Episode 971 - Should Teaching be Required for Black Belt
In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew discuss whether teaching should be a requirement to earn your black belt.
Should Teaching be Required for Black Belt - Episode 971
SUMMARY
In this episode of Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio, hosts Jeremy and Andrew delve into the topic of whether teaching should be a requirement to earn a black belt in martial arts schools. They explore the nuances of teaching responsibilities, the value of teaching in enhancing one's own martial arts skills, and the importance of creating a structured leadership pathway for students. The conversation emphasizes the need for incremental teaching experiences and guidance, rather than expecting immediate competency from newly promoted black belts. The hosts also discuss the broader implications of teaching in martial arts, including the development of soft skills and the benefits of diverse teaching styles.
TAKEAWAYS
Teaching can take many forms, from drilling to full class instruction.
Black belts should have some ability to convey knowledge.
Incremental teaching experiences are crucial for student development.
Teaching helps deepen understanding of martial arts material.
Schools should prepare students for teaching roles before they reach black belt.
A leadership track can help students transition into teaching roles.
Teaching can build resilience and confidence in martial artists.
Not all black belts are ready to teach immediately after promotion, if not trained ahead of time.
Different teaching styles can resonate with different students.
Feedback and communication are essential for improving teaching methods.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction to Teaching in Martial Arts
02:58 The Debate: Should Black Belts Teach?
05:46 Understanding Teaching Responsibilities
08:58 The Value of Teaching in Martial Arts
11:59 Creating a Leadership Pathway
14:48 The Importance of Incremental Teaching
17:49 Teaching Beyond the Black Belt
20:56 Conclusion and Call to Action
After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it.
✅Subscribe to whistlekick Martial Arts Radio on the following platforms:
🎧Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3mVnZmf
🎧Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3yHVdHQ
🎧Google: https://bit.ly/3kLSpo8
✅You can find whistlekick on all social media platforms using the handle @whistlekick or visit our website at https://www.whistlekick.com or https://www.whistlekickmartialartsradio.com
Show Transcript
Jeremy (00:02.396)
What's happening everybody? Welcome back. It's another episode of Whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. And on today's episode, Andrew and I understand the importance of prepositions and enunciate emphasis in a particular series of words. I'll tell you more about what that means in just a moment. If you happen to be new, please check out whistlekick.com and whistlekickmartialartsradio.com.
for all the things that we are doing as an organization to support you, the traditional martial artists of the world. Connect, educate, entertain, whether that's through our products, our content, our events. We've got a lot going on. And if you're engaging with the show, awesome. Thank you. appreciate it. Consider supporting us via Patreon. But you might also consider checking out all the things that we do outside of this show and supporting some of those endeavors from our teacher training, which is rather relevant today to some of the other things.
that we do. Now, when I don't know where you're going to trim this up, Andrew, but we started the recording laughing because here's the thing. The episode we released last week was should.
black belts be required to teach, which I took.
Andrew Adams (01:16.584)
No, no, no, should you require a black belt to be a teacher? That was last week.
Jeremy (01:22.634)
Right, but I took, that was what we said, right? When you and I talked before we started recording that prior episode, should black belts be required to teach? Should the black belt be a requirement of teaching? That's how I took it. You meant, should black belts, the people, be required to teach other people?
So you heard black, you meant black belt as a person. I meant black belt as an object.
Andrew Adams (01:58.642)
Yeah, it was interesting. Yeah. And last week's episode was great. Hopefully you all listened and watched and enjoyed it.
Jeremy (02:04.298)
Yeah, and if you didn't, maybe after this one you will.
Andrew Adams (02:08.842)
Maybe. So yeah, so this week we're discussing if you have a black belt, it be a requirement that you teach in your school? You got a black belt, now you must teach. Or should having taught X number of classes be a requirement to get a black belt? You could look at it that way as well, but yeah, there's a lot there. I told you, this could be a good one. So can we start here for a second?
Jeremy (02:31.815)
Move.
This is, they're always good, what do we? Yeah, please.
Andrew Adams (02:39.728)
Yes or no, all I want you to answer is yes or no. Should black belts in a school be required to teach yes or no.
Jeremy (02:58.316)
gonna say no but I don't want that to come across as a strong conviction. My reason for saying no is because I have a hard time with absolutes.
