By Freddie K. Nielsen, Member until 2012

I had been looking forward to this instructor course aimed at 10th and 9th kyu.. What would it include? As always, we had to bring a gi and a water bottle, so we probably had to do some karate. We had arrived in good time and were able to get a cup of coffee from the tank next door. We then took it in the lovely sunny weather outside Tjørnelyskolen, all the while we could see the other expectant students arriving.

The course consisted of 2 parts: First, a theoretical introduction that lasted approx. half an hour, and then a practical part that lasted about 2½ hours.

The theoretical part was started by Kimu Sensei who talked about the overall purpose of the course and the increasing need for instructors at all levels as more and more members become in the individual clubs.

Jens Kyoshi then talked about some of the challenges you can face as an instructor, partly from the different types of students and partly from various external disturbing elements. Finally, Jens Kyoshi introduced the role-plays that we had to work with for the rest of the morning.

We were now divided into groups and had to play through different cases with different role distributions. In each case, there were two who had to play instructors, while the others had to play different more or less attention-demanding students. It was, for example, a cross teenage girl and an aggressive boy. In some of the groups there were also a few normal students, but of course they were no longer dominant.

The instructors now had to try to carry out a training session with various basic techniques from the 9th and 10th kyu syllabus, while the others had to play their roles, which would then mean a greater or lesser degree of chaos in the group. It was then that the challenges really presented themselves.

The directors distributed the roles between them, so that they took turns playing director and assistant director respectively. The instructor could then, for example, show a shi-ho and try to concentrate on it, while the assistant instructor went around and tried to solve the many problems that constantly arose. Suddenly, on top of all the problems in the group, there could be a parent who wanted to interfere or a drunk person who wanted to participate in the training. Yes, there was enough to see.

After each case, we made a short summary where we e.g. discussed what is required of a director and what went well and what went wrong. We discussed dimensions such as friendliness, authority and framework. We also found out how important it is with the distribution of roles between instructor and assistant instructor.

There was a very nice and positive atmosphere in the groups where both praise and constructive criticism were given. Because of course good advice was needed when things went wrong, which it did quite a few times. There were quite a few laughs at the good acting performances, and on the whole the fun and the serious and challenging went nicely hand in hand with each other.

Of course, we didn't learn to become instructors in 3 hours, but we got a first insight into what it can entail, and at the same time it created a great understanding and respect for the work the instructors do.