Teacher / Student Etiquette

A teacher requires adequate knowledge in their specific subject and the ability to transmit that knowledge to suit varying styles of learning. They must have people management skills and class planning expertise. They should be able to exercise control and command respect. This comes from experience and having good mentoring themselves. We pass on the knowledge.

This certainly holds true for tai chi.

Being a student is also not easy.

Neither is wearing two hats - being a teacher and a student concurrently. But here’s the thing, all the best teachers remain as committed students their entire lives. They never stop learning. In fact good teachers should consider themselves to be more student than teacher.

The point of this article is to highlight an issue that constantly befalls teachers when it’s their turn to be a student or when they are in a class being taught by a more senior Instructor.

It is absolutely incumbent upon that teacher-turned-student to shut the hell up.        Of course the exception to this is asking questions, which is always to be encouraged.

Whether you clearly see a classmate’s shortcomings or one or more students could do with your input to improve their skills, unless your help is specifically requested by the senior teacher, you must remain silent.

This is student etiquette. It is massively disrespectful to talk over a teacher, isolate one or more students for private tuition while the senior teacher is addressing the group or to offer advise to a student at any stage throughout the class - unless requested by the teacher.

It’s also interesting to note that without fail, the student or subordinate Instructor who is constantly compelled to intervene and play teacher when it’s their time to be student, is the one who possesses more faults than most and yet seems unaware of the need to focus on their own improvement. The fact that they are unable to make this transition from Instructor back to student is pivotal to their lack of development. The teacher who fails to be a good student is walking a dead end street.

I have experienced this first hand in numerous classes, none more obvious or frustrating than a long term association with a very dedicated and supportive Instructor in my school who would constantly micro-instruct, talk over a group while I was addressing them or butt in with his own rhetoric. For so many years he failed to grasp the fluidity required in maintaining that teacher/student balance. He only saw himself as a teacher and as a consequence failed to ever improve. In actual fact this kind of person actually goes backwards as they get better at their uncorrected mistakes.

In conclusion, becoming a teacher is a noble act and can help many people improve their lives. However, no matter how good a teacher you think you have become, when it’s time to learn from someone higher placed in the art and irrespective of how many students there are in the class, you must be quiet. Listen, learn and be respectful. Be a good student, it’s the only way you’ll make a good teacher.