Andrew Adams (03:13.258)
Okay, the reason I asked is I suspected you were going to be a no, and I'm a yes.
I'm a yes. I think if you have a black belt in a school, you should be required to do some teaching. Now let's unpack that because we don't want to end the episode after three minutes, right? Let's talk about our whys because they're probably gonna differ a little bit.
Jeremy (03:39.734)
Yeah, so it's important when you ask that question, should Black Belt students be required to do some teaching within their own school? There are a few points in that question that I hone in on, right? What is teaching? Teaching could be a lot of different things. Teaching could be you are asked to take a lower rank and go in the corner for five minutes and drill this thing that you were working on. Does that count? Maybe, maybe not.
Andrew Adams (04:05.257)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (04:08.552)
Most people do that at some point, right, regardless of their rank. It could be you have to take the curriculum and break out a lesson plan and present it and run the whole class. That's a whole different type of teacher.
Andrew Adams (04:24.082)
And then there's just modeling good behavior. That's still teaching.
Jeremy (04:30.614)
So the reason that I said no, again, it is a resistance to the absolute because I could come up with some scenarios where I don't think, where I believe someone could have a black belt and requiring them to teach may not be healthy.
And I would have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to get there to the point where I don't even want to share the examples. But I'm going to say in 999 cases out of a thousand, maybe more, I'm with you. I agree.
Andrew Adams (05:01.619)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Andrew Adams (05:16.712)
Yeah, I, so this topic came to me years ago when there was a student that I was training with. we were both going to be, I had a black belt from another school, but she and I were going to be testing for our black belt in this school together. And one of her concerns was she didn't, she on one level, on one hand, she didn't want to get her black belt because she knew that
The minute she got her black belt, the teacher was gonna start asking her to teach classes because like we discussed in the last episode, there were many schools where you're not allowed to teach until you're a black belt. And so she was afraid, I'm gonna get my black belt and then I'm gonna be asked to start teaching classes. And I kind of don't wanna do that. don't want like, in every other aspect of my life, I'm in charge and I appreciate coming to class and not being in charge.
And I'm afraid when I get my black belt, I'm going to be expected to be in charge. And I want to recognize that I, I understand that and I feel for, I felt for her. But on the other hand, and there are a lot of issues there. Like I, we talked about last week. I don't think you need to be a black belt to be a teacher, but we also discussed this huge learning opportunity when you are a teacher.
So I think that the benefits of being a teacher far outweigh those issues of not wanting to. Now, having said that, I think schools should consider teaching how to teach because we both recognize that that is a very different skill. There needs to be things set up to make it easier for your students who are gonna be getting their black belt to be more comfortable teaching.
But I do think to some degree, black belts should have some ability having taught, whether that's one-on-one, someone else, or whether it's a whole classroom, that could be, it could be no, like you don't have to do that, but the ability to convey knowledge from one person to another, I think in my personal opinion, black belts should have that ability.
Jeremy (07:39.874)
So the resistance to teaching that occurs to me is very, almost the same as any other aspect of martial arts where someone's resistant. I don't like sparring. They avoid sparring nights. I don't like forms. I don't like breaking, right?
But even if you don't like something, you recognize there is value in it for you. You may not want to do it. It may not line up with your goals, but on some level you accept, is part of my martial arts education. It is well established that the ability to teach helps you better understand your own material, right? If you can teach it, you are better at it. You become better at it by teaching it.
So there is value there. Now, I think both you and I are opposed to flipping the light switch at Black Belt that all of a sudden you are expected to have this high degree of teaching competency. And at whatever point someone is expected to start teaching, they should start teaching in small increments and they should receive guidance just like every other aspect of their martial arts education.
Andrew Adams (08:40.71)
Yes. Absolutely.
Andrew Adams (08:57.514)
Absolutely, absolutely.
Jeremy (08:58.774)
but to take it a little bit further.
100 % of what people don't like about teaching correlates with some of the soft skills that are valued within martial arts education. Why don't people like teaching? I don't want to be in the front of the room. I don't want people looking at me. I don't want to screw up in front of people. If just those things alone, if you have
two randomly selected people. One of them doesn't like being in front of other people, doesn't like being the center of attention, and doesn't like making errors versus doesn't mind being in front of people, is confident enough to make errors and, what was the other one, center of attention. Which of those two people is going to better handle an unplanned altercation on the street?
