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After my Aikido class today I wound up alone in the changing room with our chief instructor, who is a fifth degree black belt. I paraphrase here, but he pretty much said, "I've noticed that your Aikido has gotten really sharp over the summer. Really sharp. Don't think I haven't noticed how good you're getting. You're also much more stoic in your practice. This is something we really need from our senior students. They need to set the example for the younger students." By younger, he means lower rank and less experience.


I am feeling good about this, but since I am stoic, I will not show it. Some of it, I suppose, is that the Dave Lowry book, Moving Toward Stillness, has had some affect on me.

School is in session. I'm busy in my fourth grade classroom, and my wife is taking the first two clinical classes for her nursing certification. My attendance at the dojo has been less than stellar.

Speaking of, my entire body hurst from yesterdays classes. One hour of open hand, followed by an hour of weapons. Carlos, who is ready to take his shodan test, taught weapons, and only two of us stayed. We worked three bokken techniques followed by their respective open hand techniques. That was intense enough since the final technique involved a "backwards" choke, meaning, uke is bent backwards with his face is in nage's armpit, and facing upwards with his chest open to anything nage wants to do. In our case, nage was supposed to bend uke's elbow backwards over his knee.

Again, my body is sore, but I have until Tuesday to recover. By then I'll be itching to get back to the dojo and go through it all again.

School has beat the snot out of me. My class is difficult, to say the least. Having a student teacher has helped, but I'm still completely worn out by the time I get home. The only reason I didn't go to the dojo on Thursday is because I had to drive Lu back and forth to her class, which coincided with class.

This week should be better.

Well, It's a Start

We got off to a decent start this week. On the first day of school, we met outside in the parking lot that also doubles as a play area for the students. Yes, there are other areas to play, but about two-thirds of the asphalt is devoted to play. On Thursday morning, there were balloons set out, each one with a grade number on it. The students lined up around their balloons. When it was 8:00 the principal gave a little speech, then the eighth graders all came to the front door, and cut the ribbon that "opened" the school for the year. I always like that tradition.

Before school began, I walked over to the fifth graders to say hello. These were the students who were in my class last year. I got a lot of hugs and smiles. I love that class. It's going to take a lot for any other class to take up that much space in my heart. Since the first day, I always stop at the lunch tables when I see one of my kids there. I keep getting hugs from them. I really hope that never stops. I'd love to have them giving me hugs and smile when they are in eighth grade.

So far the student teacher has been fairly fine. I've spent my time going over procedures; she has gone over an interest inventory called, "My Book of Things and Stuff." The students list their favorite subject, where they would like to go on field trips, and multiple pages asking kids how they like to learn. One page asked alone, in pairs, groups, or whole class. Another instructs kids that they are going to learn about houses and what would they like to do: Build a model? Design a house? Read about houses? There are more pages like that, and I can tell a lot by what they'd like to do. I also like to go over that with the parents to see if the students write anything that surprises the parents.

When we practice at the dojo, our chief instructor walks around and observes while the students practice the technique. If he sees something wrong, he'll work with an individual. If he sees several students doing the technique wrong, he'll stop everyone and correct. He'll also say something to students if he sees good things, too. Yesterday he said something to me. I was in the middle of doing a technique so my concentration was focused on that, not on the specific words he was saying as he walked past, but I got the overall idea. The part of what he said that made it to my brain told me that he was telling me that I was doing the technique about as well as it could be done. I could not have been more pleased.