Friday, September 25, 2009

On the road to teaching...

Earlier this autumnal week (which by the way I'm not happy about - as a friend put it, "I want a refund on summer 2009") I had the good fortune to assist buddy Bri-guy with teaching a CSSD SC class. It was a small class consisting of 4 people: 2 students, one certified instructor and one other guy - other guy being me. Since I don't have the certification, I'm not going to be billing myself as qualified to teach a class.

That isn't to say I'm not capable, in fact, I consider myself pretty handy with an edged tool these days, and while I might not be getting any prettier as I age, I seem to be getting smarter. I like to think I brought some value to the session, and I'm a pretty fair sparring partner. Bri-guy's teaching also helped me to see something very basic about myself that I will need to keep squarely in check when I begin teaching someday.

In this class we covered 1-4-12 of modular and the first two gunting entries. In my head, I was thinking "Why aren't we moving to 2-3-12? Or 1-2-2? Why no mention of decision points and switch points?"

Right? I'm sure we're all thinking the same thing.

I'll tell you what though - after some 4 years of study and practice it wasn't even until this past February when Master Bram Frank personally rag-dolled me around the lower east side that I really internalized a lot of this.

I tend to want to teach everything all at once. I have to remember not to do that. It's a simple, effective system, but if you dump anything on anyone all at once, don't expect them to remember much of it.

Oh and I got my certificates in Basic pistol from the NJFA the other day. So in addition to the patch, I now I have paper and knowledge... and you know what they say about knowledge.

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