Andrew Adams (09:56.264)
Yep, yep, good point.
Jeremy (09:56.884)
If I've got to put my money, everything else being equal, of course it's the person who has those soft skills. They're more likely to speak up before a situation becomes physical and so forth. Right? So there is value in that even beyond simply how to teach because it builds you as a more resilient human being in a way that you can implement your physical training.
Andrew Adams (10:04.314)
Yep.
Andrew Adams (10:25.374)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I wanna go back and reiterate something that you mentioned because I think it's really, really important for any school owners listening to hear. I will make this a blanket statement for me. I'm only gonna speak for me. I'm not speaking for Jeremy, but he's probably gonna agree. But if you are a school owner and you hand a black belt to a student and you all of a sudden, boom,
expect them to teach, that is a bad idea.
Jeremy (10:58.146)
Teach versus teach. Ready?
Andrew Adams (11:00.37)
Yep, like you, it sets such a bad precedent, I think, for you as a school or to expect just because you have this new color belt around your waist, that that makes you a teacher. I think if you are running your school like that, you really need to reevaluate how those students are being taught. Now, if you are prepping those students,
to be teachers, maybe you have a leadership program. That is different. I'm talking about here you've been a brown belt in the school for X number of years. You've been in the school for X number of years. You've always been a student and only a student and nothing else. Here's your black belt. Great. Go teach a class. There are schools that do that. I'm going to say you should not do that, period.
Jeremy (11:49.122)
I don't think that is the ideal experience for anyone involved. think no matter, regardless of when you expect someone to start teaching, it's gotta be small. There's a progression. We have this in MADC, in the Whistlekick Martial Arts Teacher Training and Certification. If you take the level one course, that is basically how to teach one-on-one. Level two is how to teach a class, order of magnitude. Level three, which is still in development,
Andrew Adams (11:53.094)
Absolutely.
Andrew Adams (11:59.402)
Correct.
Andrew Adams (12:15.966)
Yep.
Jeremy (12:18.068)
how to teach a school, level four, how to teach schools, right? How to run curriculum and things like that, right? So it ripples out and there was a huge difference. Most people, if they have some skill in how to do anything, can convey that in some way to one person such that that person gets a little better.
Andrew Adams (12:46.474)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jeremy (12:47.616)
The problem comes in as you add more and more people and they're at different places in their learning path and they learn differently. That's a whole different skill set. And how do you develop that skill set? By implementing that skill set and being guided by someone who already has and saying, hey, you you spent 90 % of your time on this one person and the other 17 people in the room.
weren't learning as much, right? Like just as we learn how to spar or do forums or whatever, it requires some guidance.
Andrew Adams (13:18.334)
Yep, absolutely. And that was the issue with the scenario of the friend of mine that I tested with. She had never been asked to teach a class before, maybe had gone off and worked with someone one-on-one a little bit, but certainly never had any guidance on what she did well or didn't do well. And that school had this issue of you can't teach until you're, can't teach a full class.
until you're a black belt. And so she knew as soon she got that black belt, if since I got sick, she was gonna get called and said, hey, can you go in and teach? And she's like, I've never done that before. Like I don't feel comfortable doing that. And that's a valid fear for her to have had. And that's kind of where this episode stems from.
Jeremy (14:05.834)
Now, something that I want to bring up, because I think it's an interesting perspective onto this subject and this problem, because there is a problem here. And a lot of people out there know that I consult, I work with a variety of martial arts schools, we have a psychic alliance. This is not meant as a commercial for that. But because I have those conversations with those schools, I can tell you that the number one issue that plagues most schools
Andrew Adams (14:15.487)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (14:33.812)
is an ability to delegate responsibility from the school owner. Most schools are smaller. Most schools are barely profitable.
Jeremy (14:48.318)
not profitable enough to just hire a full-time person and have all these expectations. So what does that mean? A lot of martial arts school owners barely take vacations because they don't trust anyone to get better. Now, why don't they trust anyone? Well, because they're just, not ready. They're not good enough. Well, why aren't they good enough? Because a lot of schools wait until their students are black belts to give them a real responsibility.
Andrew Adams (15:17.994)
Absolutely.
Jeremy (15:18.078)
I'm gonna encourage and challenge every school owner out there right now to sit down, maybe you even press pause on this episode and write out a leadership track for your school. How do you get people prepared so they can take over? At whatever level of technical skill rank, you want them to be able to run a class for you so you can, I don't know, be sick in bed? Happened to me last week.
