TEENS’ PERSPECTIVE: Changing My Lesson Plan on the Fly

“I was really surprised. I had gotten used to training with adults and stronger people. I barely had to do anything to get [the kids] to fall down.”

The following is from one of our youth members. As a member of the Teens’ Leadership Team, he is held to a higher standard for attendance, manners, and dedication. As part of the program, he learns teaching technique and leadership skills and is required to train with adults, as well. Enjoy…

I’m a Teens’ Leadership Team member, so on Thursday I was teaching the kids class. There were only three kids but they were all younger than usual, so Sensei told me I should just do a 35 minute lesson.

I kind of had a lesson plan in my head and decided to not really go into that much detail and just focus mostly on their rolls. But, like always I started with races.

Halfway through the races, 3 red belts joined, who were a different age group. It was kind of annoying because I had my whole class planned out and this all changed it. For one, I couldn’t do a 35 minute class with red belts and they had to do things like techniques and sword work.

It worked out in the end but I was pretty stressed. I wasn’t really sure what to do but decided to split the class into two groups. I taught the red belts techniques and showed them how to train when there were only 3 of them.

Before I had them train all together, I trained with each one of them individually and I was really surprised. I had gotten used to training with adults and stronger people. I barely had to do anything to get them to go down. They were all too happy to do so. With adults, I actually had to work for it and put my strength into it. Like I said, with them, I didn’t have do anything.

I brought the class back together and we did some tug-a-war. The teams weren’t fair at first but then I made them fair and we had a lot of fun. After that, we played Aikido freeze tag and it was really fun.

At the end when we all shared our thoughts on the class. I was really surprised because some people had done 50 rolls which was great since the roll-a-thon is coming up.

All in all, it was a really great class and I had a lot… and I mean a lot of fun teaching.