2023-05-31

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

Tonight we went over rank exam results. As I mentioned last time, I was pleased with everyone’s performance and I believe everyone got the result they hoped to get. Later that night, someone unrelated to my karate activities asked me if students usually pass their tests. I explained, no, not always, but I think a good instructor’s students should usually pass for three reasons:

1. A good instructor shouldn’t let a student test if that student doesn’t have a good chance of passing.
2. If you’re a “good instructor” then, by definition, you’re good at teaching karate, as measured by your students’ success.
3. At the lower ranks, I subdivide youth belts into “d”, “c”, “b” and “full” grades so, if a younger student isn’t quite good enough to earn the next full kyu, I can still award them what amounts to a partial promotion. To be clear, this isn’t an attempt to collect more testing fees. It’s solely about motivating students. I’m much rather award a student a half belt than “fail” them.

In the second class, my senior student got promoted to 8th kyu so, after going over feedback, we spent the second half of the class starting her on Heian Nidan. We made it up through the first kiai, including a few applications of some of the techniques up to that point. Some people think that applications are more “advanced” and should only be learned after you can get through the “moves” of the kata, but I tend to think that knowing what you’re supposed to be doing acutally helps students to understand how to make the “moves.”