Andrew Adams (15:47.882)
Mm-hmm.
Jeremy (15:50.54)
How do you get them there? If you say, know what, material wise, I would be okay with a brown belt teaching my class. Okay. What do they need to know? And how much experience do they have to have teaching to be able to do that? When do you start that? If you build that in, this becomes a very different conversation. Your school becomes a very different school.
Andrew Adams (16:15.391)
Absolutely, absolutely. And you are setting up those potential teachers for success because you are giving them a path so they know where to go.
Jeremy (16:28.374)
you hit the nail on the head. People wanna know what success looks like. It is the reason that rank has been such a successful method to help people progress in martial arts. It's also part of the problem is rank becomes further and further time-wise in between steps. The schools that I have worked with that have codified this and said,
This is what our instructor track looks like and I recommend that being a separate track. It could have requirements, right? My assistant instructors have to be green belts. My students know that. So they are looking at how do I get all these things checked so that when I'm a green belt, I can be an assistant instructor. Not all of them, but the ones that want to.
Andrew Adams (17:08.66)
Mm-hmm.
Andrew Adams (17:19.156)
Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Having a clearly defined path is when I first came on board as your co-host, one of the phrases we used a lot, the one of the phrases I used a lot was open, clear communication. That's what this is, right? Give them a path so they know where to go and how to get there. I set the expectation early that part. And I would even
prescribed to schools if I don't think this would be requirement, but I think it might not be a bad idea to consider to get your black belt. You have to have taught X number of hours of classes. Like I could prescribe to that like again, you're getting them there. You're working with them on how to do that. But I think I think the ability to convey knowledge from your brain to someone else is a
critical skill that will make you a better martial artist. And that's why I feel so strongly about
Jeremy (18:25.384)
If we take the...
Jeremy (18:30.796)
fairly common.
rank.
hierarchy that exists in a lot of martial arts in a lot of martial arts I Would say even most you can't from you you cannot promote someone to your own rank in Some systems you can promote to the rank below. Sometimes it's two ranks below There is a general understanding that if you're here, you should be able to get someone to hear you can't get them to hear
Andrew Adams (19:03.571)
Yep. Yep.
Jeremy (19:04.2)
Overall right and and we talked in that last episode that maybe on some niche subjects you can do that But why does that stop at black belt Why can I as a brown belt not get someone to blue or green belt? Why is a blue or green belt? Can I not get someone to yellow belt or orange belt? Shouldn't I know that material well enough?
Andrew Adams (19:21.666)
Yeah, absolutely
Jeremy (19:31.98)
Do I know all of the nuance? No. Does the yellow belt need the nuance? Are they expected to have the nuance? No. And I also want to remind people that when we talk about teaching, teaching doesn't have to be formal. It doesn't have to be a class of 50 people. It could be, right? I mentioned the instructor track for my school.
Andrew Adams (19:39.198)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Andrew Adams (19:52.062)
Nope.
Jeremy (19:57.854)
Assistant instructor at Greenbelt. Do I expect a Greenbelt to stand in front of the room and run the class? Absolutely not. I expect them to be able to take a person or a small group and with my direction and my periodic check-in to be able to help people do that. Hey, guess what? I have groups of Yellowbelts doing that, supporting each other now.
Andrew Adams (20:19.572)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely.
Jeremy (20:25.27)
Are they learning? Are they moving forward? Yes. Then that's what matters. There's a phrase here that comes up, and then I'll throw the ball to you. There's a phrase here that comes up, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. And in a lot of martial arts schools, we recognize if it's our school, we're probably the best teacher in the school.
Andrew Adams (20:30.792)
Yeah, yep, absolutely.
Andrew Adams (20:38.506)
Hmm
Jeremy (20:49.878)
There are rare exceptions where the owner of the school is not the highest rank and the most competent instructor. I've seen it happen, it's not common, okay? So quite often those school owners will look at, know, I could take a vacation or I could do X, Y, Z, but the only person to fill in for me isn't me. They're not as good at me as me as an instructor.
Andrew Adams (20:56.82)
If
Jeremy (21:16.106)
I don't want to punish my students by giving them someone who is less competent.
