What is a good first/Introductory Course?

[jfarmer]

Originally Posted by Allen Evans

I think the goal in beginning classes is NOT to teach people to fence, but to find out which people want to learn to fence, and to encourage those people to come back. The first hurdle in that process is to teach students that they will get hit, and they will hit, and it won't be too uncomfortable.

Allen

I "borrowed" a quote by Allen from another thread to kickstart this discussion about what should be in an introductory course for fencing.

How many lessons should an introductory course be? What should be covered? (Ie, what should they know are the end?) Should the goal be to expose them to all three weapons, basic footwork, the skeleton of a competition? Are there any skills learned in the introduction course that will carry over to a second, more serious course?

For our club, we've tried several different approaches to teaching new fencers. I started out teaching what the club president wanted, that is to teach basic footwork, a couple of simple thrusts, and basic parry 4 & circle parry. As one might suspect, that didn't really provide a good outcome for either the students or the club. Next I tried an in depth class that lasted for 6 to 9 months, meeting one night/week. The students enjoyed bouting with each other, and what they learned, but had no interest in moving up in skill levels and joining the club.

Lately, I've been teaching two courses, an introductory one that mostly follows the contents of Elaine Cheris' Fencing Steps to Success, and a second course that focused on competitive electric foil. This is working fairly well, but I'm having problems with both students dropping out during the first course, and not continuing to the second.

So, while our current course are better than what was before, I'm not convinced that we've structured them correctly for the maximum benefit to the the students and club.

John Farmer
Coach, Oak Ridge Fencers Club

[Hobbes]

Well I would never call myself a coach, but I did run the club and teach everyone the basics of my college team. (We had a real coach at one time, but had to take over more and more of the teaching on our own.)

To get everyone to stay we taught them the basics so they could bout one another. It was simple stuff and no one would really call it fencing early on. From there I could always tell who was really interested because they would ask the good questions about things like timing and distance and the like.

For those people we would meet after the weekly lesson and meet one other time each week. There we would work on more complicated things and work on lots of constructive bouting.

What was really nice about this system was that for the intro group it was easy come easy go, but we always got serious fencers out of it. Also people would fence in the intro group for over a year and then randomly one day realize they wanted to go farther and join our advanced group.

I hope that comes close to answering your question.


As for the quote you started, the very first thing I ever had the students do with a blade (epee) was don their masks and hit each other in the face. It seemed to help get people used to getting hit.

[Allen Evans]

I think I've posted this in other places but...

Some blanket statements off the top of my head, from years of teaching classes at Salle Auriol, in Seattle, and wclasses in Northern Virginia, where I currently work.

1. The demographics of your community make a big difference in the students you get, their commitment, and the retention rate of people from classes. The contrast between the type of people looking for fencing classes in the Pacific Northwest and the people looking for classes in Northern Virginia is very marked. In Seattle, I got inquerys from 20 and 30 somethings looking for something new to do. In Virginia, we get inquerys from parents looking for something new for their children, often with an eye towards college. You have to know who is walking in the door. If you don't like who is walking in the door, you have to work harder to attract the people you do like.

2. The first experiance in class is going to make or break the students. Your best coaches shouldn't be teaching this class, your best teachers should be. The coach for the beginning class has to make fencing approachable, familiar, and simple, while hinting that there is more to fencing than these first few classes. The teacher has to make this fun, and introduce not just fencing, but the culture of fencing: its long tradition, its history as a fighting art, its place in modern sport....all of this is hard to fit into an hour or hour and a half class, but a good teacher does this.

At the same time, the teacher instills the club culture into the students. They should be invited out to any social events the club is hosting, encouraged to drop by other classes, and so forth.

With beginners, the more help and attention they get, the more they feel that they are making progress and getting their questions answered.I found it helpful to have advanced fencers help with class, and to make sure and introduce these fencers to the students as future teammates. It doesn't hurt to have the beginning students feel that they are getting a lot of assistance. Teacher/student ratios are important, no matter what you are teaching.

