Teachers and students perceptions

What we did on Sunday 1 April 2012

One of our long term members has cerebral palsy and is undergoing a difficult period.  He is moving towards mobilising himself again so that he can get back into the art proper and begin to take part in class activities.  This involves specific strengthening and mobility exercises. Today’s achievement was taking three steps unaided.  Made a deal with him that he walks unaided at least one step for every pound weight I loose for the remainder of the year!

 

All kata practised with an emphasis on Kata Shinzen.

Subsequent discussion about member’s perceptions regarding training, both students and teachers.  This is an important and difficult subject to broach for it involves looking impartially at the roles of both student and teacher without clinging to preconceived ideas.  I am obliged to voice my own standpoint in all this; that a Shinseido teacher’s role is to help every student realise his or her own potential and ambitions within the framework called Shinseido.  Members will have different aims and different ideas about what the art is for them personally.  It is the teacher’s role to look at the student with a wholistic perspective deciding the best way forward for that person.  This is not about teaching by rote or teaching to a fixed model.  Both of these methods of learning are important but have to be balanced against the individual needs both physiologically and perceptually.  In one sense two types of student arrive at our doors: the complete novice with a mind like a blank piece of paper and the student who has trained in another system or other systems and has a range of experience and perceptions that may not be in accord with the methods of Shinseido.  The first person is easy to teach in one respect because one doesn’t have to work against opposing perceptions, all information and influence is absorbed more or less willingly.  Because of this the Shinseido teacher carries a great responsibility to provide sound and accurate information.  The second type of person comes with a great deal of baggage and if one is lucky, that baggage will be in accord with Shinseido principles and concepts.  If we are unlucky much work will have to be done in undoing erroneous ideas and practises.  The student is likely to fight tooth and nail in his or her mind against different ideas.  Anyone’s formative training, no matter what it is or how accurate it is, will always be the most powerful and indelible.  Then there is the matter of the inner person, who that person is, who they think they are, where they want to go on balance with where a teacher might perceive they need to go.  It is not the job of a Shinseido teacher to change the personality and character of an individual just to suit the workings of the system.  Shinseido teachers are experienced and have a great deal of insight.  They are able to see where weaknesses lie and steer a student accordingly but they must never fall into the trap of thinking every student who comes into our system has to be forged into yet another clone, another robot off the production line.  One student will be good at some things while another student will be good at other things.  It is for the teacher to recognise strengths and weaknesses and to capitalise on them. Then there is the student’s perceived reasons for doing the training in the first place, why did he or she start, what do they hope to gain from the training?  What do they think the art actually is and how it will serve them?  What dreams and aspirations do they have for their training? These things have to be discovered and taken into account by the teacher.  Young minds are impressionable and inexperienced, it is the teachers role to steer a wise course, but older students, particularly those who may even be retired have already formed a good and powerful sense of where they are at, where they want to be for the last years of their lives.  Trying to teach an old dog new tricks can be like banging your head on a wall and begs the question, do we have a right to do that or do we need to do that?  It is hardly appropriate for a teacher, particularly a much younger teacher to be calling the learning shots in these instances.  We need to transcend the perceived need to mould students in a particular way, to make them all look the same.  This demands questioning why we want a particular result, is it really for the purpose of achieving a functional, practical, mechanically efficient result, or is it more to do with the way we ‘think’ a technique should look according to the orthodox manner of execution?  We Shinseido teachers are challenged to look at a different manner of execution and ask why it is necessary to change it.  If it is effective, if it works, if it is not detrimental to the body in any way, we may not actually need to change it.  Having said this, the informed Shinseido teacher will know that absolute functionality exists within quite strict and limited boundaries.  The answer for the teacher must be to teach from the perspective of functionality not form.  The form will look after itself if the technique is good and functional.  The manner of execution is another matter and while the beginning student needs guidance, I am of the opinion that things should be moved on relatively quickly to a point where a student is able to make decisions as to speed and quality of a movement depending upon the visualisation in the moment.  This is akin to teaching people to paint or play a musical instrument; we want to encourage individual interpretation, more so as a student becomes more competent and knowledgeable about what he or she is doing. On the other side of the fence, the student must have trust and faith in the teacher and listen to the good advice given, but always underpinned by sound common sense.  Even the newest most inexperienced student knows intuitively when something is bad for or destructive to the body for example.  Everything has to be done within the bounds of common sense.  Much more could be said about this but I ask only that Shinseido teachers do not develop closed dogmatic minds and that students embrace the sound advice provided.