Sensei Cindy

Rob took some pictures of my black belt test - mostly at the end. Apparently phone cameras aren't too good at action shots so there's a lot of blurring, but several of them are fun anyway. This one is from the self-defense portion of the night. Mike, a very sweet TKD black belt is the guy going for a roll.

Last night was my first night teaching as a black belt. Sensei called (a whole five minutes before I headed out the door for class) to say he would be late, and possibly might not make it at all. Sensei D wasn't there when class time rolled around, so I was on.

I was surprised how much difference a week and a change of belt color made. I've taught classes now and then ever since I was a blue belt (and taught one as an orange belt, but that was special circumstances), so I wasn't expecting a change from prior experience. Instead, the students (all three of them, but still), treated me perceptibly differently, and perhaps in response I was a lot more confident. I tried several exercises I've known about for a while, but had never tried in class before. All of the kids seemed to be enjoying themselves and were learning things at the same time. I even got our teen brown belt guy to do a little bit of grappling and enjoy it - normally he responds to any teaching of joint locks, grappling, or escapes with barely concealed boredom.

Sensei D showed up very late in the class (last 20 minutes), but didn't join in. Instead he watched and took some photos with his phone, which he e-mailed to me later. He had no commentary on the class at all, which I will chose to interpret positively.

School started Wednesday. Both kids like their teachers thus far. Robbie had a bit of a bus disaster on day 1. He had never ridden a school bus before, so he hadn't realized he needed to remember the bus number (even though I told it to him at least three separate times). When he couldn't find his bus after school, he nerved himself up to ask the principal, but spoke so quietly that the man misheard him and put him on the wrong bus - not even one going to another part of our neighborhood, but one going to a completely different town. It took us about 90 minutes to retrieve him, during which both Robbie and Mommy were fairly upset. His bus number is written down in his school planner now, and day two went smoothly.

Aaron is trying out for the school cross-country team next week. I'll be flabbergasted, but extremely proud if he makes it on (endurance is a continuing problem for him). The elementary school open house is next Tues., but we haven't had any information about the middle school OH yet.

Essays

Well, I finally got a look at the essay topics for my black belt. I knew I had to write three, but I could only remember two of the topics: What in your opinion, is a black belt? and What does karate mean to you? I couldn't remember the third topic for anything. So once I got a look, I figured I'd come talk about it here a bit, which should serve the dual purpose of grinding it into my memory a bit, and providing a written record in case it does slide out again.

The third question, being much of a kind with the previous two, is: What, in your opinion, is a sensei?

This could conceivably provide some serious overlap, since to my mind, one of the meanings of a black belt is that the wearer is a teacher. And since what karate means to me also has bearing on the meaning of a black belt, it would almost be easier to address all three questions in one giant essay. I wonder if Sensei would go for that?

So on to the pondering. I've been pondering the other two questions for nearly a year at this point. Time to let the hindbrain cook on the third one.

In other news, Sensei has the death flu that's roaming around town right now. Sensei D. and I taught class Tuesday, and I had it by myself Thursday, since Sensei D. is now down in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Tuesday was very casual, with only two students. Last night, however, was pretty successful. I tried a couple of new drills garnered from my book on developing speed (Loren Christensen), and both were fairly well recieved. One drill was highly revealing, at least for my and my partner - and I suspect for the other pairs as well. The drill consists of circling one another as if fighting, up to and including fakes (which should be responded to as if in a fight), but no real thrown techniques. At random points, the designated person yells "Freeze!" and then "A" or "B" (each team as an A and B partner). The pair freezes, and then the designated person has 1 second to throw a technique to tap an open area. For me and my partner (Sensei's daughter), the opening for her was almost always a roundhouse to the chest - which is a kick she very rarely uses in an actual fight, and you could see the gears in her head turning as she noticed this. For me, I was nearly always slightly out of position. Never badly, but enough that I had to make an additional move to make a technique connect. Step forward, step sideways, turn - I was always just slightly off kilter or out of range for an effective technique. Which - duh! - of course I'm going to be slow on the attack if once I see an opening I have to both shift and throw the technique. I suspect it's my subconcious trying to slow the fight down, but its result is only to slow me down, not my opponent. Not exactly effective technique there.

