How to be resourceful here in karate class?

Every month, we have a word of the month. It’s part of our social emotional learning program, which is called True Character.

This month’s word of the month is resourcefulness. For the kids, we define resourcefulness as “I can do it without help.”

Character traits of resourceful people

Resourceful people show many different character traits. They’re open-minded, confident, imaginative, creative, adaptable and positive. They think of ways to solve problems.

These are all great black belt traits. So when we start talking about black belt — having a black belt attitude — that’s a symbol of excellence we put up in front of our kids.

One of those symbols of excellence is somebody that’s independent — that’s strong on the inside and the outside. Somebody that doesn’t need other people’s help for very simple things. Somebody that learns and understands how to find out how to do things on their own.

So we’re going to talk a little bit about how our students can be resourceful around the karate school.

Resourcefulness in all aspects of life

Everything we teach here in the karate school, everything that we teach the kids on how to be excellent in the martial arts, is a lesson in how to be excellent in anything.

So how to find your resources to learn the martial arts lessons is the same way that we teach for how to find your resources to find lessons in school. We teach the same methods for all these kinds of things.

We’re going to go over a few ways how the students can be a little bit more resourceful here in karate class and help them on their way to earning the black belt — and in turn build habits of success they can use everywhere in their life.

How can we show resourcefulness here in the studio? Oftentimes, we don’t even realize we’re being resourceful here at TBK. What are some things here at the studio you can use to help yourself solve problems?

Attendance cards

For example, we have our attendance cards. On the front of our attendance card, it shows our classes. It shows how many classes we are to our next rank. And as you get up into the Level One side of things, you need 24 classes in between belts.

If you’re not sure if you’re ready to test, or if you miss classes, maybe you were sick, maybe you’re on vacation, you can use your resources, instead of asking us a question. You can grab your attendance card and take a look.

On the attendance card, it also has your last test date. For our Level One and up students, it’s four months in between testing. So if you’re wondering if you qualify for the next testing, you can use your resources and look right there on your card.

You can also use your card to see if you have classes you need to make up. You get a chance where you’re looking back and you’re thinking, “you know I think I missed a couple of karate classes over the last few weeks. How can I find out if I missed some and I need to come in and make it up?” You can look right on your own attendance card that you pull when you walk in.

Resourceful people understand and learn how to solve problems and look up the information themselves.

When you ask questions and want to learn how to get the answer, you’re being resourceful. You don’t want answers handed to you. You want to learn to find the answers so you can better understand them.

Other resources available to you

We have several other tools around the school. We have our gut manual. We have a book that goes along with the membership. At orange belt, we hand out the gut manual and we start doing written tests. You can look up answers to some of the martial arts questions, some of the history and the terminology in the gut manual.

You can look around you. We have different resources hanging up all around the studio, where we’ve hung up some of the different things that we work on.

You can use your resources in karate and look it up on our website. Did you guys know we have a student website? Up in the top-right corner of our website, there’s a student log in. We give access to all our students.

You to log in and you can actually see videos of all the forms, all the one steps, all the curriculum. There are also all the different worksheets that we work through all loaded up on there.

So when you have a question and you’re struggling with something, you can use your resources to try to find the answer.

Ask the right questions

If you’re not sure where to look when you have a problem in class, you can ask a question. We’re always here to help as teachers. We’re always here to help you find the answer.

You can say something like, “I wanted to work on my form at home the other day, but I wasn’t sure what to do.” And we might reply with something like, “Here, let me help you work through the form. Let me show you where you can look that stuff up too, so you can find those answers in the future.”

Remember, a great black belt attitude is resourcefulness. We picture a black belt, we picture somebody independent, somebody confident, someone who is a good leader, somebody who does things for themselves.

This month’s word of the month is resourcefulness.

Thanks, and we will see everybody out on the mat.
– Master Helsdon