Another character building episode...

Yahoo! I've finished my exams and my last lab report (and probably did a crappy job of it), so now I only have one more semester to freedom from Monash! Yay! I actually am looking forward to start working, even though everyone tells me it's more stressful and a dog-eat-dog environment....not looking forward to that, but more to the ability to earn my own moolah and be a bit more self-dependant....and also because I've spent the last 16 years of my life doing nothing but learning and studying, and I just need a change of environment. My main problem though, is deciding what exactly to work in....but that's a dilemma for another blog post. Today I have other matters pressing on my mind that I feel like blabbering about.
Been going through yet another one of those character building episodes of my life. Except this one is a much longer one than my "You pretty, I pretty" scary experience. It's been nothing but tough taking over one of my instructor's taekwondo classes since the beginning of this year. He's has more than a decade of experience teaching, and he teaches good. Whereas, for me even though I'd been assisting my instructor for years, I've only just begun to learn how to teach and lead an ENTIRE class. It's been tough coz' before this, I was familiar mostly only with the white belt taekwondo syllabus (I always got stuck with the whities coz' few other black belts have the patience to teach them. :P). Now I have to know the syllabus for ALL the belts inside out, which includes ten different belt levels, in order for me to teach it to the kids. And I have to think of creative and fun exercises for the kids. And I have to separate them according to their abilities and teach them different things or else the younger kids won't be able to catch up if I teach too advanced stuff, while the seniors will be bored if I teach the simple stuff. And I have to do all the administrative stuff. And I have to deal with the student's parents, most of whom are nice and reasonable, while others are just a big headache with their complaining. It's tough.
I know my instructor picked me to take over one of his classes coz' I've shown myself to be very capable as his assistant. I know I am responsible, willing to follow instructions,
and I taught the students really well as his assistant....which is not to boast, but I know that's how it is. But since I took over the class, parents have been doing a quite a bit of complaining about me to my instructor. In a way, their complaints are justified coz' when it comes to teaching an entire class of students of varying belt levels, I don't teach as well as my instructor and I know I've made a heap of mistakes, teaching things that were not appropriate for their abilities, not teaching them the whole syllabus in time for the grading test, sometimes even forgetting the syllabus. Before this, I could rely on my instructor to ask questions if I needed help. Now I have to rely solely on myself, and I've been making so many mistakes. It's been demoralizing, knowing I haven't been doing a very good job so far in running this class, and the parents complain a lot. Many times I've been tempted to just throw my hands up and tell my instructor I don't think I'm the best one to take over his class. But I've continued to stick to it and try not to be discouraged, coz' when I thought about it, I realised that leaders will always be criticised, and people tend to like to complain. And if I really want to learn to be a good leader, not just in taekwondo but in anything else in my life, I can't allow the criticism to bring me down so much that I just give up trying. I don't want to be a giver upper. I want to be someone who is able to take criticism, learn from it, but not be demoralized by it. I mean, if over more time, I still don't see my teaching improving much, then I'll know I'm really not the best for the job and I'll give it up. But now, I know my mistakes have been mostly due to lack of experience in leading a whole class on my own...and I need to give myself a chance to get more experience so I can be as good as my instructor one day. Fortunately, my instructor supports me all the way, and he always tells the complaining parents to give me a chance, or else no one will ever be able to take over from him in the coming years.
As if those problems weren't enough, another problem has cropped up recently that has been bugging me quite a bit. I had a misunderstanding with one of my assistants, who says in class sometimes I scold her or the other assistants, or refuse to take their suggestions in class even though what I do in class isn't very good. Her problem with me started two classes ago, when I had to be at the junior class late to do something, so I told her and another assistant to start the class first. When I got there, 20 minutes late, I found a bunch of students just milling around and couldn't find my assistants until a student showed me where they were.... sitting down somewhere and eating. Of course, I went up to them, asked them what the heck was going on and why they didn't start the class. And then I told them to come quick to get the class started. Obviously, I would've sounded annoyed, but to my assistant, it sounded like I was scolding the two of them, and it pissed her off. So she told me off after the class, saying that she didn't start the class coz' there were too few students and she told them to join the later class instead, so I should have asked her why earlier on. And then she went on to say I was scolding her and it was not the first time I had done that, before walking away in a huff. I wanted to talk to her about it, but I decided to leave it at that and hope she would cool down so later on, so I could talk to her. One week later, at the class, when I tried to talk to her, she just walked away when I call her and refused to talk to me. Fine. After the class, I emailed her and explained why I reacted the way I did, and she told me that for her it was unforgivable to scold her like that, and that I had done it before to the assistants. Sometimes they would try to help me by giving suggestions on what to teach, but I would say no and continue what I was doing even though it wasn't appropriate. To her, it seemed like I was disrespecting the assistants. To add to that, she implied that I had lost her as a friend because of it, and I was losing my other taekwondo friends as well.
