My best students are teachers.
Sifu told me that several years ago during some post-lesson relaxation on my balcony. We spoke about how students best make progress. I mentioned noticing an improvement in student comprehension after grouping them as threes, rather than pairs, where one leads the others.
This formation of triadic, rather than dyadic, relationships was beneficial both to the group leader and followers. One learned by teaching two.
Specifically, recognizing mistakes in others from a third-person perspective made them more obvious. Problems I had tried to repeatedly correct were more quickly resolved after a student could identify them in others. This process is only successful if the leader is more informed.
Naturally, to be a teacher requires more knowledge than the students taught. So to learn more by teaching you need to know more. This is a positive feedback loop which leads, as Sifu noted, to the “best students”.
If you’re interested in studying WingChun at a deeper theoretical and practical level, while pursuing teaching accreditation from the International Academy of WingChun (IAW), consider joining us for the 2011 WingChun Teacher Training Program.
Open to IAW members 2 SL and up, join us as we kick off a new series of special training modules at the IAW-US Headquarters starting January 15, 2011. We’ll cover the IAW curriculum from the Basic and Middle Levels, including Form, Footwork, Lat Sao and Chi Sao.
Download this flyer for the program details.
Sifu Paul Wang 
Good day Sihing Paul! Wonder if IAW Malaysia will have this
program or not 🙂
Thanks for your comment. It would be great to develop WingChun teachers in Malaysia. Perhaps you will some day become one!