Denny Strecker’s Blog

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Some parents are amused by it, and others just think it’s silly. Still, others are just curious why - and we often get asked: “Why do your teachers take the games you play in the classroom so seriously?

Chances are, you’ve seen your child play one of our favorite games, in which her goal is to remain standing perfectly still… as one of the teachers creates all of the distractions they can think of. You’ve probably felt yourself pulling for your child, hoping she could remain still.

Deep inside, everyone has a place that is unmovable, determined, and focused. Some people call it the “do what it takes,” or the “go the distance” attitude. It’s often referred to as discipline or commitment - but we consider it the root of both.

Fortunately, most children have not had the kinds of experiences that would force them to dig that deep… Yet!

Some kids find it when dealing with a tough coach in high school football, or when dealing with an injury (either physical or emotional). Some unfortunate kids never find that place.

But what if there was a way that would help kids find that rock solid place that was safe and fun? What if there was a way of finding it that children looked forward to, and were motivated to chart their progress? A way that was completely painless, yet was so effective it must be “magical?”

We call this “magical” way the “Attention Stance Game.” It’s not a hard game for kids to learn - as they try their hardest to stand at attention, perfectly still, the teachers use any means of distraction (except tickling or touching), some of which are quite silly, to try to get the kids to move. If a child loses concentration, they are asked to sit off to the side, or do a few exercises. The teacher’s goal is make all of the kids laugh - and the child’s goal is to be the last one standing.

If you watch, you’ll notice that the beginning students are usually the first ones to break concentration. But as they continue through the belt ranks, students learn how to reach that place of deep inner strength, and are able to remain at attention longer. By the time a student reaches red belt or so, the teachers almost never win!

That is the best part of the “Attention Stance Game” — when the kids win, and the teachers “lose” — the kids and the teachers both win. Obviously, the kids have one the game. But the teachers have won the battle of leading students to that deep, inner place where they find commitment and discipline.

And the process is FUN, for both the kids and the teachers!

We all love “Win-Win” situations - especially when it means that our students are learning such valuable lessons. The lessons learned in the “Attention Stance Game” are right at the core of positive character development.

We love using games in the classroom because they are so powerful when it comes to character development. That’s why you’ll notice that a large part of our classes are dedicated to playing games.

All of our games, in fact, have an underlying lesson. As you watch your child’s karate class, are you able to figure out what the lesson is behind the game?

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6. Set or get deadlines for your tasks. When setting yourself a task or getting one from someone else - always find out when it needs to be done. Then diarize an appropriate amount of reminders before the due date.

7. Work/life balance seem to be the buzz words all over the world at present - but you really do need to put time and energy into this area. Schedule in time to relax, time with family, time reading, time with your partner - if it’s in your diary and you are committed to it, you’re less likely to neglect it.

8. My desk at work is my haven. My trays work for me. Now I can’t tell you what the best desk system is for you, all I know is that if yours doesn’t make your day easier - change it, constantly change it until you get something that works. For me, I don’t allow anyone to put anything on my desk. My assistant is allowed to put things in one tray and one tray only, everything else is put in my communal pigeon hole. I have a single out tray - this simple tray stops me from getting up 20 or 30 times a day as much of what comes in to me needs to go elsewhere in the office. I have a tray full of non urgent things to read, when I get time, I start going through it. I have a tray full of things I’m waiting on others for and I have an email folder full of these sorts of emails - my diary prompts me with a recurring reminder to check through these two areas. Whatever works for you, works for you, just take some time to find it!

9. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. What’s worse - asking for help once or doing the task incorrectly or incompletely 5 times, or even worse, hiding the work! It happens, don’t be a victim of the “scared to ask” disease.

10. Your mind isn’t a computer, use your computer to help your mind become like one. Each week on a Friday a little reminder comes up in Outlook telling me to send out my weekly email. Each week on a Wednesday I’m told I have two meetings first up. You’re not a machine; use your technology to its best advantage.

“Nothing is a waste of time…if you use the experience wisely.” - Rodin

Short attention spans don’t stand a chance in our classroom!

I recently read that children’s attention spans don’t exceed 12 minutes - and I’m sure many parents will agree! However, while some might see this as a limitation, we see it as useful information in structuring our classroom. 