Score! Something specific I can work on that should increase my effective speed. I'll have to tell Sensei about the drill when he gets better and comes back. I think he'll like this one.

By Request

MALS wanted a more detailed explanation of backward-shaping, so I'll do my best.

I was first introduced to backward-shaping through the work of Karen Pryor, an animal trainer whose book Don't Shoot the Dog is one of a very few books I think pretty much everyone should read. Karen Pryor teaches positive reinforcement and clicker training, and while the book is marketed as a dog-training book, it has broad-based applications for teaching pretty much any kind of animal - including humans.

Backward-shaping involves two things. First is breaking a complicated task down into bite-sized bits, giving the trainee a high chance of success. The other is working from the unknown to the known, so that instead of starting with the part of the task the trainee knows well and progressing into successively less well known parts, you start with a part the trainee doesn't know and move from there into parts the trainee knows better and better.

Most people do this quite naturally with some tasks. When we teach a child to make cookies it's pretty common to start by teaching them to roll the dough into balls and put them on the tray. From there you progress backwards to having them add the fun ingredients like the chocolate chips, and from there to running the mixer, and from there to measuring ingredients. Each time you bake cookies, you start the child on something they don't know (measuring), and then progress into something they know better (mixing) and then into something they know well (making dough balls).

With other things, like pieces of music or karate katas, backward-shaping is counter-intuitive, but the principles work the same. You break the whole into bite-sized bits, something small enough to be taught in a single session, the same way you would if you were teaching (or learning) front-to-back. But instead of teaching the first portion of the sequence first, you start with the last one - the ending chords of the sonata, or the final pass of the kata. Once that's well established you back up to the next bit, and teach it. The trainee then learns the new bit and flows from that new section into the ending section that they already learned. So the training sequence for something that's been broken into five sections would look like this: 5, 45, 345, 2345, 12345.

One major advantage to backward-shaping is that the trainee is always working towards what they know, which tends to end training sessions on high notes, which is good for morale on both sides. One disadvantage is (as noted in the prior post) most students aren't used to learning this way and tend to be weirded out the first time they encounter it. My experience would tend to indicate that it's a pretty valuable technique when you can find people who are comfortable working this way, and I would encourage people to try it and see how it works for them.

Bass Ackwards

Hah! I finally cleared Kusanku. Last night was my first lesson on Sunsu (or Suansu, depending whose pronunciation/spelling you go for). This will be my second-to-last empty hand kata, with only Sanchin left to learn. Sensei says he will also start teaching me Tokumine no Kun (bo kata) now, though he intends to start by showing me individual moves first, rather than teaching front-to-back.

I'm kind of tempted to ask him if he can teach it to me back-to-front, to test out a little theory of mine. The rule of thumb in dog training is that you start with the last thing first, so that the animal is always working from the least well known stuff towards stuff it knows better. In theory it should work the same way with human learning. I've done it succesfully with piano music and with memorizing text. With piano music it is frustrating, but it works exceptionally well. It forces me to break the piece up more, and since the end of the practice section is generally the end of the piece, it doesn't reward half-assing things past the point I'm working on. I'm a good sight-reader, so the temptation to do this is strong if I'm working from the front. Generally if I can make myself work back-to-front, the learning process is neither faster nor slower, but when I get to the point of doing the whole piece, my technical playing is much stronger. Whereas if I'm going front-to-back my playing tends to stall out at the "sounds good to a layman" stage.

However, most people aren't used to learning (or teaching) back-to-front. I've tried teaching that way once or twice, and the immediate reaction is "Man, that's weird!" and a shutdown by the student. They're just too weirded out to pay proper attention. Only one of our current students thinks it sounds interesting, but she's learning simultaneously as her two sons and teaching them all the same kata from different ends would likely be counter-productive to their home practice, since they use each other for memory-checking. She did memorize the karate creed using back-to-front, and reported that it worked well.

