As much as the corresponding student manual was a pleasant surprise,
the teacher reference was a disappointment. The student manual was basic,
but that can be expected given that it is intended for beginners. The
teaching aspect would presumably be for the benefit of someone who has
considerably more experience, but it is written in the same remedial format.
Even in light of a need for linkage between the teaching manual and student
manual in this or any other instructional series, the teaching manual
is in this case redundant and largely uninformative. Any competent instructor
should be able to pull any new material from the student manual and devise
their own lesson plan for it. At times, the narration in the student manual
is simply replaced by an instruction to “read this..." to the
class and everything else is the same. Actually, the teacher's manual
may leave out some of the best information present in the student manual
concerning awareness, assessment and de-escalation, merely referring you
to the student manual for the information in detail.
The only distinct or additional quality to the teacher's manual is that
the physical skill sections have additional charts for the purpose of
error correction and descriptions to distinguish the beginning student
from the more skilled ones. But once again, any instructor should be able
to discern differences in the quality of technique independent of such
an aid, otherwise they have no business teaching. Similarly, the extensive
error correction charts are only valuable if the instructor really needs
to consult a book to tell the student what they are doing wrong, and only
if the instructor is teaching the technique the exact way it is taught
in the book. There is also a bank of test questions, which is a nice reference,
but once again, a competent instructor can easily discern the important
information from the student manual and write his/her own test one that
would be more specific and thus more valuable to that particular class.
This book appears to be written more for PE teachers or anyone else
who arbitrarily decides to start teaching self-defense than for martial
arts professionals. Unless you are a beginning instructor with little
experience who wants the reassurance of having it laid out for you, or
someone who hopes to get a few new drills out of it, instructors need
not worry about purchasing both the teacher and student versions. Simply
buy the student manual and take what you need from it.
NOTE: This review is separate and should not be confused with Self
Defense: Steps to Success (the student manual)
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