Teaching children can be a rewarding experience; it can also be incredibly frustrating. Your instructor obviously has enough faith in you to teach, you need to have the same belief in yourself. You need to be a confident and enthusiastic teacher or the children will spot it and either walk all over you or just lose interest. You’ve already shown yourself as dedicated to the task by coming here and asking for advice.
First of all I’d say that you need to differentiate between young children and teenagers. Young children have a fairly short attention span and can be prone to drifting off if not kept properly stimulated. You can do this by altering the tone of your voice, cracking jokes and changing activities. One of the things I have started doing with the juniors is making their warm-ups ‘fun’. This way they do not even realise that they are warming up/doing exercise, and they put in a lot more effort than if you just had them jogging around the class. Some suggestions for things I do are:
- Get the children running around the edge of the mats. To test their reaction speed shout out commands such as left hand, right hand, duck, jump, change direction etc. Then point out that they are slowing down and that therefore you are going to start running too, and if you touch them they get 10 push ups/sit ups/sprint thrusts etc. To them this is just like a game of ‘it’ at school, but you are going to get much better effort out of them.
- Another thing I will do is line up the children on the edge of the mat, I will get them to run across the mat and touch the other side 5 times. I will stay in the middle and try to catch them as they try to run across the mat, if I touch them they get allocated press-ups, sit-ups, sprint thrusts (like British Bulldog with a difference). The trick here is to spot who you have already tagged so that they all get equal shares and one child is not ‘victimised’.
- Finally if you have a fairly small class line them up opposite each other on the mats. Explain to them that when you say go they have to run around the mats and touch the back of the person opposite them. This means they will be effectively racing against each other, and unless on is really slow and one really fast this can go on for quite a while.
Teenagers are a more difficult age group. They want to be treated like adults but will not always act like them. You may also find that you have some teenagers that don’t particularly want to be there, and are being ‘forced’ to attend by their parents, for whatever reason. You may find that you have trouble motivating these people, but by far the important thing is that you do not let their listlessness affect, or disrupt, the rest of the class. I would suggest that any teenager acting like a small child gets treated like a small child. If they are constantly giggling, talking etc. and it is starting to disrupt the class then do not be afraid to remove them from the class. Send them off the mat until they are ready to rejoin you with a more pro-active frame of mind. (This works wonders if the next thing you do is something really fun, so that they feel they are missing out!). I tend to think it is better to be a bit more serious with the teenagers. If you are silly you risk them ridiculing you (as teenagers are wont to do – I’m not sure at what age I started becoming ‘uncool!’
, or them taking advantage. As you get to know them you will find out which ones need to be kept reined in and which ones can get a bit more freedom. With teenagers you need to draw the balance between them not quite being little kids, and yet not quite being like adults.
To a young child an adult is an adult, no matter what your grade. You will probably find that you have little to no problem with them. Teenagers can be a different matter, especially if close to you in age. What you have to remember is that Sensei has decided that
YOU are in charge…. Not them! Therefore what you say, goes!
Try and get a good all round stretch when doing the warm up, from the toes to the (perhaps most importantly) neck. Make sure the children aren’t bouncing into the stretches as well. Look into which stretches may be potentially harmful to still developing bodies. Exercises such as knuckle push ups can cause problems in the formation of the bones in the hand if performed by children. Some exercises are ok in moderation, but not over extended periods of time.
Children need to be encouraged. If all you do is criticise what is wrong then they will leave feeling disheartened and not want to come back. It is better to finish on a positive note, for example; “You need to aim you punch a bit more into the middle, but I really like the effort you are putting into it, that’s some really good work!”. This way you get your point across but the child still ends up feeling happy. Even as adults there’s nothing worse than going home and thinking that absolutely nothing as gone right in the lesson. For the same reason, do not keep correcting the same mistake over and over again. If you have had to tell a child more than three times the likelihood is that they will not pick it up in that lesson, so move on, maybe next lesson it will sink in.
I’d say start off simple: Kihon, Kata and Kumite. Work everyone through the white belt syllabus (after all we don’t forget our early stuff do we?
) and then slowly work up through the rest of their grades, building confidence as you go. Occasionally pick up on stances, hips, positioning or show a little bit of bunkai so that the children can get confidence that you know what you are doing. Don’t go too deep at first as you may find you lose the children on a tangent or develop a “brainfart” and forget what you wanted to show.
The trick is to think like a child, without acting a line a child. You need to understand what motivates and drives them whilst still keeping their respect as Instructor. You will get loads out of teaching, it will improve you own Karate abilities and self-confidence etc. Another thing is that children tend to be very astute and logical, and will ask questions that adults will never think of asking, and will help you question and evolve within your own training.
So keep it simple, show them what you know and the rest will all come with experience.
[glow=green,2,300]AFTER THAT, ADULTS ARE EASY! ;D[/glow]
i really appreciate that you both took time to answer my question, i will definately use your advice, it's definately an experience standing in "the mirror"(teaching) and i didn't expect it to be such a huge jump, i have always respected and admired my sensei for his skill, dedication and passion for teaching but i have to admit that standing there has increased my admiration more for him and all those involved in teaching, there is something very rewarding and fulfilling about the whole experience, thank you once again
i really appreciate that you both took time to answer my question, i will definately use your advice, it's definately an experience standing in "the mirror"(teaching) and i didn't expect it to be such a huge jump, i have always respected and admired my sensei for his skill, dedication and passion for teaching but i have to admit that standing there has increased my admiration more for him and all those involved in teaching, there is something very rewarding and fulfilling about the whole experience, thank you once again
, or them taking advantage. As you get to know them you will find out which ones need to be kept reined in and which ones can get a bit more freedom. With teenagers you need to draw the balance between them not quite being little kids, and yet not quite being like adults. 
) and then slowly work up through the rest of their grades, building confidence as you go. Occasionally pick up on stances, hips, positioning or show a little bit of bunkai so that the children can get confidence that you know what you are doing. Don’t go too deep at first as you may find you lose the children on a tangent or develop a “brainfart” and forget what you wanted to show.