Hey it's Richard Mosdell, this is my daily karate vlog #77, and I want to share with you what a child psychologist recently shared with us when it comes to teaching karate to kids.
We had a child psychologist in and they were observing some of the students and observing what we did, and gave us some amazing feedback on the most recent thinking about how karate can be used when teaching children, especially when it comes to better behaviour.
I know a lot of martial arts say join karate, you're going to concentrate better, you're going to do better in school, hmm, that could be said about anything that you do, I think club's use that type of promotion because they are not able to explain the quality of what they're doing on the floor.
I've always felt that if you're going to go to soccer, you really want to be good at soccer, you want to compete in soccer, you really want to have a great life in the soccer world, so karate should be the same thing, you come to karate because you really want to learn karate.
But it is of course really important that you have better social skills and through sport you learn how to be a better person. So I want to share with you what we do in our club and how the psychologist focused on a few key things. So let7s look at the poster that we use. So you as you can see we have this really big poster on the board.
Kenzen students are responsible for their own stuff. Right and here are some sentences, are nice to everyone, listen to sensei/sempai, are helpful, do great techniques, are trying to become black belts, keep the club clean and respect the dojo, always try their best, knows sweating is good for you, remember everything is about karate, it's awesome, be safe, have fun, oh and get changed quickly!
She really liked that we had this up here, but what she wanted us to emphasize was how could we put all these points into fewer points, so we circled nice, it's really important to be nice to everybody, second was to listen so we circled listen, try their best - great techniques, become a black belt, keep the dojo clean/respect the dojo, all that stuff, sweating is good for you, remember everything is about karate - all that goes into try their best. Be safe, have fun, get changed quickly.
So we have 1, 2,3,4, 5, 6, well it's also 7, for awesome! The next is to ask the kids to give us an example of what it means to be nice to everyone, or nice to one person, they have to give an example of being nice, another class they have to give an example of listening, another class they might have to give an example of how to try their best, how to be safe, how to have fun.
Now being nice is not about, not not being nice, you actually have to explain how you did something for somebody. So this was really interesting, and we were using this in the last 6-8 weeks, and it's been really helpful, it's made the kids be a little bit more aware of what they're doing with the people around them, too not get too upset or flash up too quickly because some kids depending on their temperament or who they are might jump into a conversation, or push their way or their thoughts forward.
It's as simple as that!
Just a bunch of rules that are really guidelines you stick up on the wall, the kids actually came up with all of those after 2 years doing the after school program, we said hey what rules should we use for this year and the kids these are the ones we really like and we put them on the wall, and when the child psychologist came in were circled the ones we thought would be the best, and we're really seen some improvement from some of the kids that have been struggling with interacting with the other ones.
So I hope this is helpful, and whatever you guys are doing in your club, and whether your training and even if it's not karate, but another activity, we're just going to share what we're doing everyday and hopefully that's something of value to you and and your world out there!
I'm Richard Mosdell, this is my daily vlog, I can can't wait to bring you another one from the club! By!