Karate moms

[Hoot]

I'm curious, does your dojang publicly post which instructor will teach each class?

 

DS15 is a 2nd degree black belt and has been in the same studio for about 10 yrs. Ownership of the studio has changed hands more than once in that time and many instructors have come and gone. Some have been fabulous while others, not so much. In all of ds's years here though I have never once complained. I understand that not everyone is a great instructor regardless of what their own personal skill level may be.

 

Anyway, there is now an instructor who is just truly and honestly awful. We're stuck with him though because he's the son of some regional big shot in our discipline. We've given this guy a fair shake but I'm done and ds is to the point of wanting to quit. All of the other instructors are great, but this guy simply shouldn't teach anything EVER. I've requested that they post a schedule so that we can simply avoid him. You'd think I'm asking for the moon to be personalized and gift-wrapped though. Is this really all that unreasonable of a request?

[dirty ethel rackham]

My boys took karate for over 10 years.  I don't recall that they ever posted a schedule of which instructors were teaching what class because they were often left scrambling trying to make sure each class was covered by an instructor that would work well for that class (i.e. someone who likes kids teaching the kids' classes.)  However, most instructors had a fairly predictable schedule (Sensei O usually did the Monday night class.  Sensei P did the Wednesday one, one of the teens taught the really little kids, etc.) 

 

In your situation, instead of trying to avoid a certain instructor, I would try to seek out instructors that your son likes and ask when that one usually teaches.  If that doesn't work, I would seriously consider changing dojos, mostly because they don't seem to be all that concerned about quality and responsiveness to their customers.

[Mnemosyne]

I took karate for about 7 years, there was never a schedule, but it was almost always the owner, occasionally he'd have another black belt teach.

[happypamama]

Ours doesn't, but ours is a small dojang, I think, and the owner/head instructor is almost always there, if not teaching, and he keeps a tight rein on the assistant teachers, from what I gather. My kids usually attend his homeschool class, which he almost always teaches himself, but a few times they've attended the evening class, and a couple of the other black belts have taught. We haven't been there long enough for me to know if the instructors tend to rotate or not. They've been really great with the kids and have been a good complement to the usual instructor. However, if I had a problem with a teacher, I'd talk to the owner/head instructor before just simply trying to avoid a teacher I didn't like, and I get the feeling that our teacher would welcome a question from a concerned parent and be happy to discuss my concerns.

[ashfern]

Ours is small so only has one instructor. The owner does the one-on-one first class.

[vettechmomof2]

Owner instructs each class and black belt members assist by leading stretches, etc.

 

[jenn-]

We always play the guessing game as to who will be teaching any given class any given week.  Right now we are down to the owner and one reluctant sub because the second in command had surgery and is out for a couple of more weeks.  Next week will be fun with the owner gone and leaving some of her teaching assistants (those that help her out but don't teach their own classes) in charge.  She is heading to an out of town wedding for her son, so she didn't have a whole lot of choices left.  I think this is a sport where sometimes there can be some consistency, but often there is some fluctuation as to who is available and wants to teach.  What makes this instructor so bad?  No control of the class?  Insanely difficult? Appears to have no rhyme or reason to his classes?

[Catherine]

This is very different from our karate experience. There is only one sensei at our dojo-Sensei Gene, and he is the only teacher. Since the group is small, everyone knows everyone else. Though I will say that when Sensei had shoulder surgery, the only black belt I have seen in 10 years, who just had finished the black best test, taught his fellow students until Gene was able to come back. In our dojo, the brown belts (there are 2) are both called "sempai" and assist in teaching some parts of the class. Maybe it's because our group is small.

[Berta]

Our dojo is small too. We have the Shihan, who is an 8th degree black belt, Sensei M who is 3rd degree black belt and Sensei B who is first degree black belt. It's usually the same Sensei in the daytime and afternoon, and the Shihan usually comes in for the afternoon/evening classes.

 

My daughter is one of the assistant Sensei's, as is almost all of the kids in the "Black belt club". These are kids that have decided to work to black belt and can come to as many classes per week as they want. Being in the BBC they are required to help teach two classes per month. My daughter helps in 4 each week.

 

Shameless mommy brag: My daughter is on the competition team. She won in both the State and Regional Qualifiers and a few weeks ago she won the gold medal and title of 2014 National Champion at the AAU Nationals in Ft. Lauderdale.

[hillfarm]

Our facility is small but we do occasionally have a surprise instructor if something comes up and our regular instructor is called away. I like Dirty Ethel's suggestion of finding out when the good ones teach and then following them. If asked why you don't attend Joe's class, you can just say that he's not the best fit for your ds, but Mike and Tom are.

 

IMO there is nothing wrong with not hiding the fact that you don't like Joe's teaching. Although there are many excellent martial artists, not all of them have received the gift of being able to teach it. And life is too short to spend it with them. Especially if you are paying for the privilege.

[mathnerd]

Ours is a huge facility with almost a dozen instructors (with a lot of teens helping). We have a couple of awful instructors like you describe. Our facility assigns certain instructors to certain floors at certain times of the day. They never publish the name of the instructors in their schedule, but they publish the floor number and belt color for each class.

 

What we do is to talk to the instructor who my son likes a lot and ask him at what times he teaches and we show up at that time - the instructor we like actually was very flattered that we wanted to attend his classes in particular and wrote down his schedule for us. If we miss that instructor due to a scheduling conflict with other activities, we go to the class that the Master Instructor teaches and that is always good. So, ask your son to pick his instructor of choice, talk to that person and find out the schedule.