According to your website you have roughly 20 years more experience than me in martial arts, so, firstly thank you for taking the time to reply.
Regarding the length of lessons, we have actually extended the time to 1 hour 30 minutes, due to the fact that this is a once a week class at this stage. In retrospect (so far), this has only affected one student negatively. The student in question is a young 6 year old, and he spends a lot of time staring at the ceiling fans and not listening to me. I had a chat to his mother, and her perspective was that if she let him quit, then that would set the standard for any future endevours that she put him on. So, I do what I can with him in class, and let him be too young to train at other times in class. Time will tell with this student I think, it's only early days.
Regarding the way I speak to them, for the most part I teach them the same way that I teach adults (I'd like to think). But, I guess there is some room for improvement.....there is always room for improvement. I'll take this onboard.
What I am finding out, which surprises me, is that kids love complexity, and they will rise to the challenge most times.
The thing that I'm not happy about with my school, is that I was never taught to teach, I was just shown the syllabus and given some students. That being said, I'd like to think of my self as a decent teacher and martial artist anyway, and I'm always looking to improve (hence this thread), but what if others come through the same training and end up been mindless robot clones, without looking to improve or question anything taught to them?
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