Hi There,
I thought I would just contribute to this thread, as I understand where you are coming from with the displine and respect. I have been teaching for about 14 years. I am from what you call the "old school". If you were late then you would be doing push ups regardless to who you are, if you did something wrong you would get hit, etc, etc. This is how my Master and Instructor taught me and it never did me any harm.
However times change and the way people teach martial arts needs to change as well. You cannot teach people how your grand master used to teach. I am not saying that all the older generation instructors were super strict and disciplined. However a fair few of them would shout and hit you if you did something wrong.
This was really brought home to me when I went to back to our main headquarters to teach. I was using the old style to teach and we were losing students and people were complaining. Then one day my master pulled me to one side and told me I can't teach like we did in the old days. The simple fact is that the majority of people's attitudes have changed towards what is right and wrong. Most people will come to the gym to keep fit and self defence. Getting the balance between firm but fair is difficult.
Lateness is one of my pet hates and we combated most of the issues we faced with a simple rule sheet. This way everyone knows where they stand. When I used to teach if the person was late I wouldn't even need to say anything. They would do their push ups even before joining the class.
However I will say this to you. If you treat teaching as a business. The kids are the future and where the real money is, so sometimes you will have to change how to discipline them, because you are not only teaching for them but also the spectators (the parents). The best way I found is to have a good communication between yourself and your students. I would always finish teaching about 5 minutes early, so that I could sit down with the student and talk to them about history, techniques, terminology. If I had a real problem with one of them I would take them to one side rather than doing it front of the whole class.
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