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Character Chats

Excellent Questions

Excellent Questions

Here at True Balance Karate, we have a social emotional learning program called True Character. I’m Master H, owner and chief instructor here at the studio. And I have two master’s degrees in education. We’ve developed this curriculum to meet the needs of our youngest students who are three or four, and our oldest student who is 85. This month we are talking about excellence.

Last week we defined excellence as setting goals, working towards achieving them, finding ways to make yourself a little bit better than you were the day before. Being the best that you can be. That’s you demonstrating excellence.

Growing Through Questions

This week we’re talking about asking good questions, right? Excellence involves asking good questions because if you’re working on making yourself better, you’re going to need to ask questions. And for some of us, we can find that to be a nerve-wracking experience. It can give us anxiety. It can make us feel uncomfortable, all of those kinds of things. But at the end of the day, no one grows in their comfort zone. So we have to stretch a little. We have to grow a little. We have to push ourselves a little bit that way. And we have to ask good questions.

Being Specific

A good question means that you’re focused. You’re not going to be off-topic. You’re going to be on-topic. You’re not going to ask somebody to repeat all of the information that they’ve already shared. My fellow teachers and parents and anybody who has ever had a young kid ask them a question knows when they look at you and go, what are we doing? They didn’t hear any of the information and now they’re hoping that you’ll just repeat it back to them. Anybody who’s ever had that question posed to them knows it.

And so if we’re talking about excellence in asking questions, we want to make sure that we’re very clear and precise as to what piece we didn’t understand. When my kids were growing up and they would ask that question, I would turn it around on them. You tell me what we’re doing. So that they had to work on their own processing skills, goal-setting skills, awareness skills, responsibility skills, all of those things to answer their own question along the way. From there, they would then be like, okay, but I didn’t understand this piece. And that’s where we get into excellent questioning skills.

Finding Resources

We also need to make sure that not only are our questions on-topic and focused and concise in terms of what we don’t understand, but we also need to make sure that we are asking the right people. We are not going to go to the grocery store and ask where to check out a book? Where would I find this book? It’s not the library. It’s the grocery store.

We’re not going to go to the library and then see if we can have our teeth cleaned. They won’t be able to help us there. We have to make sure that we are going to the right people, that we are using the proper resources.

Now, yes, the library can help us find a dentist because the library has a huge swath of knowledge. They just won’t be able to do the actual act of cleaning our teeth. So the library is a great resource. Our teachers are great resources. People who really know their field are a great resource for their field. Going to those experts, if you will, in those fields, is important and helps us in terms of growing our knowledge and growing our understanding of what’s going on.

So we need to seek out those people and make sure that we’re asking them the right questions and we’re getting the information in a way that we can then understand it and comprehend it.

Pushing Ourselves

As we are striving for excellence, it is that goal setting and making ourselves better. And the way we make ourselves better is by asking good, focused on-topic questions of people who know the answers that we need. Those experts in their field, those people that know what’s going on.

It’s teaching our kids, what would be a good question to ask right now? What are you not understanding right now? So that they can then apply that, especially as they get older and get more comfortable in asking those questions.

So, this week was all about questions. Next week we’re going to talk about excellence with our feelings and continue more of this chat.

Thanks, and I’ll see you on the mat!

 


True Balance Karate was founded in 2012 by Master Sue and Paul Helsdon.

We offer kids karate lessons for pre-school children ages 3-6 and elementary age kids ages 7 and up. These lessons are designed to develop the critical building blocks kids need — specialized for their age group — for school excellence and later success in life.

Our adult martial arts training is a complete adult fitness and conditioning program for adults who want to lose weight, get (and stay) in shape, or learn self-defense in a supportive environment.

Instructors can answer questions or be contacted 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week at 630-663-2000. You can also contact us here. True Balance Karate is at 406 Ogden Ave Downers Grove Illinois, 60515 (next to CVS) Check out our Facebook!