Lupin1

I'm not sure if it's allowed for him to sign the certificates, I guess that would depend upon the organization, if the school would belong to one. If they don't belong, then I guess it doesn't matter who signs the certificates. I think most of us are just speaking from our personal beliefs about how adults would react to being taught by a child. They're all just generalizations based on personal experience and so they really mean nothing, but it's our opinions. I personally wouldn't go to a school where the head instructor was any less than 35, maybe even 40. But then again, I'm weird in the fact I wouldn't go to a school run by a woman, either. I'm just really particular about who teaches me and I learn best with older male teachers and I clash with woman teachers and younger teacher. Who the teacher is really affects the school probably a lot more than the teacher's level of expertise, and I'm not sure many adults would react well to being shephered around and told what to do by a 16-year-old wanting to be called sensei and sir and stuff. It's just... not really natural to us, I guess.

Make sure you're speaking from your stomach and not from your throat. The lower down you feel your sound starting the more powerful it'll be. It'll also save your voice as speaking loudly from higher up for a long period of time puts more strain on the voice than supporting it from the stomach.

My school just redid our child syllabus to have the child move through the belts faster and we developed a junior black belt that's pretty much the equivelant of an adult brown belt. It has three levels just like the adult brown belt and since all the kids start out around the same age, everything's timed out so that if a child keeps on schedule they'll have finished the third level of junior black belt right around the time they're old enough to test for their adult black belt.

I don't know, though. Just because someone is a 3rd dan and has the knowledge, doesn't mean they have the ability to pass it on effectively. Again, as a professional educator I have to say that just because someone's good at something doesn't mean they'd be good at teaching it. Being a good teacher means being able to organize and keep control of a class and pay attention to your students enough to know what they need and how they're progressing and having the wisdom and life experience to pass on the knowledge in a way the students will understand and that will treat the students with dignity and at their level in life. A child cannot know how adults learn and how to treat an adult student because they've never been an adult. I don't think it's as much a "is the adult being immature by not wanting to learn from a child who has the knowledge" as much as it is "can a child teach a mature adult while respecting and teaching to that level of maturity".

This summer's going to be pretty boring. I just started my summer job at the amusement park a few towns over (running the kiddieland rides-- yay!) and it's pretty much just that until the end of July when me, my old college roommate and two of my cousins make the cross-country trip the New Mexico where I'll be teaching next year. New teacher training starts first week of August and then school starts the second week.

I believe in fighting. I don't like fighting and I've never been in a fist fight in my life with anyone other than my sisters and I would like to keep it that way, but I'm by no means a pacifist. I'm gung ho and ready to go if needed.

Nope. Just a carpeted floor. I feel like I'm getting a little big better at it. It still scares me, but not as much. And my instructor's starting to realize it scares me, so he's not really making me do it as much as he was before.

I tend to be more intimidated by sporty looking people than by strong looking people. If someone's skinny and looks athletic, I just feel like they pose more of a threat to me than a big person. Then again, I'm a big person (well, average height, but pretty large and muscular for a woman).

Can they? Of course. There are no laws against it. If people are willing to pay and take them seriously, then of course a child can teach at his or her parents' dojo and give out black belts. The questions is if people are going to pay and take them seriously and if those blackbelts are really going to be worth all that much when given out by a kid who still has his learners permit and can't even be trusted to vote or enter into a contract yet. There's a reason the government sets the voting age so high and I believe it takes the same kind of wisdom and discernment to vote as it does to determine who's ready to recieve a black belt. There may be kids out there with the wisdom and experience to be able to have that discenment, but those kids are few and far between, in my experience. I remember when I was in JROTC in high school. Our corps was basically run by the 17-year-old seniors. And the leaders were the cream of the crop as far as high school students went-- National Honor Society, Eagle Scouts and Gold Award Girl Scouts, top of our class academically, leaders in other organizations around campus and some of us even had scholarships and military academy appointments lined up for us for when we graduated. But we still weren't trusted in handing out ranks to our fellow cadets. Even the cream of the crop high school kids were still just high school kids. We based our decisions on who we liked/didn't like, who was popular and cool, who might threaten our own power and authority, our whims of the moment, and we went by our adolescent ideas that we were infallible and all-knowing. It's just the nature of a high school student. Again-- there are those who are more mature and beyond that, but those kids are few and far between. And of course there are adults who never grow up and still act like that, but we're not talking about them right now.

