Let Them Teach

So you’re nearing the end of a lesson, you’re brain is almost entirely full of new ideas that are going to help get you unstuck on that one thing that’s been bothering you for months. Suddenly someone else comes up to you and your instructor and starts commenting on a totally unrelated part of your game. How do you as a student react to this?

A. I have no idea what’s going on anymore. What was that last thing we were just covering?

B. I’m really glad to have gotten all this information at once. I definitely feel like this has sped up my learning journey.

If you, like me, answered with option A then hopefully the rest of this article will help you out.

The above scenario is something I see on almost a weekly basis at my various practices. One instructor is giving an intentionally limited lesson that only covers one or two things in order to help the student get those things down without getting sidetracked or firehosed. Then, all of a sudden, one of the other instructors comes by after seeing something wrong with the student’s technique. While this is almost always out of a place of wanting to help, the intention and the result just don’t line up.

Not only has the second instructor now distracted from what was hopefully an intentionally structured lesson, but on top of that their advice was entirely unsolicited. If everyone is chatting at the pub after practice and you join in that’s one thing, but a fencing lesson is an entirely different context. This wasn’t an open conversation with no end in mind. It’s a way of helping someone achieve a very specific goal at a very specific time.

Diving into a little more detail, here’s an inexhaustive list of issues with unsolicited teaching.

1. It derails the lesson as planned. I’ve got multiple shelves of fencing books at home, but hitting someone with all of them at once isn’t going to get things across any faster.

2. It undermines the authority of the first teacher. You coming in shows that you don’t believe the first instructor was getting across everything they should have. This is even more pronounced when there’s differences in age, gender, rank, etc. between the two instructors.

3. Lessons aren’t there for instructors to show off. Coming in referencing an entirely different source or illuminating something the other instructor hadn’t pointed out moves the focus away from the student and on to you.

4. It’s likely to result in the lesson violating the Three to One rule of teaching. The second instructor’s advice is going to come in the form of a monologue as opposed to additional reps. This now means the student is spending even more of their time in practice listening to people talk as opposed to actually use their sword.

So what can you do to help avoid this? Here’s a few ideas.

1. Shut up. Literally just let the other person teach. It doesn’t matter if they aren’t at your caliber, you jumping in isn’t going to make things better. I know this is something I’ve had to learn both as an inexperienced teacher as well as later on as one with a little bit more background.

2. Save if for later. At a typical practice I tend to spend about 20 minutes doing one on one work with each person. If you want to grab them afterwards and give an additional lesson that’s fine. Just wait until the previous instructor is done.

3. Don’t go to that class. So I was at a teaching event recently where I saw a few classes being taught by more junior members of the community covering areas I have a decent amount of expertise in. I knew that if I sat there for the full hour, there was no way I was going to be able to resist the urge to constantly interject. As a result I only sat in for a couple minutes to get an idea of how the other person taught and then left silently to go and do something else with my day. Having someone highjack your lesson when it’s a multi-person class as opposed to a one on one can lead to an even worse learning experience because now ten people are lost instead of just one.

4. Agree to co-teach beforehand. If you’ve chatted with one of the other instructors ahead of time and gotten their consent to co-lead a session, that’s great. Watching two instructors weave in and out, complimenting each other’s strengths and filling in for the other’s weaknesses can be a beautiful thing. The key part to this is to ask ahead of time instead of just deciding to interject on the fly.

5. Ask. This is just basic manners. If you see someone struggling with a lesson, it’s okay to go up to the teacher and ask, “Hey, is it okay if I add something in that might help?” The trick here is that you have to wait a couple seconds in case they say “no” and to respect them if that’s the answer they give. Sometimes, especially when you’re a newer instructor, it can be hard to ask for help when you’re supposed to be the authority figure. However, having someone else swoop in and just take over your lesson for you without asking doesn’t help you to grow as a teacher.

6. Tell that person to shut the fuck up. If someone comes over to a lesson you’re giving and tries to take the reins from you, you have my express permission to kindly tell them, “Thank you, I’ve got this covered.” Unfortunately problem children almost neve realize that they’re the problem and sometimes you have to be the adult and tell them to leave. This isn’t a particularly comfortable situation even as an experienced teacher (and is even harder the newer you are to this), but sometimes it’s just something that needs to be done.

Hopefully this helps you regardless of whether you’re brand new to this or have been top dog for decades. We all want to help and that’s something I love about this community, but it’s important to identify which of our actions lift people up and which ones drag people down.

For another look at this same topic, I highly recommend this short and sweet article focusing more on student to student interactions: https://www.academieduello.com/news-blog/unsolicited-help-isnt-help-harm/

A few quick updates. First, I’m going to be teaching a one day rapier intensive this Saturday just outside of Akron, OH. This is going to be a jam packed day where the attendees get to decide what we go over. https://www.facebook.com/events/965422374828012

Next, I’ll be teaching a one day track on Bolognese longsword for the Longsword Symposium just east of St. Louis on November 9th. https://www.facebook.com/events/442306731738275

My book is still coming along. I spent today getting things set up with the printing service, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem any option for preorders, so stay tuned.

Finally, I had a truly wonderful time getting to teach at VISS last month. My class on finding your area of excellence seemed to go over really well and I can’t wait to bring it out again. So if you’ve got a teaching event and want someone to give people some more hands on coaching as opposed to memorizing plays, I’d be more than happy to bring my class your way. If you’re curious, you can read more about how the event went here: https://pathofthesword.com/vancouver-international-swordplay-symposium-2024-in-review/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3_G7P0xfeURPDvxf4IYB3AH9TAD2N7H57OfTTe8BWpdFXgOAjpdQGEnbM_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw