Ringing Forums

This sounds like a lack of communication from the trainer. To ask someone to talk to a learner while they are ringing (or while others are ringing) means that other ringers need to know to ignore it (and / or the person asked to talk needs to judge their volume). Unfortunately some people find it very hard to ring while there is talking happening so if they didn’t know this was an instruction they can react very crossly. It is definitely worth discussing what happened and why with the tower captain and you may find that the person who shouted is now sorry that they hadn’t understood the situation and, probably, were louder and more abrupt than they expected themselves to be.
When finding helpers for training sessions many trainers know which experienced ringers can be helpers and which struggle to keep right if the learners are struggling, which are patient and calm and which get agitated when it is not going as expected. This experienced ringer may have learnt something about themselves in this experience.

I’m slightly confused. Was the learner (to whom your friend was explaining place counting) ringing at the time (as I think Lucy is assuming)? If not, was your friend using the ringing that was happening to point out places? And what was the role of the person who shouted? Was he standing behind another learner? We also have no idea what this tower was like - how much space there was, and what that acoustics were like. Was the plain hunt going well at the time, or falling apart? All in all, I don’t think this forum can hope to resolve an individual issue like this (which isn’t to say that it shouldn’t be resolved elsewhere), but there are perhaps some useful takeaways.

Listening and hearing are not easy skills for most learners to acquire, and external distractions don’t help.

As Lucy says, sometimes an instruction in the heat of the moment comes out louder or more ‘aggressive’ than intended, particularly when things are suddenly falling apart. We all need to be aware of this, so that on one side we make allowances for the ‘shouter’, and on the other side, we apologise if we’ve accidentally gone over the top.

Ringing is a team exercise, where the ‘atmosphere’ really matters, and we should be alert to the need to nurture a friendly and supportive environment.

We need to be tolerant, but we also need to be prepared to call out problematic and divisive behaviour. Doing that in a way that will heal rather than further inflame a situation is a special skill, but letting things fester is rarely the right answer.

I’m conscious that things are very different in my home tower on a practice night, where we all know each other, and make allowances, by comparison with a course where a number of strangers have been brought together. Leading a training session demands skills beyond ringing. We should be particularly supportive of those who take on this role.

We’re all learning together, all the time!