You should try to do a search on this issue. I think there are already a few dozen topics on it.

Not being able to swim is no reason to hate yourself. You said yourself you had a traumatic experience. That's more than a valid reason to be afraid of water. Everyone has stuff we're afraid of. Just take it slow, like I said. Don't push yourself and be PATIENT AND FORGIVING with yourself. This is a valid fear and will take time to overcome.

I have another idea-- lightsaber kumite!!!

I don't know if there can be a "rule of thumb". I know six year olds who would be able to watch something and just watch it and not be affected by it in anyway and then those same kids when they reach 15 will want to go out and try to recreate it with their friends. You have to know your kids-- are they going to cry? Are they going to try to recreate what they see? Are they going to think it's ok to hit someone when they have a fight just because they saw it in the movie? Personally, we show my cousin's four year old violent movies all the time (we watched Spiderman yesterday) and it hasn't seemed to affect him negatively at all.

look to your left, stack your fists at your right hip.

Go as often as you can and stay in the shallow end. First just go up to your stomach until you feel more comfortable with that. Then go a little higher, then a little higher. Don't put your head under the water until you feel comfortable enough to do so and always stay where you can touch the bottom. Stay at every stage as long as you need to just to get your comfort level up. Don't push yourself or you'll get more scared and you'll regress. When you're ready to start actually swimming (like without touching), practice it where you CAN touch if you need to first-- just float on your back, then on your stomach and then move around a little, knowing that all you need to do if you get scared is stand up. Stay close to the edge of the pool if that helps, so you can just grab the edge. Let your swim instructor teach you to swim in water over your head WHEN YOU'RE READY. Don't feel rushed. Go nice and slow. Remember that humans are meant to be in water-- we're naturally bouyant and babies can swim to the surface if born in water. Human's have a little webbing between our fingers which some scientists believe is because we used to spend a lot more time in water. We also have a biological trait that not too many species have in that when our face is submerged our breathing slows and changes to allow up to stay under longer comfortably. All this means that humans are meant to be in water and swim, it's something natural to our species. Just trust yourself and take your time and let yourself get comfortable at every step before moving on to the next. You'll get there!

As a teacher, I have to say that any question like this has the same answer-- it depends on the child. I'm sure the parents on here (which I'm not) will chime in with their idea of when the majority of children or when their children, at least, were able, but really these sort of things vary based on the maturity/sensitivity/ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality develop within each child.

I think calling people sir outside of class has a lot to do with geograph, too. For the US, at least, calling people sir and ma'am seems to be the norm in the south but it's usually taken as a insult in the north. When I was student teaching in the south, students were expected to call me ma'am, but up here I'd call my teachers ma'am (I was in JROTC and it was something we were taught in that program) and they'd get mad at me because up here it implies they're really old.

I call all my instructors Mr. ______ both inside or outside the dojo. I see it as no different than calling my high school teachers Mr/Mrs _______ when I saw them in the supermarket. Heck, I even still call my college professors Professor or Dr. _______ and I've been graduated over a year and one of my professors pretty much adopted me into his family-- I went and visited them for Thanksgiving and everything, but I still wouldn't call him anything other than Professor or Dr. _______ (although I've been known to call him dad or "Dr. Dad"). If I respect someone and they've ever been in a position over me, I tend to show them that respect even outside the realm of that position. Now if the person was a peer, that might be different. Like I don't still call the kids who were over me in JROTC "sir" (but then again, I didn't at the time). If my karate instructor was my age, I'd probably call him by his first name both inside and outside the dojo.

