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Old 04-05-2013, 02:26 PM   #3
graham christian
Dojo: golden center aikido-highgate
Location: london
Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 2,697
England
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Re: Responsibility in Learning

Thanks Todd.
I found this personally very rewarding and helpful on my path of teaching. So I encouraged the view especially of teacher and student and that you are both in my students and it led to much more responsibility on their part. So I encouraged communication between them when they get stuck to work through things and help each other.

Then when they are really stuck and looking over to me for help then I go to them knowing they have been trying their best as students and then sharing their opinions and trying to teach, usually the one without the problem then tries to teach the other and the other then puts in the discipline but to no avail.

Now the difference is I approach from a supervisor angle. Thus a prime place to come from is calmness. This means I listen and oversee what they are doing and observe how they are doing it and basically agree with them how the result isn't good. Then enter the field of correction. Point out the principle which is missing or body positioning or geometric dimention etc. and that's all part of supervision. Then if I actually take over and run through things personally taking them as uke to show them then I am back to teaching.

Teacher alone may the the qualities of 'just do it' attitude and just follow the rules and discipline and straightforward face and do whilst supervisor has the qualities of extreme patience and calmness yet at the same time alert to all that is not optimum and ready to step in when correction is needed.

Thus I find all three work together and depend on each other so to speak.

We do the same when we learn anything even baking a cake. We may study and teach ourselves via a recipe book and practice making a cake but always we have the supervisor looking at the result telling us if that's good enough or not.

Peace.G.
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