Mistaken By Mistakes
I have been teaching low impact Aikido for seniors in our local recreation center for a while now. I never expected teaching seniors to be this challenging, but it is. To start, most of the students are complete beginners. You have to teach them absolutely everything from scratch. Given their age, most students are stiffer and less agile. Their body awareness may not be high. The pace of the class is much slower than regular dojo practice with younger students. Since we only meet once a week, whatever we did last week, people already have forgotten most of it by this week. We spend a lot of time reviewing. The learning curve is not steep. It is a real test of your patience. Another distinct thing about teaching seniors is that, unlike children, they are absolutely not afraid of their teachers. Given I am at the younger end of the 55+ crowd, most students are older than me. To them, I am the kid. You ...