To tell you the truth, I think the fact that he's not Japanese makes him even more awesome. Asian martial arts stars are a dime a dozen. Chuck Norris is awesome because not only is he a martial arts god, he's also a straight up Texas gunslinging god. And when he roundkicks you, it's not in barefeet, it's with cowboy boots on.

It's mostly about using the attacker's momentum against him. There's a lot of redirecting his force to put him on the ground with just a small movement-- a lot of knocking his hand out the way gently so it misses. It's basically "how can I stop this attack and render my opponent harmless to me with the least amount of movement/force possible".

But again-- not everyone wants MMA "can he and does he beat the crap out of people". I have no doubt he'd be able to defend himself and he wants us to be able to defend ourselves and so yes, we learn some very practical stuff that looks like it's out of a police-taught "woman's self-defense" class. But for martial arts study he tends to teach it more as an art. A lot of the things we do he openly admits probably wouldn't work in real life, but no one in the class seems to mind or else we'd go somewhere else. He studies very old techniques and tries to make them work, knowing full well that it'd probably be impractical to use them in a real fight. But we study those moves to perserve history and develop the martial ARTS as an art. The people in the class don't go there just to learn how to defend ourselves, although as I said we do learn that type of stuff as well. There are many reasons to study something beyond just wanting to put it into practical use. But different strokes for different folks.

Also, look at what the school offers. Is it what YOU want in your martial arts school? Do they offer the programs/classes/atmosphere you're looking for? Is the price reasonable? Watch a class and look at some of their students. Do the black belts look coordinated and like they know what they're doing? Are they sharp and precise? Do they seem to have the skills you'll expect out of yourself when you make it to black belt? It's a very personal thing since everyone's looking for something different. You need to ask yourself what you want and try to find a school that meets your requirements as best as possible.

Depends on what you want. My instructor isn't a "world champion" or anything-- he doesn't compete in tournaments anymore, although he will judge them sometimes. Some may say that he's not "accomplished" because he never held any titles in tournaments and some say they are accomplished because they do. But my instructor's been training for 40 some years, he's trained with experienced instructors in many different arts and he studies and researches the martial arts like a fanatic (actually, he is a fanatic). Even in his 60s and with his bad back and limited physical capabilities, he's constantly learning and searching for new information and usually he finds it. He's also creating his own new ideas and applications for old moves and kata every single day. To me, that makes him accomplished, even if he did never bother to go past 3rd or 4th degree black belt (not exactly sure what he is) and even if he doesn't hold a bunch of fancy titles. I think of him more as a martial arts academic-- if the martial arts world handed out PhDs instead of concentrating on new cool colored belts to give out, he'd have one. So yeah, I think everyone considers their instructor accomplished. Everyone just has different ideas of what the word "accomplished" means to them based on what they value in an instructor.

We start off with stick around blue or green belt and then get into bo during brown belt and just stay with bo until 3rd degree black belt (the highest we go) when you can pretty much choose whatever weapon you want to learn (our senior instructors know forms for sai, tonfa, kama, tanto, tai chi sword).

It's all about learning to manage your time. If you make enough time to study on other days and before karate, you'll have plenty of time. Then again, it's different for everyone. I'm such a procrastinator that keeping really busy after school actually helped my grades-- I'd know I only had two hours to do homework/study every night, so I made the most of those two hours instead of pushing everything off to watch tv or whatever on nights I had nothing to do and then I'd just end up not getting as much done. You just have to budget what time you do have. And keep in mind that colleges want to see kids who can do that. A kid in all AP classes with no extra-curriculars won't impress them much. You need to show you can balance your school work with a healthy dose of after school activities because they want kids at their college who will be able to keep their grades high AND get involved in college activities. This is great practice and will look awesome on your college applications.