Thoughts on teaching

This semester I've been skipping Stoccata training, and getting to the SCA Rowany training night instead on Mondays. It's a novel experience for me.

The small core of people turning up are all concentrating on analysing and learning various bits and pieces from manuals. There's one set working through I.33, another set doing Spanish, and me being a general answer resource.

Young Justine was working on getting the feel of her lunge right, and failing miserably. It's one reason why you need a spotter to help you correct problems. The core issue was she was dropping her head to look at her feet. This of course led to cascading weight shift, and poor lunges. I spent a bit of one on one time with her, getting her to first lift her head, then fixing the landing of the front foot etc. By the end of 20 minutes she had improved tremendously. It's the little wins like this that help me keep going. Group classes are very draining as there's only so much of me I can spread around. Working with Justine was enervating tonight, and I guess that I've got emotional investment in seeing my students progress. I feed off their excitement and pleasure when they finally understand a technique.

Similarly, Ray and Louise had hit a wall with their I.33 work. It was to do with the section on falling under the sword. They'd mostly sussed it, but had been turning the false edge too early and then stepping too far forward. A quick demo, and some explanation of the concept of moving along the tangent to the engagement, and they were sorted. Distance was sorted, the technique hit properly and I'm going to have to keep an eye on those two when we bout sword and buckler next. They are rapidly becoming efficient Targhettiere.

The last group was Loni and Justine who are working through the Spanish rapier notes from Puck and Mary Curtis. (see www.destreza.us) They'd hit a snag on the technique of weak against the strong, which is similar to the Italian envelopment. I showed them what I thought it read like, and it worked. It was a small matter of the differences of where we individually made the engagement. I was close to the medole, they were closer to the debole. I was surprised at the difference in our natural inclinations to make the action.

I ended up with a really enjoyable night's practice. I came away feeling tired but enervated, versus the usual tired and exhausted. Teaching is something I can do but find to be energy intensive due to my introverted nature. The success of tonight made me realise how much I enjoy working with motivated self-starters. I forget that feeling when I teach because most of the students are consumers. It also reminded me why so many people seek me out as a teacher. I don't know of many generalists with a solid background in fencing theory. I could bounce from Italian rapier, to early German sword and buckler, and provide insights to Spanish rapier. Sometimes I scare myself with the breadth of understanding. The first love is the Italian schools but I do actually enjoy all types of fencing.

Well till next time,
Rick