Midget Ninja Army

April 6, 2011

I received a phone call from one of the Chief Instructors of Sanchin-Ryu, the karate style I've been studying for 6 or 7 years and in which I hold a black belt. He asked if Ian (my oldest son, also a black belt), would be interested in co-teaching a class. This is a terrific honor and I said yes.

I knew this particular class site was open. The first instructor I was aware of is a great guy, but he was just finishing up college to be a chef and got a job in a chi-chi restaurant, and my guess is it's going to be a while before he knows or gets to a point where any of his evenings are free on a regular basis.

Then one of the chief instructors took the class, but that was a temporary situation because he was a couple hours away from the site. Then it was filled in by one of my friends, who already has a class (with an enviable, for the most part, Saturday morning time), and she was just filling in until the next session started. So I knew it was available, but didn't think Ian or I were likely to be asked, although I suspected it was possible. It was just that we are both fairly new black belts and they generally prefer to have people with at least a year's experience and/or apprenticeship take over a class. But Ian has been apprenticing and one or both of us has been substituting for a number of classes as instructors, so it's not completely out of the blue.

It sort of officially makes me a sensei, which loosely translates to "teacher" although a more accurate translation is "one who went before" which I actually like bit more, because it's more nuanced. At some point in the future, hopefully, I'll become a "certified sensei," whatever that entails, but in the meantime I'll just teach what I know and keep learning and studying.

Essentially we'll be co-teaching two classes, one which is all kids and one which is "family" i.e., may or may not have some parents and adults in it. I'm really excited about this and think it'll be a lot of fun.

So just in case you were wondering, yes, we're training our own Midget Ninja Army with plans for World Domination. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

(And I'd really like that photo better if there wasn't a grammatical error in it. I suppose that makes me a Grammar Ninja!)