Obviously, I won't always have time to cover all of that in every class. The two elements of the above outline that take the most time to practice are forms and sparring. So, I usually break forms down into segments and work on them one segment at a time, and I hold sparring practice in a separate class when possible.
This serves to make class run faster, plus I get to focus more on teaching sparring techniques and tactics to my students. Now, if you teach jiu-jitsu, obviously your outline is going to look a little different, and you're going to roll in every class. No matter - just realize that you need to have a logical outline to follow for writing every lesson plan.
The Big Picture
Writing a lesson plan for each class haphazardly each week is just as bad as not having one at all. The reason is that you're still going to be all over the map in your classes, and your students are going to take 3x as long to learn your curriculum.
So, you need to have a grand, overarching plan. That's where the
rotating curriculum comes in...
A rotating curriculum is where you have a curriculum for every class (of which they should be divided into age groups and experience levels) that repeats after a set period of time.
For example, when I was teaching karate and tae kwon do, I had a separate curriculum for each of my beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes. Every quarter (every three months) we focused on 1/4 of the entire curriculum for that class. Once students had made it through the entire year, they'd covered all the material they needed to know to progress beyond that level.
What this does is it keeps your classes focused and organized, and it ensures that no matter when a student starts or enters a particular class, eventually they are going to learn all the same material and curriculum that everyone else learns at that level. They just won't all learn it in the same order.
This also allows you to teach everyone in the same class the same material at the same time. The brilliance inherent to this approach is that you no longer need to separate classes by belt rank into three or four groups to learn three or four different sets of material. Instead, everyone works on the same things at the same time.*
Why Your Staff Needs To Learn How To Follow A Lesson Plan
This is why it's so important for your staff to learn how to read and follow a lesson plan. For one, it keeps everyone on the same page. This is crucial, because once you implement a rotating curriculum all your students in each class will be testing on the same material every quarter.
Second, it ensures that you have complete control over what is being taught in your classes. I once hired an instructor to teach my kid's classes for me, and he came in and taught whatever he felt like teaching in every class. Needless to say, when it came time to test those kids it was a disaster.
So, you need to make sure every instructor is following the same lesson plans each week in every class.
Training Staff Members to Follow Your Lesson Plans
Typically this isn't hard to do. Most teaching staff members will be relieved to know that you have written lesson plans for every class and every week of the year. That's because it takes the pressure off of them to prepare their own.
However, you are still going to need to have weekly staff meetings to cover the lesson plans for the upcoming week. In these meetings, I suggest that you spend about half the time training the exact material that is going to be taught in that week's classes. And, I suggest that you spend another five to ten minutes or so going over the drills and mat chats for that week as well.
The main thing to impress upon your staff members is that they live and die by the clock and the lesson plan! Again, THEY LIVE AND DIE BY THE CLOCK AND THE LESSON PLAN.
Once you train your staff that they need to start every class right on time, and they need to follow the lesson plan to the minute (because each class segment should have a set number of minutes to spend on that segment) then you'll find that classes at your dojo run a heck of a lot smoother.
Breaking Them In
Finally, you need to break in new instructors by gradually letting them take over more and more of a class. I start by letting new instructors do the warm-up for the first week or so, then I have them assist me for the rest of the class.
After a week of this, the next step is to give them a segment of the lesson plan that they are going to teach that week. Typically I have a new instructor do this for a few weeks, and I observe them and provide feedback to them AFTER CLASS.**
Finally, after I see that they can handle themselves and teach a class segment effectively, I turn them loose to teach an entire class. The way I typically do this is I have them assist me for the first class day of the week - that way they can see how I taught that lesson plan. Then, I let them teach the second class of the week by themselves.
I also make sure that I don't hover when they are teaching. Instead, I get off the floor and find something to do so I don't make them nervous. Sure, I'll pop my head in every now and again, but really I want them to teach the class on their own without my input.
Afterwards I'll review things with them and answer any questions they might have, but mostly at that point I let them teach at least one class each week solo. I'll trade off with them like this for another week or two, and then at that point decide whether they are ready to rock and roll on their own.
- - -
Tomorrow I'm going to wrap this up as we discuss curriculum and how it relates to training a new teaching assistant. Don't miss it!
Until next time,
Mike Massie
MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
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