This is the first blogpost where I'll talk about some of the issues that you'll face while teaching. This particular issue is fresh in my mind, so instead of letting my insights on this sit inside, I figured I'll allow myself 15-30 minutes to type as fast as possible and get this on the blog before trying to get more work done.... or maybe rest up some more and try to kick the remainder of this damn cold.
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Handholding is one of the most useful and useless parts of the teaching/learning process. For the really self-motivated, it's a very powerful means of walking a student through a process in a very piecemeal, step-by-step fashion with a ton of encouragement along the way. For these self-motivated and strong students, the handholding process is a form of very committed mentoring. It signifies a kind of high-level personal interest, attention, and devotion to the improvement of a particular student or disciple.
But the handholding process should be curtailed as quickly as humanly possible. The sooner a student has the chance to fly on their own (or crash and burn miserably), the faster they will learn the importance of what you've been teaching and how to apply it to their own lives. SUCCESSFUL APPLICATION or PROGRESS is THE deciding factor as to whether or not the student is getting what you're teaching or not. Anything less is fantasy or denial.
For the emotionally stunted, handholding is a crutch that encourages feebleness and dependence. These students will, even after long periods of instruction and detailed coaching, habitually ask you how their performance is. They use words to indicate that your opinion and your feeling about them decides their self-worth, whether they are conscious of it or not. In extreme cases, like one I just had to deal with, you can outline the process for a positive outcome and excellent progress to the nth degree, but they will ALWAYS leave themselves some sort of an "out", a backdoor, or some other means of denying total commitment.
The student I'm talking about had the audacity to tell me that "success is a decision", and angrily defended her inability to commit to doing what I'd laid out in high detail for her. Stifling my knee-jerk reaction to tell her to "Go and F--K right off, then!", I simply said "Enough" and ended the conversation.
The student I'm talking about has made considerable progress during the time I've been working with her, but the energy I have to put out to move her an inch out of her reflexive and defensive inertia is monumental. And for someone like me who absolutely disdains the "kiss my arse & coddle me indefinitely" method of pedagogy, having come from a traditional East Asian and military background, this is irritating beyond measure.
It'd be like having Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora spending months teaching me how to play their hit single "Dead or Alive" from scratch, but I spend a lot of time practicing without a strong intent, without a strong mind, without a strong and focused spirit. Instead of following his instructions and doing exactly what we practice doing together, I decide to waste time looking on Youtube or Wikipedia or somewhere else for shortcuts or tips or some "other" way of doing exactly what he taught me to do. Instead of practicing the way he laid out for me and trusting his experience and deepening my skill, I flounder about like a fish on dry land; flopping from one thing to another and making no real progress. I gain no real familiarity with what I need to, and I grow more anxious because I'm not confident in my ability to perform.
Whenever I try to play the song or a few bars in front of him or his other students, I always do so in an apologetic manner, doubtful of myself or what will come out from my guitar. This is a phenomenal waste of time for both myself as an aspiring guitarist and for my esteemed mentor. Skills practiced in a way that can only be duplicated in total privacy are like babies born into and raised in a sealed Ziploc bag; they die quickly due to the lack of energy put into them.
What you as instructors and instructor candidates have to decide is who is worth handholding, who is worth letting go of, and how much YOU are over-dependent on someone else. When I tell you to do something that's outside of your comfort zone, you have two real choices - DO IT with real commitment, long-term dedication, and enthusiasm, and grow stronger from the experience, or don't do it and tread water for the rest of your life.
2 comments:
Sifu,
Has it been your experience that this type of student ever evolves to be less dependent... on approval, excuses, outs.... etc.?
Or does it seem to be as fully-ingrained into their personality as anything else?
I know it would be hard to let go of someone you've already seen so much improvement from, but I understand the need (let alone the frustration), all the same.
There comes a time when there's more resistance than progress. If someone's expending so much energy resisting you, second-guessing you, and giving you attitude, their progress almost doesn't matter unless you're a masochist.
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