Finding the Balance in Twenty

Today was good; a long-overdue break in the weather lifted the spirits of the entire school, enough that you could actually see smiles returning. A small shift, but I felt it clearly in the afternoon session, everyone putting in the work that felt like it was making up for lost time.

Our class feels a little unbalanced right now. A competition sits on the horizon, a handful of classmates are training hard toward it, and the coaches have treated it as the most important thing on the calendar. All the attention seems to be pouring in one direction, and the students not competing are starting to feel a little invisible. I don't know if that's entirely fair to say, but there are always students who feel unseen in a school this size, and I understand the feeling well enough.

Over this past year, I've watched the coaches closely. How they interact. How they listen. How they teach. It's been genuinely instructive just witnessing their different approaches up close; the act of watching skilled practitioners teach has taught me almost as much as the training itself.

There's no perfect teacher,  just as there's no perfect student. We're all learning this in real time, together. But I've come to understand how much balance actually matters inside a class. A properly balanced room lets every student feel seen, which carries people through both the good days and the harder ones, and that balance is something only the coaches can really set.

It isn't easy. It never is, with twenty students spread across ten different forms. But finding that balance has to be the goal regardless.

I'm fortunate enough to have the experience to work independently when I need to. Not everyone has that, which is part of why I try to step in when I notice someone struggling.

This life was never going to be easy. That was always the choice we made walking in. Part of the training, at least for me, is this ongoing mental work, finding balance inside the daily rise and fall of living in a place like this.