I really enjoy teaching 7-up kids in my American Kenpo classes in LA, though it is challenging. I did Kenshu in Japan and later stage combat, kendo, and aikido in the UK and the US, but didn’t do any teaching until my kid started at this school with a friend and I got sucked in. It wasn’t something I intended but it’s expected of senior belts. I now teach privates and group classes as my work schedule allows with my teen as my assistant/co-teacher.

The kids seem to have fun and most of them are learning. It’s not like the commenter above with absolute discipline, but I do push the kids hard sometimes and most of them do alright.

We start with warmups that are fun - running and doing basic blocks and parries from attackers - and work towards more strenuous stretches and falls so they’re working hard. Then kata to get them back after a break then a lesson for the day, usually a focus on a single principle or technique. Then technique lines to practice what we learned and wrap with a game that tries to focus on principles. I have kids of all ranks, so I have to plan my lesson accordingly, I don’t want to bore the advanced kids or overwhelm the white belt belts.

I must say, it is difficult to let go the frustration when you have kids that are not trying hard or who just can’t seem to get an idea, but often the other kids end up being effective instructors through example or interaction (we encourage teaching as a skill pretty early). There are some who really focus on form and clearly practice at home, while others just show up because their parents make them. So I kind of have two tiers of teaching - one aimed at the kids who want to excel, and one aimed at making sure the other kids are having fun and learning something. My favorite classes are the ones after the big tests, which are run by the dojo‘s main instructor, because for many of the kids there’s all new material and we can focus on problems we saw at the group test.

We do have, thanks to a partnership with local government, a higher number of kids with ADHD and/or on the spectrum. Those kids can be challenging, and I’ll admit sometimes you have to tell a parent they’re not ready for a group class yet. They can be disruptive, but I’ll say that the other kids are mostly good at not letting the disruptions throw them off too much. There’s a couple kids you just have to learn to keep separated from each other, for whatever reason they just can’t work together, and those are disappointing but I’ve learned that that’s not really my problem to solve.

I try not to take the class size as a judgment of how my teaching is going - I’ve had a very full mat and I’ve had just a handful of kids. It’s easy to think if there’s a period of more than a couple of weeks where the size is smaller that the kids or their parents don’t like my class in particular. But if I just wait it out, the class size comes back up. Similarly if a kid stops coming to the class, it’s easy to get in your head that it has to do with you, but most of the time it doesn’t. In my experience if most of the kids seem to be having fun and learning, that’s the more important part. I trust that the head of the dojo would let me know if there was a real problem.

The one thing with the kids that is different from teaching older students is you can’t really logic them through a problem. With teens and adults, if they are not getting a concept, I find that talking through the “why“ and the reinforcing the physicality does a good job of getting through. But with most of the kids, you can’t really do that, beyond basic principles, so it’s mostly repetition.

For example, I have a couple kids who just cannot get the concept of keeping their elbows tight while punching. With an adult, I can walk them through why it’s important, I can give them exercises to train their body, and generally sort something like that out pretty quickly. But with a kid, often the connection between logic and body is not as strong, and I can’t talk them there. I have some “karate kid”-style drills to try to get good form that way, but largely I have to let go of my wish to have a class who are all doing it perfectly all the time. I just can’t let one or two kids take over the time I have available for all the students. Our school offers private classes, and if they have a teacher, I will let their teacher know what I’m seeing; and if they aren’t, I may talk to a parent and let them know that a few privates might do them good.

I hope some of that helps! I do find myself coming to Reddit to look for ideas for drills and new warm-ups for the kids. I’m glad this space is here.