Psychologists have recommended that teachers break up their classes into smaller segments, because the study had revealed that children tend to “retain” more information at the beginning and at the end of a learning session. 

We took that to heart… By now, you have probably noticed that in our classes, the children never work on one any one skill for more than a few minutes. If you watch, you’ll see that the kids don’t even stay with the same teacher for more than about 12 minutes. At first glance it may appear to be chaos with the kids moving back and forth in the classroom!

However, there is a purpose to this “craziness.” At the beginning of each class, the students line up, bow in, and do a quick warm up. As the children are stretching after their warm-up, the head instructor begins to divide the class up by age or rank. 

Each of the other instructors has a different part of the lesson plan - it might be forms, basics, self-defense, one steps, or any number of drills - and each is given a small group of children to work with. 

After a few minutes, you’ll hear the head instructor yell “One minute, teachers!” This is the cue for each instructor to finish their drill and prepare to send their group to the next teacher. 

The kids are sent off to another part of the room, with a new teacher and a new drill, just as their attention span had reached its limit with the old drill. A short attention span isn’t given a fair chance when faced with the combination of this “switch” and the “SSL” rule. 

“SSL,” by the way, stands for “Smiling, Sweating, and Learning.” In other words, our students are learning an important skill at the same that they’re getting a good workout… and having a good time. And balance is the key to accomplishing our goal of improving our students’ lives. 

We get much better results when we have a good balance between teaching kids life skills, giving them a good workout, and making sure they have a great time when they come to class. If we only focused on one aspect of the class -“sweating,” for example - the kids wouldn’t want to come. If we didn’t teach the kids valuable life skills, the parents wouldn’t be interested in bringing their children. 

After all… what keeps us interested in working with children is seeing the benefits of their training - improved self-esteem, confidence, respect, courage, integrity, and perseverance. And these are the things that keep parents interested.

By Kirsty Dunphey

“Until you value yourself… you will not value your time; until you value your time… you will not do anything with it.” - M. Scott Peck, Author

Time management, as anyone who works with me would know, is one of my big complaints, issues, concerns. It’s also one of the most frequent things that people rate themselves lowest on in things like performance reviews.

Today I want to provide you with some simple tips to improve your time management, efficiency and productivity that work for me. Fingers crossed and there may be a few here that work for you too! 1. Eliminate these words from your vocabulary: “I don’t have time.” This one’s a tough one, and although this is one of my aims I’ll admit that sometimes they do slip out, but my aim is consistent - to eliminate them. The next time you go to say those dreaded words, just remember - you have exactly the same amount of time as everyone else, you have exactly the same amount of time in your day as the Olympic swimmer who gets up at 4am, you have the same amount of time in your day as presidents and world leaders who run entire countries. Eliminate the words because what you’re really trying to say is: “I don’t want to make time to do that,” and that’s quite alright too! The next time you go to say “I don’t have time,” imagine if that task you’re saying you don’t have time for was a family member at a hospital - you’d have time to get there, so what you really need to decide is, “Does this deserve my time?”

2. It’s an oldie but a goody - start each day by getting rid of your most despised task. Nothing ruins a day like dreading a task you have to do later in the day.

3. Set rewards for yourself if you can achieve all your tasks, find out what motivates you. For me - it might be that if I can get through these three hard tasks I can eat some of the doughnuts that one of my team brought into work today. Another great thing about that reward is that if I procrastinate - the doughnuts will be gone! Another great thing to do is to buddy up with someone and become accountability partners for getting your tasks done.

4. Unless you have the world’s best memory (I don’t), make lists. When someone gives you a responsibility, write it down, whether you record it in your phone, your organizer, email yourself, write it on the back of a napkin - it doesn’t matter how, write it down! Nothing’s worse than the feeling of waking up in the middle of the night thinking - oh no, I forgot to do that.

5. I’ve never been a huge believer in labeling tasks A, B, C, in order of their importance. I’ve tried this system and it doesn’t work for me - of course that doesn’t mean it won’t work for you. What I try to do instead is what I call Little Things First. What this means is that when I get an email, if it’s small or has a small task, I’ll get rid of it quickly rather than continually come back to it over and over again. I have many recurring tasks in my diary and the small things on my list are gone by about 10:30am usually, leaving me the bulk of my day to work on larger projects.