Obviously it was quite unsettling to hear these things, but after really thinking about it, I do think that I did do things wrong when it came to teaching, but not when it came to how I treated the assistants. Pertaining to the incident that really pissed her off in the first place, if she had called me to let me know she had told the students to go to the later class, or at least informed me as soon as I had arrived at the school, I would've said ok. But she did neither, and when I arrived, I was wondering what was going on and my first reaction was to get the class going coz' I saw students milling around doing nothing. I am the instructor of that school, and it should be my call to make the decision to cancel the class or not. Not only did she not ask me before she made that decision, she couldn't be bothered to let me know as soon as I arrived....and was more concerned with eating a snack instead.
Second of all, I don't know what her definition of scolding is, but far as I can remember, I have never yelled at the assistants, or insulted them, or told them they were doing something wrong. I agree that sometimes they have suggested that I do different exercises and I told them no, probably in an annoyed manner which would've sounded disrespectful to them. But my reason for doing so is that if I'm in the middle of doing something with the kids and then my assistants suggest I do something else, I can't just say "Oh, ok, let's do it!" and drop whatever I'm doing right then and there. If I do, it would seem like I don't know what I'm doing and I do what the assistants say instead of the other way round. What kind of instructor would that make me? It would undermine my authority to the kids, and I can't allow that to happen. If they had taken me aside, away from the kids, and then made those suggestions, or talked to me after class, I would've gladly accepted their advice. But I cannot stand the assistants to be questioning my ability, no matter how justified, in front of the students, or else they will start questioning me too. I don't mean to say that I know everything... I've definitely done a lot of things wrong in my class. But I need my kids to think I am capable, or else I will just lose control of the class. And to me, refusing an assistant's suggestion is not scolding them. Sometimes I may sound not-so-nice when I tell them to do something...but to me that's not scolding either, coz' instructing my assistants is what I'm supposed to be doing too. I dunno, I guess a lot of times, I've sounded annoyed with my assistants, which made them think I was being rude to them. But to me, my first priority in the class is to teach the class and not to be buddy-buddy with the assistants. Outside of class, I joke with them and chat with them like friends, but in class, I'm the instructor and it's my job to tell them what to do. And I suppose my biggest mistake was not explaining my behaviour to my assistants and they take my behaviour to mean I'm disrespecting them.
In my email, I explained exactly the same thing to my assistant, hoping that she would understand. I even apologized for sounding rude or mad at her. I explained that I didn't even realise that I sounded rude to her and the others. To me, my mind is always so busy trying to think of how to run the class, that I probably never realised I wasn't talking so nice to the assistants. But even with my explanation, she still does not want to forgive me, and added that nice line about how I'd lost her as a friend, and some of the others. Of course it kinda stings to hear something like that, coz' obviously I would not like to lose my friends. But I thought about that too and realised, hey, if they all don't want to consider me a friend anymore, that's not my fault. I already apologized and explained myself to that one assistant of mine, and later on I will apologize to the others as well. If they refuse to accept my explanation and my apology like she did, then I'm not gonna mop about it. I've made my mistakes, and I can't turn back the clock and change everything I did. If I'm big enough to say sorry, but they're not big enough to accept it, then I'll know who my real friends are lah. To me, real friends would talk to me if they had a problem with me, instead of talking about me behind my back, coming to their own conclusions about what I do and then dropping me as a friend. I know sometimes I say stuff that hurts other people but I don't realise it. I did it before to my good buddy, Mei Ling, and she talked to me about it, I said I'm sorry and now we're still good buddies. And that's the way mature people ought to be behave.... not dwell continuously on how much they've been hurt and refuse to accept a heartfelt apology. But even if she continues to give me the cold shoulder, I'll still consider her, and the others, my friends. My instructor always tells us that our taekwondo gane should be like a family, and I agree. If anyone is going to divide the group, I don't want it to be me. I don't want to go around talking crap about other taekwondo people who bug me, and try to get people on my side. Even if that girl tells everyone else all sorts of bad crap about me, and I know she has, I'm not going to do the same thing to her. If they don't want to be my friend anymore, that's their choice. If they don't have the maturity to see me for who I am, I don't need those kind of people as friends. But I will still try my best to treat them as friends no matter what.
Haha, all my Christian friends who read this, I don't really need to tell you that I hope you'll pray for these issues right? :P Especially pray that I'll become a much better teacher and not make the same mistakes with my assistants. Thanks for reading all the way to the end too. Hehe!