Ready to Teach?

[bennyvt]

Hi
My teacher is called "Bill", his teacher is "barry". We only call barry sifu to tease him. He doesnt like to be called a sifu he finds it strange. Bill only got Sifu papers as a legal and insurance thing.
I depends on what you are teaching, as long as you know why they need to do it and all the steps needed it should be fine. Except chi sao, my teacher was allowed to teach chum kiu but not chi sao until barry said he was ready. Barry strongly believe that you have to learn chi sao right or your training is stuffed.
Oh and Barry also doesnt think he has finished the system as he is still working on a bit of the knife form. And he finished the forms etc in the seventies but he says you are learning until you die.
So it probably seems weird that in other posts I call them bill and barry but this is no disrespect. They dont need titles to show who they are, actions speak louder then words. And in australia we tend to be pretty laid back.

[Achilles1987]

In my organisation and in all GM Leung Ting Style based organisations it requires the "SiFu" title to make examination and give degrees to students. For being a Sifu you need to be at least 2nd Tecnician Grade but normally a person becomes a Sifu at 3rd Tecnician Grade and that means approx. 9 years of active learning and practice of the style. In my opinion a you do not need to be a SiFu to teach but you need at least 12th Student Grade approx. 3 years of active learning and practice. That means full knowledge on Siu nim Tau and Chum Kiu forms and their applications and superior knowledge of self-defence in practical.

[bennyvt]

This is not meant as a thing against other schools but I have never really liked the whole grading system thing. I used to teach children and I had to make a grading system because I felt children needed the encouragement and sense of accomplishment that comes from the symbol of the grading. But I have always hated the belt system or other alternatives as several reasons. *People think that the title actually means something*It is normally used as a marketing tool and cost money each time you go up levels*As more people start there is a pyramid style of title meaning that eventually people have to make others masters, grandmasters and great grandmasters because you have to move other people up levels so they cant be on the same one.
*Politics start to become involved on who should move up etc. VT has never needed grading, in our school you learn until you are told that you can run a school (there are only 6 people that are allowed to run a Barry lee school in Australia maybe one or two in germany). As soon as you learn something you are helping to teach others that are junior to you so really you are always teaching. You even teach you teacher sometimes. When I went to china I found people that needed you to call them things so they felt important. Others knew they were good so didn’t need it, Sifu Cliff Au Yeung being a prime example, he is Cliff I call him cliff and deeply respect him. Most others were really nice people that talked to you normally. In my experience the people that could kill you are the nicest as they know they can they don’t have to prove it to themselves by people falling over them.
But I also understand the need for people to be able to tell if people are legit, but there are so many different levels of ability that it makes it very hard. You also have people that claim stuff that isn’t right so you need some sort of middle ground.
In the history of vt peoples titles especially ones given to themself have been a big problem

[Paul T England]

Hi,

You should be able to teach what you know.

I think if you are helping your sifu or teaching a few friends then you can start teaching early on, let’s say after SNT. If you are teaching publicly then you should be close to Black Belt / Sash level and for Wing chun I would say have at least a solid SNT & CK + some dummy or 3rd form. (Or 3-4 years experience as you would expect from a brown or black belt)

Paul