How Teaching 5-Year-Olds to Fight Made Me a Better Writer
Also, my first eBook is almost done!
This summer, I worked at a friend’s martial arts gym covering his kids and adults Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes. I’ve been a martial arts teacher for a few years now, but this was my first time running a school, building a curriculum, and most importantly, my first time teaching kids.
When I found out I was going to spend this summer teaching kid’s Jiu-Jitsu, I immediately was met with flashbacks to my summer spent as a camp counselor when I was in college.
I hated being a camp counselor.
The kids were mean to each other, they didn’t listen to anyone, and I spent every single lunch break sweating my butt off while I tried to make sure that little Derrick didn’t get within 50 feet of the nearest peanut butter sandwich. Being a camp counselor was basically like being a glorified babysitter.
But teaching kids how to fight each other was nothing like that. Teaching kids how to fight was surprisingly one of the most rewarding gigs that I’ve had in a long time. It helped me develop my skills as a teacher, a leader, and surprisingly, as a writer as well.
These are the biggest writing-related takeaways I learned from the last 8 weeks of explaining complex, difficult, and sometimes even dangerous maneuvers to a room full of children between ages 4–13.
Crappy stories make crappy teachers
During one of the first classes that I taught, I made the mistake of leaving my Jiu-Jitsu brown belt at home. Because of this, I wore a white belt (which is the “beginner belt) during class instead. This confused the heck out of the kids. I mean, I was supposed to be their highly qualified coach for the summer, and I was wearing a white belt? It was confusing to everyone, especially for 5-year-olds.
I had to think on my feet to explain why I was wearing the white belt, so I made up this elaborate story about how I’d lost a “super fight” to someone over the weekend, and he had taken my belt from me (this would never happen in real life, my life is nothing like 1980s martial arts movies). A couple of kids (the older ones) laughed, but the younger kids actually thought that I had been “demoted” to white belt, and they became anxious and detached from the class. I only know this because one of them actually called the gym later that day to ask why I was really wearing the white belt and if I was doing okay after I’d been demoted.
Even if you’ve never done martial arts before, you can understand how this was a minor fiasco at the gym.
What I learned from this incident is that the words you say do not belong to you once you say them. The same is true for writing. Once you share a story with the world, it’s up to anyone to judge, distort, and make up their own thoughts about it. Their reactions to your story will dictate how they perceive you going forward.
That’s why you have to be incredibly careful with your words.
Writing is just really fancy teaching
Every single piece of writing is some sort of lesson.
Whether it’s a blog post, a memoir, a novel, or even just a haiku, every idea communicated through writing is a lesson that we’ve learned throughout our lives. All writers are teachers in some way. The quicker that we can understand that, the better we’ll become at our craft. When I first started teaching Jiu-Jitsu, I honestly did it just for myself. Sure, I needed the money, but really, I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it because I’d always respected my teachers growing up. I wanted to satisfy my ego.
The same is true for writing, I started writing for myself. I wanted to express myself, my ideas, and I wanted to prove that I could be a good writer because I’d always loved stories, movies, and books growing up.
But the reasons that I started and the reason that I keep going are very different. To me, telling stories and teaching children how to armbars are one and the same — they’re both mediums of expression that can be harnessed to teach life lessons, inspire personal growth, and help people (regardless of age) live better lives.
Everything I write, whether it’s fiction, a blog post, or a Jiu-Jitsu lesson plan is a lesson to help someone grow. I have a responsibility to share good lessons.
Patience is the most important tool
One of the most difficult parts of teaching children difficult movements like takedowns, chokes, and joint locks was that sometimes, they just couldn’t get it.
No matter what I did, some of the students in the class just didn’t listen to me, didn’t do the moves that I showed, and were incredibly undisciplined. But of course, they were 5, so what was I expecting? Did I really expect 5-year-olds to master moves that have taken me 12 years of experience to develop? When I thought about it more deeply, I realized that I didn’t.
When I got frustrated as a teacher, I realized that it wasn’t the students I was frustrated with, it was me. I wanted the kids to do the moves properly because if they did, that was an indicator that I was doing a good job and that I was a good teacher. As a new teacher being considered “good” by my students and peers was very important to me.
Honestly, it was insecurity.
The same is true for writing. When we write, we’re impatient that success doesn’t come to us right away. We want lots of readers, lots of subscribers, and lots of money, and we want it now. As writers, we can only control our work, nothing else. The readers will eventually come, but if you don’t have the patience to fall in love with the process, you won’t last long enough to meet them.
Closing thoughts
Teaching kids martial arts this summer was a new challenge for me. It made me think about aspects of myself that I’ve never actually put time into, like my impatience, tendency to speaking carelessly, and the real reasons why I choose to do the things I do.
Though it wasn’t the job that was going to make me rich, it was definitely the most eye-opening gig that I’ve had in all of 2021, and I’m really glad that I took on the challenge.
What surprised me most about the experience was how directly correlated teaching is to writing. I’d often spend time writing at the gym before teaching, and it really felt like when I switched from my writer hat to my teaching hat, that the only shift was in my mode of expression. Teaching is verbal and writing is, well, written. That’s the only difference.
Despite the agony of the long days at the gym in the flaming Chicago summer, I got a lot out of leading an army out of 5-year-old ninjas this summer, and I’m excited to see how the kids have grown when I come back to visit them soon.
Originally published September 7, 2021, in The Writing Cooperative
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Update on My eBook!
I’ve been working on my eBook, 15 Ways to Get Better at Jiu-Jitsu Faster for the last month and a half, and I’m just about ready to release it to the public. As a subscriber to this email list, you’ll get free access to the entire book when it comes out.
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Wishing you the best,
—Chris