Jeremy (21:24.084)
Okay, so nobody else ever gets any teaching experience. You never take a vacation and now you're a grumpy person and you take it out on your students without realizing it, right? There are so many reasons to let that hard, thick, dark line fade and crack.
Andrew Adams (21:46.186)
Yeah, absolutely. The student may actually resonate better on certain things with a different instructor because of the way they're teaching it. Whether it's peer to peer, more of a peer level, which we talked about last week, or just the way they express something connects with that person in a different way. I have...
gotten a lot out of sitting down, like drumming wise, sitting down sometimes literally with my sitting on my hand, so I'm not actually drumming and watching a different teacher teach a private lesson to someone else. I learned from that because what they are, the words they're using to convey their information, the information is the same that I'm gonna teach. It's the exact same thing that I'm teaching, but they're conveying it in a slightly different way.
I learned something by doing that. So let's extrapolate that out to martial arts. I'm teaching this form this way and someone else comes and teaches the same form. The movements are exactly the same, but the way they do it is different. That might resonate with some of your students in a better way. That doesn't mean I'm a bad teacher.
It just means that they have learned it in a different, slightly different way from a different person.
Jeremy (23:22.115)
So if we sum this up, we are in agreement that by the time you are a black belt, you should be teaching. Specifically how or how much or at what capacity, there's a lot of variance in there.
Andrew Adams (23:31.965)
In my opinion, yes, yeah.
Jeremy (23:40.918)
But we also agree that at no point should someone be expected to go from zero to 60 as an instructor. They need guidance, they need incremental progress, just like every other aspect of their martial arts development.
Andrew Adams (23:50.086)
And if you are doing that, you need to consider not.
Andrew Adams (23:57.598)
Yep, absolutely.
Jeremy (24:01.162)
Anything to add before we roll out?
Andrew Adams (24:02.995)
I mean, if you are looking to add that to your school, mean, MADEC would be a great suggestion. Learn how to be a teacher better.
Jeremy (24:14.023)
We suggest that students enroll in the MADC program towards the beginning of their teaching journey. There's no time that it's too late, but generally speaking, if someone's not gonna teach for a year, if they're not even gonna be given a one-on-one over on the side sort of a thing, it's probably premature. But we've also had plenty of people who...
Andrew Adams (24:37.054)
Yep.
Jeremy (24:41.024)
teach in other aspects of their life. They teach non-martial arts things and they have said this is an incredible course. we are hoping to have, if you're watching this when it comes out, it is October, it's towards the end of October and we are hoping that the online version of the course will be out by the end of the year, by the end of 2024. So you can watch for that.
And of course, if you have feedback on this episode, there are things that you think, you know what, Andrew and Jeremy, you guys are dumb and you got this so wrong. And here's why I think this. We want to hear why you think this. If you just want to call us dumb, we don't want that.
Andrew Adams (25:23.851)
Or maybe you have developed a great leadership program. Like how do you develop your students to be better teachers to teach in your school? Do you have a set curriculum? Like tell us that too. We'd love to hear.
Jeremy (25:28.065)
Yeah.
Jeremy (25:35.426)
Tell us everything. We want to learn from you. Okay. Facebook group, Martial Arts Radio. This is not the behind the scenes group. That's the old group. The Martial Arts Radio page is what you're looking for. You can also email us. Andrew at Jeremy at whistlekick.com. Pardon me, my voice is starting to go. If you want to support us, Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash whistle kick. Andrew, I need you to finish it up.
Andrew Adams (26:03.37)
You can also if you haven't we haven't mentioned in a while, but we're on YouTube as well So you can watch us there and I don't think we've really mentioned this a whole lot but You can like the video on YouTube you can subscribe So you get all the videos every time it comes out. It really helps us out if you subscribe as well So please consider like subscribe Hit smash all those buttons. That's what everybody says when I watch you do smash those buttons do it
Jeremy (26:24.938)
It really does.
Jeremy (26:33.292)
Turn on notifications on YouTube.
Andrew Adams (26:34.548)
Turn on notifications, there you go. So, yeah.
Jeremy (26:37.644)
Yeah, and that's it. Whistlekick.com, WhistlekickMarshallArch. Radio.com, at Whistlekick, everywhere you can pick up. Until next time, train hard.
Andrew Adams (26:48.564)
Smile.
Jeremy (26:50.582)
And have a great day.