3. I think it's good to keep classes short for adults: 8 - 12 sessions, preferably in a month or month and a half. People are more likely to sign up if they don't feel that they are undertaking a year long quest. In Seattle, since our market was mostly young adults looking for something new to try, this worked perfectly. In Northern Virginia, I would like to arrange longer commitments, so parents can plan (that hasn't been possible, to date, at Dominion).

4. Have a progression of classes. I think three short classes (beginning, intermidiate and advanced, and title them so) is important, especially for anyone older than 12. Students need to feel that they are making progress, and they take their cues in a variety of ways. In foil, it is easy to break classes down into units: simple attacks for beginning (with the parryes), attack au fer class for intermidiate, and prise de fer class for advanced. In each class, the students see some familiar actions, and new actions.

Even with all of this...

A good beginning class of 20-30 people will have an attrition rate of about 50%: 10-15 people will move to the intermidiate class. It was my experiance at Salle Auriol that this was a normal attrition rate. Once students made it to the second class, we usually kept them onto the third class.

After the third class, the transition to open fencing was a huge jump. Sometimes only 1-3 people make that transition. Salle Auriol experimented with holding an additional "competitive" class on open fencing nights, which seemed to help. Getting fencers actually out on the floor proved to be difficult, however. Dominion has had more success by spending a lot of coach time with new fencers when they show up to free fence, but this only working because Dominion is a very small club, and we have the time. This wouldn't be possible in a bigger club.

A

[Allen Evans]

Originally Posted by jfarmer

How many lessons should an introductory course be? What should be covered? (Ie, what should they know are the end?) Should the goal be to expose them to all three weapons, basic footwork, the skeleton of a competition? Are there any skills learned in the introduction course that will carry over to a second, more serious course?

My class curriculumn for the first starts with simple footwork, simple attacks, four (4, 6, 7 and 8) parries, riposte, and counter-riposte, and feint-disenage to a variety of lines. Really talented classes might get "treats" such as a parry of prime, or coupe. We did this in eight classes.

The beginning class might get to see the three weapons fenced, but I don't spend any time on teaching them. They do get to bout after the fifth or sixth class.

The Intermidiate class does all the actions of the beginning class, plus is introduced to beat and press in a tactical context. Why and when do you beat and press? What's likely to happen when you do these actions? This class also bouts with each other. Again, the int. class is eight sessions long.

The advanced class does all the actions of the first two classes, and in addtition is introdcued to simple opposition (they have seen some of this from parry 6 and parry 8-riposte already), binds, and croise. As a "treat", they might get envelopment. Again, eight classes.

All of these classes are done with a lot of simple demonstrations and paired drills.

At the end of this, they are hardly "fencers", but they are usually (if the coaches have done their job correctly) pretty smart about the theory of fencing, even if they can't execute. At Salle Auriol we encouraged them to take the intermidiate and advanced classes as many times as they would like.

If I were to redo this structure, I would add an additional fencing class in competition (though I am not sure I would call it that). This would be an ongoing class in tactics and technique that would meet the same night as open fencing nights, and help introduce fencers into the general club population. Because of the busy schedule at Salle Auriol, this sort of class proved difficult to run (though it was tried). I've since realized how much more involved the coach has to be when I've been doing it at Dominion, but the results seem to be better (getting people out into the general population).

A

[Durando]

Originally Posted by Allen Evans

Getting fencers actually out on the floor proved to be difficult, however.

So irritating and so true. A constant battle. This is simply a behavior I don't understand. Okay we warm up, we do some footwork, and then we change. Now it must be time to sit around and admire our shoes/weapons/each other. As an initateur I try to do the MdA a favor and clear the dressing room. But it doesn't end there. The teenagers especially, don't like fencing with people stronger or physically larger. A few round robin class competitions seemed to have helped but still.