The Art in Teaching

I've written about creating in the moment before. It is a critical aspect of our training. Fights are not the beautiful coreographed dance we see in Kung Fu movies. It doesn't make sense to train as though this were the case. We need to be ready fir anything. Our techniques need to be adapted and changed to meet our needs moment by moment. We need to take our opponent into consideration. Is he or she tall, or short? Is he or she stronger than we are? What training has he or she had, if any? All of these factors affect how we need to fight. If we cannot adapt, we lose.
As in so many other areas, this holds true of teaching as well. When teaching Kung Fu we need to be ready to adapt our teaching according to the students who are present at the time. We need to take into account there interests and strengths and weaknesses. If I am prepared to teach forms but I have a large amount of students present it might be wise to teach something more conducive to a larger class size. Just like sizing up my opponent, I need to size up the class I am about to teach.
Sometimes we begin teaching and quickly realize that what we are doing isn't working as well as it should so we have to change our plan, on the spot. Knowing your subject matter well is a big help. When I am teaching forms I know the subject matter so it is easy to change up the way I am teaching them. Subjects that are more challenging for me are difficult because my teaching style is so much more rigid, it isn't as easy for me to adapt to the current situation. These are the areas I know I need to work.

In training and in teaching, we need to create in the moment.