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Old 03-03-2005, 05:04 AM   #10
Dazzler
Dojo: Bristol North Aikido Dojo
Location: Bristol
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 659
England
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Re: multiple teachers in one dojo

We try and be democratic and do whats best for the dojo....but with a voting system everyone has to reach the legal age to do so making them all equal.

I don't believe this is the case when you have one instructor that has been teaching for say 35 years and another for 3 months. Our instructors range from 8th dan to 1st dan...with a 4th dan, 2 3rd dans and a couple on nidans thrown in plus some shodans. I believe like others here that there should be a single chairing authority.

Sometimes we disagree...we try and encourage a perfect world, but we are not all the same and we have some fairly wide chasms between what we see as the way to teach Aikido through this panel of instructors.

We try and utilise the range in backgrounds to the advantage of the students so they get more than 1 persons opinion of aikido and thus can make their own informed choices. We swap classes after every couple of gradings to help this...and no-one owns 'their' students - they are students of the club.

Not everyone fully embraces this concept!

anyway - we all have our say but the final major decision making making falls to the head of our club.

It can take quite a bit of managing - we have instructors that have just trained in our style and others that have spent many years elsewhere. Sometimes the external influences are beneficial. Often they are out of context and hinder our structured approach to student development.

Last week I attended a class where the instructor directly contradicted the standard dojo approach...It happens and takes a bit of dealing with. I mentioned it...but didn't get it resolved.

I'll try again.

We are having a club grading this weekend...It will be interesting to see how the various groups of students reflect the backgrounds of their different instructors...will there be any big issues to deal with?

who knows?

just my ramblings...

D
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