Welcome to our great martial arts school! You have taken the first step to providing your child with a powerful array of tools that will empower them for the rest of their lives. Here at Karate America we are dedicated to three core values:
Believe: Your child will learn that the first step to any success is belief in themselves. Belief turns into goals, achieving goals builds confidence, and soon you have an unstoppable child!
Work Hard: We believe in hard work at school, at home, and in life. We know that short cuts don’t work. Hard work builds discipline, character, and strength. Watch as your child grows physically fit, mentally strong and socially prepared.
Be Nice: The foundation of our program is built on courtesy, respect, and honor. Rather at home or in school, students carry their responsibilities with them at all times. At Karate America we still say yes sir and yes ma’am. Our environment fosters an attitude that will supercharge your child and propel them to reaching their full potential.
Students in our Junior Achiever program are proficient in their vocabulary and problem-solving skills, yet they are not at the age where they want complete independence from adults. This makes the teacher-student relationship stronger than ever. The problem we discovered is they still lack core skills, and although they are highly intelligent, they struggle to keep up with more advanced students. The solution we found is to provide them with their own program that targets their stage of development in a manner that adapts to their adventurous attitude and youthful nature while at the same time building skills that set them up for success, and prepares them for our more advanced Black Belt training programs. With that said a structured program introducing core skill-based training in Martial Arts has proven to be very successful.
Here's an overview for the stages of development our Junior Achiever program focuses on:
Physically - they typically have weak fine motor skills therefore proficient technique is not quite there yet. Also, they still tend to stumble when their body is in motion therefore advanced movement is still a little sloppy.
Intellectually - they are extremely bright, but they typically have a hard time concentrating during distractions.
Emotionally - they are wonderfully stable and love challenge. However, they will typically show excessive fear when they over-process something.
Socially - they love to interact with others, especially adults. However, they typically don't like when something is unfair and will be determined to point it out and be heard.
By understanding the stages of development of students in our Junior Achievers program, we were able to select 8 age and level appropriate skills that make up the Junior Achiever Program:
We cover one of the above skills per class (in order.) During each class we run a warm-up; deliver a mat chat about the skill; run two or three skill-building drills; and then we have them demonstrate the skill to prepare for or earn their skill-stripe. Once a student earns all their skill stripes they are ready to graduate to their next belt.
Here is an example of what a student must demonstrate for each of the 8 skills above in order to earn their next belt:
As you can see we take Martial Arts training to a whole new level! We use core elements of traditional Martial Arts curriculums to build skills that are appropriate for the beginning level student. This means that your child will learn and grow at a pace that is not too easy, nor too challenging. The best part is the Junior Achiever program will equip your child with skills that they will utilize in every area of their life!