It seems odd to think that someone doesn’t want to be successful in life, but I see it time and time again. Some people unconsciously sabotage themselves into failing again and again at every task they work on and then sit back and wonder what happened. The same thing can happen to parents. You have to WANT to be a great parent. Day after day, I talk to parents who are sabotaging their family and what makes it worse is now the children suffer too. You can give people every tool they need to be successful and they will still fail if they don’t WANT it!

I was watching a show on BBC called Kitchen Nightmares and this episode is a perfect example of what I am talking about. The plot of the show is chef Gordon Ramsey, one of the premier chefs in the world, goes to a struggling restaurant and teaches them how to run their restaurant better. In this episode, he was working with a women who owned a small vegetarian restaurant in France. She had not paid rent or many of the bills for 6 months and was ready to close. Gordon came in, and within 5 days had the restaurant making more money per day than it was earning per week before his arrival. He gave the owner a new menu, new staff, and several ideas on how to make the restaurant grow. He saved this women and her restaurant.

Guess what? He came back 6 weeks later to see the restaurant closed and a for sale sign in the window. Gordon Ramsey sat in disbelief as he gave this women every tool she needed to be successful. He tracked down the owner to hear what happened and the disbelief just grew. She didn’t “feel” like following his suggestions and she was too “tired” and “stressed” trying to make it work so she walked away. The fear of success kept this woman from making a great living.

Parents fall into the same trap. You come home and are tired and stressed about your day and you end up venting on your family. Remember, parenting is a skill and it needs to be practiced until it becomes an art. Teach your children, and yourself, to WANT to be successful because without that desire you are doomed to a mediocre and unhappy life.

I recently spoke with a parent who asked for my help regarding her teenage son. The concern that she had was that he would walk away from her any time she said anything that he did not want to hear, and worse, he would lock himself in his room and turn up the radio to drown out any sound of her voice. If you have teenagers, you have more than likely found yourself in this position at least once. So the advice I had for her, and for the rest of you parents out there, was so basic, and so simple, that she did not believe me.

Do you want to know what I told her?

Click Here to read the rest of this story…

If there were ever two skills to teach your child, “energy” and “passion” would be right at the top of that list. As the following article states, success is sure to follow anyone who has these two skills in their arsenal. Read on and then think about how you can begin to teach your child to be passionate about their goals. I look forward to reading your comments.

The 1-2 Punch of Success… Energy and Passion
By John Rowley

“The most essential factor is persistence - the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm (Passion) to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.” -James Whitcomb Riley

When you have the energy to fuel your passion, success is sure to follow. The 1-2 punch of energy and passion is the key to success in life. In order to be successful in any endeavor you will need to overcome much discouragement, frustration and failure, and the key to rising above these things is energy and passion. That is why I always say that “energy is the fuel to ignite passion and passion is the engine of success!”

In the movie Cinderella Man, Russell Crowe plays a down and out boxer that makes a dramatic comeback. The backdrop to this movie is the great depression and previous to the great depression Crowe’s character, Jimmy Braddock, was a champion boxer that lost his way. After his comeback a reporter asks him, “You have lost before, what’s the difference this time?” Jimmy Braddock then answers “I know what I’m fighting for.” The reporter follows up with “And what’s that?” and Jimmy comes back with what I feel is the most memorable and inspiring line in the whole movie, he simply says, “Milk.” That says it all; now he knew why he was fighting. He was fighting to feed his kids. He was able to look defeat straight in the face and say “Okay, one more round.” He was able to overcome failure because he had the energy and passion to achieve his goal of putting milk on the table. I feel this is the story of America. A spirited passion for a worthy goal that will let nothing stand in her way. “Okay, let’s go one more round” was the unspoken mantra for generations of Americans and what has made America the greatest country in the world.

The 1 – 2 punch of energy and passion is the key to success in your career as well as your life. People can feel your energy and passion.Put the 1-2 punch of energy and passion to work in your life so you can live the life of your dreams!

To become good at something, you first must be willing to be lousy
at it for a while…and in some cases, for quite a while.

Often, a person’s pride gets in the way. It won’t permit them to look
bad at something. They only like to look good…and that means only
doing the things they are  already good at.

Talk about a zero growth formula! Don’t succumb! Be willing to be
lousy…as long as necessary to master the skills that are important
to you!