August 15th, 2018

It's summer and it's time for students to practice all the skills they have learned over the past year.  If you think of martial arts as portable gym that works on making your mind laser sharp, your body strong and creating a positive mental attitude then you totally understand the benefits of martial arts.  I remember clearly one time when I was a lower belt in Taekwondo our instructor telling us that only 2 students out of 100 would ever become a Black Belt!  Talk about motivating and un-motivating a student at the same time then this was it!  I believed that this was the way to let students know that they had to work hard for years.  I was wrong.  I read and article in the Wall Street Journal that this particular Ivy League School had implanted a program to help every student graduate from their college.  They put in extra classes, more tutors, longer library hours and on and on.  I thought this was brilliant!  In fact I was inspired to change how I taught as well.   First I retrained all my instructors to teach with the understanding that some students learn from tactile lessons, other learning from seeing or hearing while many students learn from combinations of all 3.  Next we offered free 15 minute lesson after class for any student that needed a little extra help.  Finally we put our written curriculum and a video version online for students to train anytime and anywhere they wanted to.  The only thing that was required was effort.  If you wanted to reach your goals there was clear path with plenty of help our students.  It's safe to say that 2 out of 100 students is now much much higher.  Until next time Master T