Teaching How To Teach

Is this going to be my thoughts on recursion? Some weird take on Inception?  No, this is what I actually did today.

We had leadership class at TKD. At my dojang, once you reach 4th Geup (start at 10 as a white belt, count down to 1 which is just before 1st Dan black), you are eligible to join leadership class.  Join leadership is a requirement to reach to reach 2nd degree black belt. In leadership class, we learn how to teach lower level belts their curriculum. Up until today, I had only participated in this class really as a student.

Today, as a junior instructor, I had to teach the other students how to teach the curriculum. This was one part of becoming an instructor that hadn't crossed my mind. It's one thing to be able to teach the core curriculum that you've been practicing yourself for so long. However, it's quite another to teach a topic that you aren't so sure you've got handled right yourself.

I think I did ok. The number 1 fear that most people have is the fear of public speaking. Getting people, especially kids, to overcome that fear and at least attempt to teach others is a bit of a reward. I'm happy to say that all of my group was able to at least go through this exercise once, even if none of them did a perfect job. (I know I didn't).