Teacher/Student

Heyo everyone, this weeks blog is going to be about understanding students as a teacher.

I’m going to start this blog by saying I’m not doing the best in math this year. Not awful, but not the best. I could probably think of several excuses to why this is the case but that’s all they are. Excuses. However, I do believe that the root cause would be that I’m not really learning anything from my teacher. To put it simply, he doesn’t teach the way I learn. So far, I’ve learnt everything from another teacher I spend my lunch times seeing, and my textbook. Every single teacher will teach a different way, just as every single student will learn a different way. It’s the responsibility of both to make sure that the student will find someone who can teach to them in a way that they’re best suited to learn. Sometimes you do have to be adaptable, but it’s really hard to adapt to something completely out of your natural way of thinking. 

The Kwoon is no different. It’s a school; people teach, people practice, people learn, people perfect, etc. And with that comes the natural balance and conflict of teachers and learners. Even though the quality of teacher varies from person to person, everybody will connect with someone when teaching. Learning from my own difficulties at school, I’ve begun to apply this to my own methods of teaching, in an attempt to make myself more aware of the gap that may exist between myself and whomever I may be teaching, and adapting my methods to their own as best as possible.

Cookies of Kindness

Heyo everyone, this weeks blog is kinda messy and short but it’s about AoK. 

Last Thursday, during the height of Tim Hortons smile cookie sales, I ended up buying a total of 25 (I didn’t eat them all myself, don’t worry). It was hard not to buy so many, knowing the money went to a good cause. Anyways, I bought five before school even started, and handed them out to the first five kids I saw at school. Whilst 4/5 cookies I handed out started off someone’s day good, the last one took someone’s day, which was off to a crappy start, and turned it around, and they ended up riding that good mood throughout the day. All from one smiling cookie. I thought, wow, this is awesome. So awesome I went with friends after school to buy twenty more. Smiles went around that day, quite literally.

Looking back on it, it’s interesting to see what one itty bitty one dollar cookie can do. Someone could have had a really bad day all because it got off to a bad start, but instead, they were able to enjoy it. I’ve always understood the value of the AoK, but I don’t think you can truly understand the significance in it until you directly see the impact it has on someone. Doing the AoK, knowing it makes the world a better place is one thing, but understanding that each one has the potential to make a specific individuals life that much better. I see a lot more value behind the acts of kindness then I did previously, which I didn’t realize was possible I guess it was. Overall, realizing that I was able to improve someone’s day with one small deed was enough to make my day better, and for me, that’s a win win. 

Long Since Lost

Heyo everyone, this weeks blog is going to be about the forever changing elements of life.

So far, 30-1 social studies is a lot of philosophy. One of the things we’ve discussed is human nature, and several different views of human nature from several different philosophers. One of them that stood out to me was the view of Thomas Hobbes, which was very similar to that of William Golding. In both of their books, respectively Leviathan and Lord of the Flies, they illustrate how the human nature is one that, if left ungoverned and unattended, will proceed in a direction of violence, a desire for power, and never having enough; always wanting more. I thought about this for a long time. If you took an environment like the Kwoon and removed all senses of government and consequence, I believe it would prosper opposed to falling apart, out of pre-existing bonds of respect and discipline. If you took a random group of people off the street, the tension may be a bit more shaky but all the same, I don’t think everything would collapse because we have millennia of behavioural traits programmed into us. It is nearly impossible to find someone who is 100% base human. They would lack communication, manners, charisma, even the standard level of intelligence today. Even if you isolated a child from the moment it was born, it would still turn out better then it would at the start of time. That’s the result of ages of human programming.

When I took this idea of a base human nature being forever lost and tried applying the concept to my Kung Fu and looking for links between the two, two big things stood out. The concept of studying a martial art that’s thousands of years old, and the concept of all knowledge dying with its bearer. These three concepts go hand in hand. Over the thousands of years, knowledge has been passed through thousands of people. Every time someone died, they took so much knowledge with them. To compensate, people would have to begin to create their own techniques and forms to fill in the gaps. Over the generations, what we have now is so different from what original Kung Fu would look like we can’t even imagine it. Just as how true, 100% base human is lost forever, so is the original versions of Kung Fu.

However, this isn’t a bad thing. Evolution exists for a reason. There’s a reason we no longer use sticks and stones for weapons or tools. We evolved passed that, because not evolving wasn’t really an option. As time proceeds so does technology and ideology, slowly improving, with an occasional hiccup here or there. But overall, as everything moves forward, it’s easy to leave the old behind. It’s best to remember as much as you can, and pass on as much as you can, in an attempt to preserve both the old whilst fostering the new.

The Last Hoorah

Heyo everyone, this weeks blog is about the nearing end of one journey and the preparation of a new one.

One of the biggest journeys in every child’s lifetime is school. It’s something you start when you’re four and finish at eighteen. Looking back, I have few remaining memories of grade school, but the one thing I remember is looking at all the older kids thinking “Wow. They’re so big”. Overtime, as you go up a grade, you slowly rise the pole of school hierarchy. I remember being in grade three and thinking “I’m the big fish of this division.” And then reaching grade six and thinking “I’m the biggest fish in these whole two divisions” then grade nine and thinking “I’m the biggest fish in the whole school.” But every time I had those thoughts, I knew there was still a higher grade, a bigger fish. But now, there is no “bigger fish”. This is as big as you get for primary schooling. The senior year. The last step before the big wide world of adulthood and taxes and rent and mortgages. So much to look forward to. 

