Thoughts on teaching

I’ve done a lot of teaching and training over the years, working with different types of students, from children to adults, from military personnel to civilians, from the average person to the specialist in a particular field of interest. Sometimes whether a student passed or failed depended on learning the topic at hand. At other times they were there for the sheer enjoyment of learning something new. Even though it’s all teaching, I’ve had to wear a lot of different hats and employ a myriad of teaching styles depending on the audience.

One of the things I’ve noticed about my teaching is that for the most part I employ a transparent teaching style. I didn’t realize I was doing this, nor did I know it had a name, but after coming across some information on the topic of transparent teaching, I discovered I was already doing a lot of it.

I believe there’s a benefit to telling students why I’m teaching a certain topic and why I teach the way I do. I do my best to explain the process of my teaching. In essence my goal is to not only build a framework for my students, but also make that framework clear and visible to the students so they know what they're doing and why they're doing it.

Outside of my five regular Jiu-Jitsu classes each week, my next most regular gig is teaching police recruits. Along with my normal duties on the street, I teach a handful of classes in the recruit academy, defensive tactics being one of them. A couple of weeks ago we conducted a defensive tactics course, and today I worked with them on ground fighting.

It’s always interesting to instruct this type of student. It would be hard to ask them to be passionate about every aspect of the training. Sometimes a particular subject is just a means to an end. In some respects these students are prisoners in the classroom, but they make the best of it and are generally all easy to work with. Having said that, I would have to say that every ground fighting class I’ve done has been well received and all the participants seemed to enjoy it. This class was no exception.

One of the huge differences in teaching this type of class to officers, rather than your average Jiu-Jitsu student, is that their life may literally depend on it. The class is more centered on positional dominance and control rather than about how to armbar a perp. That might look kind of odd on the evening news.

The necessity to transmit a lot of information in a short period of time makes it all the more important to approach these types of settings with transparent teaching, with the mindset of train the trainer. Rather than thinking of students merely as receivers of information, it’s important to think of them as partners. Give them ownership to the subject matter and this in turn empowers them to take a more proactive role in their learning.