Teaching, Training & Coffee: On ephemeral art forms

What are the similarities between brewing a delicious cup of coffee and training Taekwondo?

We have to give it our best effort every time. We cannot make a coffee once and drink deeply from it every day for the rest of our lives… and neither can we perform the perfect poomsae and bask in the glory for the rest of our career!

No, we must skillfully measure and grind the beans, then boil the water to the perfect temperature and then pour the water carefully to a measured amount. Even THEN, the weather and the water you use, can throw it off on any given day.

Maybe you worked out or did something physical the previous day, and now you come to the Taekwondo dojang and prepare to practice your poomsae. You’ll notice different muscles being tight will affect how you kick, how you move, how you enter and exit a stance. 

No matter how good we the are getting, we must always hone our craft every single day. I hate to borrow from such simplistic examples, but they show the idea well:

You get the point. 

I’ve had this idea for a long time, and I’ve articulated it to the Taekwondo practitioners who train with me at the dojang. 

However, I’ve recently been on a teaching book reading binge. (As you know, I do love to read!) Over the last few months I’ve ready many books on teaching and managing students in a classroom setting. Here’s a few of them:

• How Children Succeed – Paul Tough
• Building A+ Better Teacher – Elizabeth Green
• Teaching And Learning In Japan – 
• Teach Like A Champion 2.0 – Doug Lemon
• Running The Room – Tom Bennett

I usually read non-fiction, but to have so many books on the same topic so close together means something is going on. I have a junior practitioner who trains with me, and he has a hard time controlling his body, regulating his emotions, and consistently speaks out of turn. They are a sweet child with great ideas, and is incredibly knowledgeable! However I find it difficult to teach them because as Tom Bennett puts it in Running The Room:

“But the minute you try to teach in an even partially challenging environment, you realize that if they aren’t behaving, they aren’t learning.”

So I’ve poured over the above texts looking for ways to measure, and improve success on the Taekwondo mats (and by association, OFF the taekwondo mats). I’ve looked for ways to manage children and other practitioners in a way that stimulates their improvement and success. And it’s led me to a profound conclusion…

No matter how much I read, and teach, and learn… teaching is no different than brewing a cup of coffee or training Taekwondo myself. 

I have to do it skillfully, intentionally, and lovingly…

Every.

Single.

Time.

There is no magnum opus for teaching! I cannot teach a class and expect it to be experienced by all practitioners and others for all time… I must diligently bow in and train with practitioners on a daily basis. There will be good days and bad days, classes where I am at my finest… however the practitioners are not! Where they are alight with fiery passion, and I am dull and boring.

There is a good example of even brewing a coffee versus teaching… when you’re done brewing the cup of coffee… you are done! You get to sit down and enjoy it. 🙂

Teaching is different… whether you’re on a rotating curriculum, a static general curriculum or anything in between… you have your drills, tasks, measurements, and effort must roll over into the next day, and the next. Going from belt to belt and eventually upgrading to poom or dan… this takes YEARS!

The way I choose to look at it is like this:

There is no perfect teacher, we all try and strive for this but it’s true. There are two kinds of teachers…

The teacher who teaches well most of the time, and sometimes struggles.

The teacher who struggles most of the time, and sometimes teaches well.

I’ll be happy with the former. 

This craft can be daunting, and doesn’t always work based solely on the teacher’s experience, the children get a say!