone else had to face this problem?

Love to hear any points of view.

Thanks.

I know it's an old thread, but I wanted to chip in, just in case anyone else with similar trouble reads this. A few points here:

1. Criminal prosecution requires some proof, and the burden of that proof is legally on the accuser, in the US, anyway. You cannot prosecute what you have observed but cannot prove. This is why businesses are forced to find other reasons to let people go all the time. As I read this, it doesn't sound to me like you had proof that he was stealing or could trace anything to him, but rather that something was seen - one person's word against another's, no matter how true it was.

2. To suggest that a person with a family should automatically be prosecuted seems a little premature to me, until we know the amounts of money missing and some reasonable idea of what kind of family they are. Even good people can sometimes fall prey to temptation or find themselves under such dire circumstances that they consider taking what is not theirs.

I went through this same situation with an instructor I was mentoring. I did certain things to help his school financially (I probably spent at least $1,000 myself on helping him get off his feet inside 2 years), but I received no profits and no reimbursement. He was in a bad personal situation with his finances (although one of his own making), and I was trying to help him see how to use his martial art talent to make a living. I would go over to his school and help with seminars, testings, etc. He lived about 75 miles from me, so my contact with his operations was once ever month or every few months, and I only saw the content of class, which was good. His students seemed to like him.

He was not only a student, but also a childhood friend, and I loved him dearly. One night I received a phone call from his main assistant who was choked up and told me that after hearing me talk at their class about what it meant to be a black belt, he wanted to quit, because he knew his instructor was none of that. Shocked, I asked him what he meant, and he explained to me that equipment money and other monies were being abused.

Some of the assistant's friends had joined and ordered gear, but never received their order. After 2 months of excuses, they quit. He was ripping the students off on equipment and other things and then telling them everything was backordered. After seeing this for years, his assistant called the company anonymously and asked if they had these items in stock, and of course, they did. Nothing was backordered.

I found out that he had lost many students over this practice, and practices like it. The last belt test contained a bunch of people who weren't ready. I wasn't invited to this test, but happened to be in that town anyway and found out there was one, so I stopped in to watch. The students did terrible, and no one was ready. The instructor told me with disgust that he intended to fail everyone. I advised him that with such a flop, it was obvious that he had called a test too early. Turns out he did it to justify all these students prepaying for tests. The call from the assistant came that night after that belt test when I had returned to my home.

In the end, he had ripped off all but two of his thirty or so students with equipment they never received or something else, while using my name and endorsements. After these things, what I found was an instructor who was liked by his students, and overall doing a fair job, but who had cheated almost everyone there over long periods of time.

The assistant called the students and told them that we would be forming a new class in their town without the old instructor, as it was no longer possible for him to continue being affiliated with us. Here's the twist: Every student who wanted to stay in martial arts came to the new location, and even though I was higher ranked and had been teaching much longer, almost all of them quit over a period of 3 months with us and the class folded.

I sent the old instructor an email, telling him what had taken place, and what I had found. I told him this had nothing to do with our friendship, and I did this with full knowledge that he might hate me, but I had to do the right thing. I explained to him that wanting more and wanting it fast, even at the expense of doing things the right way was not fitting of an instructor. I told him I was sorry for the loss of his extra income, but that he had brought it on himself. I promised that I would not go into great detail with people, but I would lie to them either. Since he had cheated almost everyone, and I needed to make it right, I think everyone was generally aware what was going on. It must have been a a very painful time for him. I know losing my friend and my hopes for him as an instructor was very painful to me. I always hoped it would motivate him to change.

I think there are a few things to note here.

1. The instructor was a person who exhibited human weaknesses, not a bad person. In losing his students, he lost the supplemental income he had generated, and he was no longer endorsed by me, which meant that he lost his rank, although we did not go into detail with the students about the nature of the disconnection. I reordered everything the students were missing out of my own pocket and used their lesson fees to pay me back. Even though I was never really compensated for my time that way, I made it as right as I could.

2. Students do become attached to senior students and assistants. When you lose a teacher or helper who has become a fixture, it is almost a guarantee that you are going to lose the students who were attached to that person. Unless someone is hurting students, or has become hated by the entire school (in which case you would have already gotten rid of them), there is a percentage of that student population who clicks with and looks up to that teacher. This means that you are likely to lose more than just that family. We lost about 25 good students because they didn't like my class as much. They were used to a more laid back, relaxed and lower intensity workout. I mistakenly assumed that because I was more experienced and qualified, we could save them all. I was wrong. We lost them all, even with me and the old assistant combined on the effort. (I know this was a long time ago, so it would be interesting to hear how it all played out in retrospect.)

There's a lot to be considered when something like this happens, but I don't think losing your compassion toward anyone is the answer. If this is a good person fallen on hard circumstances, calling them in one on one and telling them what you've seen and explaining how it affects everyone may be a better solution, if you can rethink your money exchange system to where this instructor collects no money. A locked dropbox in the school, or students mailing payments directly to the head instructor's home would stop all of that.

I know this is not a perfect solution, but there isn't one. Martial arts has hopefully not taught us to condemn and discard human beings who can be rehabilitated, but that would depend on what you know of the person, and difficult for anyone here to say, really. It may be that legal charges are necessary in some cases that can be supported in court, and in others, more time, energy and hassle than it is worth, or uncalled for, based on the circumstances. In my case, I recalled one other incident many years prior of another instructor's money being slightly mishandled (but paid back) and this person's excuse was "the baby needed diapers." Of course, I had all the usual talks and reprimands, but the desire to get things the wrong way was always still in him, I guess.

If you're still around, let me know how this worked out. In my case, I did lose my childhood friend, and after receiving my email, and even after all my help and my own money infused into his school, my friend went to his assistant's house and said it was being funneled through me, and I was basically the problem. I didn't realize he was this bad off mentally until that spin story, and trying to make me look bad. Even after he'd been caught he was still trying to make other people responsible for his circumstances and choices.

Sorry for the long post on an antiquated topic. I just thought I'd share my experience in case anyone else faced this. Unfortunately, it's a topic that won't go away totally as long as money is changing hands.