A little background. The first part of this story is going to come across as melancholy or even whiny, but stay with me, as it has a positive lesson and generally happy ending.

For the longest time I have loved the martial arts. As a kid I was a Saturday morning “Hong Kong Theater” junky and loved the old “Samurai” movies like the Zatoichi series and Yojimbo. I dabbled in this and that, as a student, for years until I started into Judo at college. From there I found an aikido club and ultimately I joined an aikido school in upstate New York, in my early twenties. The school I joined was part of a small organization of “aikido” schools based primarily on the eastern seaboard. In this organization, Shodans or Nidans ran most of the schools. I never thought anything odd about this because my experience was not broad enough to recognize that in the U.S. there were many schools run by exceptionally talented teachers who were far more experienced. My town simply did not have the 5th or 6th Dan contingent. There were also no schools of any of the better-known aikido associations near my home.

By the time I was 25 I knew that my life was going to be centered around Aikido and that I was going to be a teacher someday. I moved to the Seattle area in ’99 and took on the responsibilities as an assistant instructor in a school. I was counting the days to my promotion, within that organization, to Shodan. Within weeks after my successful test I was searching for the location for my long planned dojo. I found, leased and renovated my space and opened up that fall. I was blessed with nearly instant success. The dojo was profitable within 3 months and I have made a living (albeit not a great living,) ever since. Here is where the point of this essay comes in… I have not been happy for a long time now. Why? Because the more I learned, the more I realized that I had no business being in the business.

Shortly after moving to Seattle I ventured out into the martial arts community in our city. I recognized immediately that my education thus far had been, shall I say, lacking. (The folks within my organization had been very closed-minded and strongly discouraged any cross training or outside learning. In hindsight, as I write this years later, I believe they felt and continue to feel threatened by the teachings they do not understand.) I attended a seminar with Mitsugi Saotome and was blown away by some of what he was doing, and was clearly unable to operate at a level with some of the people in attendance. From then on I continued to attend local seminars and classes at several schools, and often would drop in at George Ledyard — Sensei’s weapons or intermediate level classes to “cross train”.

So, let me get back to my dojo. We had been running along on good steam for about a year, operating under my association’s curriculum, and I was wholeheartedly dissatisfied with the level of training. My students were doing well, but I wanted to expose them to more of the “Traditional” teachings most of you all take for granted. To make a long story short, I began to teach two “tracks” of curriculum in the school. This made the powers-that-be of my organization very irritated, which upset me because of how little they understood about humility and the need to continue to learn, even as teachers. Ultimately I left that organization. We floated independently for about a year until after a seminar with Hiroshi Ikeda Shihan, Ledyard Sensei casually invited me to align the school within the ASU organization. I brought it to a vote with my students and we joined. We spent the next year “catching up” and learning the fundamentals of the ASU curriculum, and eventually started to “get it”. My students are now testing and taking rank within Saotome Shihan’s organization.

The Steps of teaching.

I said I was unhappy. This is because I had realized that I was in over my head. I felt like I was struggling with fundamental principles therefore I had no business being a teacher. There were so many things that I have been learning over the past few years. I have learned more in four years than I did the ten years previous. I quote myself from conversations that I have had with several teachers, “…if I could do it again, I never would have opened the dojo. I would have stayed as a student for another decade.” People would kindly reply that I was wrong, and that I was “Doing great”. But I truly felt that with great teachers all around, why was I running a school as a Shodan or Nidan? Until recently I have been depressed, as I could not identify a reason that anybody with my lack of experience should be a teacher. I said ‘until recently’ because I think that I understand now. It is this understanding that brings me to write this article. I thought that if I shared my story, I might help others like me to feel more at ease in their teaching.

The ‘Steps of Teaching’ is a theory, or at least a rationalization for my existence at this point in my life. Why do we need low rank teachers and schools like mine? Without trying to insult my teachers and the Shihan that I respect so much, it is because people like the Shodans, Nidans and Sandans may be better teachers for beginners. Here is why I say this. I have noticed at seminars as well as classes with the senior instructors, that often the less experienced students come away having not learned as much because they do not process the teaching as well as their sempai. I also realize, and this relates to the previous statement, that as teachers get more experienced, they begin to understand principle and technique in ways that are astounding, but that cannot be explained easily to new students. They often want to share this knowledge with all students but the beginners won’t usually get it. Mid-range students, like me, begin to perceive the lessons of our teachers and we work with them into our own level of understanding, and then are more likely to explain the roots of the lesson to our students, because we still think in similar ways to beginners. We are not as far removed from being beginners so we break down the more complex lessons into terms that our students may grasp.

This is where the ‘Steps” concept comes in. Last summer I finally started to recognize that the Shihan need the high ranking instructors to help them to spread their teachings to the younger, new instructors, and people like the Shodans and Nidans are needed to introduce aikido to a new generation of students. We get people started on the road into aikido land, and when they are ready we push them to start training with the “Big Dogs”. As we do this, we get better and learn more and as we create more beginning instructors, we ourselves will move forward.

The system is like a staircase. Imagine four flights to reach the view deck on top of the building. (This is where we might think O’Sensei might have been hanging out.) On the uppermost flight of stairs are the Shihan. Operating at a level out of sight from those of us on the ground level flights. They are at the top of their game and will soon arrive to a level with an unobstructed view of the world of aikido. Their students are on the 3rd flight of stairs or the second landing starting up at a good pace. These high level students have passed from being intermediate level practitioners to being true experts at their craft, but with much still to learn. Then we come to the intermediate and beginning instructors. We are on the second flight of stairs or climbing off of the first landing. We understand a world of martial arts information and are fresh and excited to teach, but we have a long way to go. Because we are still so close to the first flight of stairs below us we can easily encourage and talk to the beginners below. They can see us climbing and understand what to do. The beginners are on the first flight and exited about reaching that first landing. Some of them are just taking their first steps. How exiting it would be to be just starting out again!

I can still remember how cool this all was when I first entered a dojo. When I am in that kind of a mood, it makes teaching fun and easy. I relate to the new folks better when I think of the joy and anticipation I got when I began training. I still get exited when I train with the “Big Dogs”, and my instructor blows me away with the stuff he knows and the things he can do, but it is not the same as when I was brand new. So I have a new and much more content outlook on my reasons for being a teacher. My second flight of steps has begun and I have a crowd of people who will hopefully climb up after me and with luck push past me to go walk with my instructor up the stairs. I see my job almost as a feeder for my instructor. If I have students that are really getting it, I will encourage them to start training with him if it would be in their best interest. In the meantime I will steadily trudge ever upwards, and hopefully more people will become fellow “low rank” instructors. We will be needed to introduce aikido to another generation of folks. I am excited about the future again. Cool.