More from the Dojo

Thursday I was working with a shodan from Los Angeles. He's working on a project in Milwaukee, and decided to join us for the month he's here. I guess he looked at the Aikido dojo in Milwaukee, but decided to join us, instead.

We were working on irimi nage from ushiro katate dori, using a tenshin step. We led uke around behind us and into the irimi nage. For two "passes" we let uke grab our second wrist, on the last two, we did not. What was both fun and surprising was how easily I was taking down my uke. As I went in to the final move of the irimi nage, my uke's legs just folded under him and he slid forward and collapsed on himself. I said to him that I was being gentle (since that's the way I always try to work), and that I wasn't trying to put him down hard. He smiled and told me not to worry, because whatever it was that I was doing, it was working.

I find this happening more and more at the dojo. I think that I'm doing a better job focusing my center, or "ki," I'm using my body more efficiently and effectively. I'm getting more done with less effort.

We also did a series of koshi nage, or hip throws on Thursday. Koshi nage seems such an integral part of Aikido, yet to me hip throws seem to come straight from judo. Perhaps they do. I'm not going to go down that road right now. The point is that we worked three of four different variations of koshi nage on Thursday, and I was getting my uke over my hip very effectively with little effort. It was good.

Today was the same. I worked with a brown belt who started when the dojo was in its earliest years - it's ten years old now. We were doing tenshi nage - the Heaven and Earth throw, both omote and ura. As long as I was driving my "heaven" hand upward I was taking him down like nothing. This was also good.

At the end of class today Sensei had us practicing for randori. Uke were to attack with a shomen uchi, or overhand strike, and nage had to evade the strike with a move to uke's open side. When it was my turn I could hear Sensei saying, "Nice, good work, very nice." I impressed them all. It's not that I was going for impressing others, but if you knew me, you'd know I never think too highly of myself for a variety of reasons. So it was wonderful to be recognized for doing well. I'm not the type to blow my own horn in public. This medium being the one exception, as I know that no one else reads this.

Finally, my student teacher's supervising teacher came to watch her in action. She, like so many others, wanted to see my class in action as they did their projects in Social Studies. To be clear, my student teacher is helping in this one class, and I am the one who brought them to this point in their learning. They were working in groups on their very first group presentations. At the end of the learning and working time, my class went to some special, and the three of us got a chance to talk. The supervising teacher said, although I am putting this into my own words, that she has seen between 60 and 80 classrooms and their teachers in action, and she has never seen project based learning (PBL) done as well as it was done in my class. Never. Then she went on to tell me that she is on the Wisconsin board of Phi Delta Kappa, the professional teachers organization, and she is going to nominate me for some sort of award they give out annually. I was not expecting that, but it felt good. It will be nice if it actually happens.

While I am not the type to sing my own praises, I won't turn my back when others do. It's encouraging to be recognized for doing well, no matter who is the student and who is the teacher.