About two years ago this past February, my good friend and instructor Andrew started his own Arashi-Do location on Whyte avenue, handing the reigns of both his No-Gi and Kids BJJ classes to me to continue at the North location. It was a big opportunity for me, as my previous experience had been teaching the beginners Gi class and the teens kickboxing. No Gi presented a chance to teach a more advanced group and the Kids class was a totally different age group than I was used to. I also had some big shoes to fill, as Andrew was well loved as an instructor by the regulars of both classes. In the time since, its grown to be one of the more rewarding experiences of my life, and I think every instructor at some point should leap at the opportunity to teach a group of kids if it comes their way, because it has made me a better instructor in general.
If you look at a school with classes of varying age groups, there are often some pretty huge differences in terms of how they're taught. With the tiny ones, most of the classes are games of some sort that are loosely based on martial arts. The adult classes are more solemn and disciplined, which logically makes sense. There are certain assumptions you can make about an adult student versus a four year old regarding goals, attention span and physical ability. The 8-13 age group that I teach is an enigmatic mix of both, especially those on the higher end of it.
A lot is going on in the mind of an eleven or twelve year old. They're still treated predominantly as a child by other people but they don't really feel like one anymore. They're already subconsciously trying to bounce their personality, values and beliefs off other people to form the adult they're going to become later, and carve out their place in the world; their own little sphere of influence. When it comes to BJJ, both physically and mentally a kid in this sort of range doesn't need a ton of hand-holding. They can drill, they can roll, they can compete, but they're still enough of a kid that there needs to be that undertone of fun to keep the energy up. What becomes very clear from teaching them and learning to maintain that balance is that adults aren't all that different.
It's not necessarily about the content of the class itself, it's about the energy of the instructor. Kids are very, very sensitive to the difference between an instructor who wants them to succeed and have fun, and an instructor who's just there to instruct because they're wearing the belt and that's what they do. That's a trap that I have admittedly fallen into at times while teaching adults, whether I was tired or grumpy from work or distracted by something else that was going on, etc. Adults may be more emotionally mature and more physically capable but they're still ultimately doing this because they enjoy it, and they want to feel that genuine joy of jiu-jitsu from their instructor. I firmly believe that the best instructors at the biggest schools aren't just in that position because of money, connections or skills, but also because they love jiu-jitsu and believe in its power to enrich life.
There's something really special about teaching a kids class when the kids really enjoy themselves and work hard. It brings me back to when I was their age, competing at a national level in swimming. It was incredibly hard work but I had some very special coaches that enjoyed what they did, believed in me and went above and beyond to bring out my potential. That made it fun, no matter how brutal it got. The way that affected my development as a person, and now striving to be that positive influence for the kids in my class can turn a really shitty day around, really quick when I come straight from a long day at work to start the class. Sometimes adults don't realize how much kids know, how much they understand and how strong they can be. When I was collecting donations for a seminar I was teaching in honour of my mother who passed away from breast cancer this year, one of the girls from my class gave $20 from her own piggy bank. That was a pretty serious tug on the heart strings and it's those kinds of things that get me thinking about this kind of stuff. Sometimes it can take me a few months or more between thinking about something and writing about it, but I'm glad I did today.
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