Back to Saturday classes!

While Drew hadn't taken an absence from them, it's been a while since I was at Saturday classes. For the most part, Saturdays are "specialty" classes, in which we concentrate in only one aspect of our studies during a half hour class instead of just a few minutes crammed into regular class time. Due to my exhaustion from last night, and my dislike of this thing, I bowed out of sparring class, while Drew took it. Right now, it's the only specialty class he's allowed to take, and he likes it. He was partnered up with a 6 year old camo belt, so he was more evenly paired up with someone his own age and height more or less, which was good. Then I had my forms class. I wasn't too happy with it. Victoria was teaching it, but she was teaching it as if it was a regular class in many respects. She had us doing these jumping drills. Hell, if I had known we were going to do all this running and jumping in forms class, then I would've skipped that class! I can appreciate doing drills that would be helping us with aspects of the segment we are working on, but we really didn't do much of that. We did work on the form, but it wasn't anything I hadn't already learned. Bleeh. Weapons class was a little challenging. Megan and Kristen were in class with me, so it was good to be in a class with some of my teen buddies, and they are higher ranks, but they were working on the SJB, and I was working on the kata instead. Ben was teaching the weapons class, and he asked Jody if she could work with us. I had to interrupt for a few moments because I had to get Drew started on his regular class as well, but that gave Jodi a moment to work with Megan and Kristen. Once I returned, Jodi-- who is very good with the kata-- worked on my 4 way cuts, and gave me a new thing to work on as well, so that helped. I know I have stuff to work on, and that helps. Board breaking was a snap, of course. Worked on my elbow break. Didn't do it on the first attempt, as I didn't rotate enough, but the second one, BAM! Mission accomplished. Drew finished up his class, and that was that.

In between, SW talked to me. She got a new signup, an upgrade or two, and framed a few others for upgrades as well. She felt that this definitely showed that she needs to be there more. I explained that I would do more of that, but not knowing which kids would be eligible for upgrades, or which ones to frame for certain other things, and she said she understood that, and wasn't blaming me. But she felt that RA needs to be doing more selling and less instructing, and letting the girls do more instructing than selling. Besides, these kids are teenagers. While SW feels they are capable, and perhaps they are, when you are talking about having an adult sign up and pay big bucks, I think that another adult should be handling that, not a teenager in high school. They are all capable instructors, after all, so let the girls teach, and RA should sell. This is part of what SW was saying but for different reasons. And I now have the task of dropping that hint to RA. Oh joy! I think part of it is that he needs to be more authoritative with the kids. HE'S the chief instructor now, not SW, even if she's ultimately the boss. He should take some more authority in talking to and handling the kids, and taking more of the business responsibility. SW thinks that he feels the pressure of trying to keep the curriculum up to snuff in her absence, which may be true. I'll figure out some way to talk about it with him a little bit, on an informal basis.

Oh, and there was one nice little highlight. After one of the classes, Ben came up to me to talk about Drew. Ben had been one of the judges for Drew's ring in the interschool tournament yesterday, and he wanted to tell me that if it had been a regular competition of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, he thought that Drew was the one who did the best job out of all the kids in the ring. Ben's a 3rd degree, the highest belt rank in the school after SW, so I took that as a really big compliment. I had thought Drew was the best too, but of course, I'm a little biased since he's my kid, but I agree that he has a natural ability about him with this, and a lot of it is starting to kick in (no pun intended). Both he and Dean, another 3rd degree (Dean just got his 3rd degree a month ago, so he's technically ranked behind Ben) thought that he really should take XMA classes, as they thought he'd kick butt. (Again, no pun intended.) I agree, but mentioned that he's not in Leadership yet, and I can't afford to put him in that right now, and they were very enthusiastic in encouraging me to put him in when he's a little older, because they both felt that he had the right stuff for it. That was really cool to hear. I mean, they didn't have to tell me that at all, and they both strike me as the kind that wouldn't say anything if they didn't have something good to say, so I really appreciated it. It made me happy. Drew will say sometimes that he doesn't like his karate class, but once he's there and in it, he has fun. It's tiring though, and I understand that, but I think if he sticks with it, he has a bright future ahead with it.