I am tempted to ask Sensei if he's willing to try teaching Tokumine no Kun back-to-front. I'm the only one learning it right now, and he's generally pretty open to alternative teaching ideas. We'll have to see. After all, he was originally going to teach me Kusanku and Kusanku Sai simultaneously, but after the first couple of classes, it never really happened again - so it may turn out to be moot.

Sensei thinks he's found us an indoor place to go. We'd be renting space from a Jazzercise studio. Advantages: flooring should be good - certainly better than linoleum over concrete. Hours are good. Space is good. Owner will let us advertise, so we have some good opportunity to add some students. Indoors will be very good as the weather moves into high summer. Disadvantages: Cost is higher than Sensei really wanted to pay, meaning he'd have to charge us more than he'd like to, though still only about half of what our prior place charged us. Neighborhood is not bad, but scary enough that the mother of our youngest student (seven), may balk at coming there. Sensei is worried that Sin & Skin, the tatoo parlor next door, may scare her away.

In other news, Rob is currently in Oregon for his first major trip relating to his new position. He's gone until this weekend, whereupon he's home for a week, and then we head for Minnesota for a mini-family reunion (my parents, their kids, spouses and children). After that we're home for a week - and then school starts. It seems like it's been an incredibly short summer, but I'm looking forward to getting back into my normal routine. Trying to fit exercise and writing in around having the children home full-time is a considerable challenge.

Lastly, I'm moving back into proper practicing mode on the piano. I've been hacking around pretty much since we moved from Iowa - I think being music minister there burned me out a little. I'm feeling a little too much of a hacker lately though, so I'm going back to putting in significant daily time on the bench. If I can figure out exactly how, I may see if I can record pieces as I re-add them to my repetoire and post them up here. If I'm feeling especially ambitious, I may even try singing! That would be seriously courting Murphy, however. Despite multiple attempts by several different people, I've never actually been successfully recorded singing. In high school I tried to record a practice session with my teacher, only to have the tape machine go kablooie. In college the choir was doing a professional recording of the Vespers concert so we could sell it for travel funding. The entire recording was fine, except for my solo, wherein the audio engineer, for reasons that will forever remain mysterious, decided to eat a carrot, while standing next to the balcony mike, which he had forgotten to turn off. We had an extra session, specifically for re-recording that section - and the equipment went haywire.

I've successfully made and e-mailed recordings of me speaking, so it's just the singing that's whacked - but if the playing goes well, I may try it anyway.

Oh, My

Well, Sensei doesn't seem to be in danger of leaving town, but I get to teach class for a while anyway. Due to job scheduling problems, it looks like Tuesdays are mine for at least the next month, maybe two. Tonight was the first night, with a full set of students since everyone was expecting Sensei. I'll know it didn't go well if nobody shows up next Tuesday!

The book I ordered (Speed Training for Martial Arts) showed up Monday, and I can already tell it's going to be a big help. It has a ton of training drills, both partnered and individual, for every imaginable aspect of speed (reaction time, technique selection, peripheral vision, and technique speed, just to hit the first three chapters). I used two of the drills in tonight's class and liked both of them, though I will probably choose differently if the same set of students shows up next week. Some students just should not be handed props! The first drill involved throwing various visually different balls at one student where each kind of ball was associated with a different technique. (E.g. the big ball is kicks, the purple ball is blocks, the tennis ball is hand strikes), and having them hit each ball with an appropriate technique. We split into groups of three, a tosser, a target and a ball chaser. The drill was great, but one team devolved into a rules-free game of ball tag any time they weren't being sat upon.

Other than that minor quibble, I was pretty happy with how class went. There's so much I feel I need to be learning about teaching, though. I not only need the drills and ideas from lessons that differ from Sensei's (not because his aren't good, but because I can't/don't teach like he does), but I feel like I need to research teaching itself. Like how to deal with a bright, motivated, but severely ADHD kid (who's also suffering from the onset of puberty - joy). On the good side, I do think there are a number of things I can plan lessons around that won't duplicate Sensei's classes, but will still be interesting and useful, so at least I've got that for a starting point.

But wouldn't you know that I finally get over feeling like an imposter with no right to the gi, and now I get to start feeling like an imposter with no right to be standing in front of the class?