Looking at all the time I’ve spent over the last few years, it makes me realize how precious time truly is. I look back to my first year of the I Ho Chuan and I think wow. This last Thursday and Saturday I made a point to try and review all of my forms I’ve ever done, including my self made weapons forms for the IHC. Doing my first sword form, I thought “man this is really basic” and it was. All I did was spin my sword in a circle a bunch of times, really. At the time, that form was my most prized possession. Now, it’s something I look back on and think “did I really actually do that as a form?” Overall, I’m proud of that form and of where I was at then. The fact that I look back now and think “oh man” is a good sign, because it shows that with time came growth, and growth is good.

Overall, the whole of my life has been relatively the same. School changes from year to year but the structure is relatively similar. Kung Fu has changed since I first started but still, the structure is relatively similar. Now, as I prepare myself to jump into the new world, I’m leaving behind that school structure I’m so used to, and with that, the way I view my Kung Fu will be affected. Understanding that, and that no matter what happens, Kung Fu will always be a part of me, is something I’ll be working towards, hoping it will help my in the future. Who knows that will happen after this year. But first things first: let’s get through this year.

Qualities I Don’t Have

Heyo everyone, this is the part two of last weeks blog, and will be focusing on the second half of the topic. For anyone who missed my blog last week, I talked and explained about the five qualities of a black belt I believe I have. Now, I’ll talk about the five I believe I lack.

1. Confidence/Fearless of Failure. Over the last few years, I’ve been struggling with a problem I had once received professional help on. This problem, of course, is anxiety. I find that, when faced with any form of negative plausible outcome, the stress and pressure cause me to fear failure, which cause me to freak out. For me, this is something I have to overcome. A black belt should be willingly and ready to learn in any circumstance, and one of the best ways to learn is through failure. A mindset that is stronger in the beginner classes and weakens as you move up is that failure is a bad thing. Nobody likes to fail, that’s a given. But being able to accept your failure and use it to propel yourself forward is a very mature concept in my opinion, and is something I see in a black belt. 

2. Control. Being able to channel your properly whilst keeping it in complete control is by far one of the biggest qualities a black belt should have. I find I can control myself using small quantities of power, but the moment I have the increase it, my control starts to lower at an alarming rate. This is something that greatly concerns me because in my eyes control is one of the, if not the most important qualities a black belt should have. The big thing for me is mainly in sparring when I get backed into a corner, or when I feel “outgunned”, for lack of better term. I have a tendency to start lashing out and giving it my all, which usually ends up being all power and little control. This is something I’ve been working on over the last little hi and I think it’s coming along, but it still doesn’t feel like where I want it to be. 

3. Beginner sets the place/leadership. One thing I struggle with when doing a warm up or working one on one with someone is doing everything at their pace. I have a tendency to do things at my own pace and sometimes I forget that the people I’m leading don’t go quite at my pace. If I take everything I’ve learnt in the past 8 years and try to teach it to one person in 30 minutes, it’s overall a waste of time. When working with someone who has lesser experience then you, you have to understand what they know, and what the best step for them is. And that’s what’s I forget. The best STEP, not STEPS. Learning takes time, so it’s best to make sure you don’t over-teach and give out more then they can handle.

4. Technique > Realism. Yes, I’m one of those people who like to jump straight to realism. This is a bad habit that has developed over the years and it’s finally come back to bite me. When jumping straight from learning something to realism and bypassing speed, power, accuracy and technique, what you’re learning ends up not looking very good. At all. Overtime, I’ve slowly been working on trying to get everything order, and I’ve been able to get my speed/power and accuracy someone in line, but I’m still struggling with the very first step. Technique. A lot of my technique is not in a good place, and I’ve been working like crazy the last few months trying to get everything in line. Now it’s a balancing game. I want to try and get my technique more level and where it should be but I also don’t want to sacrifice too much of my speed/power, accuracy or realism to do so. 

5. Courage. This is one I wasn’t sure I should put or not, but I decided I should. I’ll have to explain this one a bit in depth because it makes sense in my mind but I don’t know if it’ll come off in words well. When I think of a black belt, I think of someone who is capable of breaking through mental and physical boundaries to reach their goals, among things. This isn’t easy to do. Nothing is, really. They all take a tremendous amount of work to achieve, and with that, tremendous amounts of courage. When trailblazing into unknown territory, you never know what may go wrong. For me, a quality of a black belt is being able to overcome the “this will go wrong” attitude and attempting anyways. This takes a huge amount of courage, something I find myself lacking in. As someone who has struggled in the past with dealing with fear, it’s hard for me. I think being able to keep my chin up and trek forward despite how intimidating it may be is something I definitely need to work on, but I don’t even know where to start. This is a messy idea, I couldn’t put it in writing as well as I was hoping but that’s the gist of it.

Overall I have a lot to work on, and whilst this list may change these are the 5 big ones in my opinion, as of right now.