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Last night I got to teach at the Boy’s and Girl’s Club. My assigned task was downward block, and I wanted to work the kids out relatively hard. During the day, I was inundated by advice from Oedewaldt about how to teach children. I told him to stop talking to me like I had never taught children before, and that I was sure I could handle it.

My plan was to give them a workout similar to the Boy’s Club of years past. A lot of “karate stuff”, not a lot of talking about it or floofing around like we’ve been doing lately. As part of this initiative, I asked Oedewaldt to have a shorter warm-up than normal so I could have a little extra time. I had ambitions of letting the kids attempt reverse punch with the downward block just for fun that would’ve required a little extra time.

Apparently, Oedewaldt did not understand what short meant. He always gives them a five minute review on what respect means every class, something that the older kids appear to have memorized verbatim by now. He proceeded to lead them through fifteen minutes of warm-ups, and he had requested that I give him ten minutes at the end for “McGruff: Part 2”. That left me with about a half hour.

Suffice it to say that I was prepared for the kids to have trouble with downward block, as it is one of the harder techniques to learn. Some of the kids got it great, others weren’t grasping it. In the end, I feel that my portion of the class was quite average. A few of the kids were having a great time, a few were bored, and more than a few were confused. We were going slow enough that by the end everyone had done several decent downward blocks, so I was pretty happy.

I felt like I gave them a taste of a real karate workout that didn’t have games or prancing around. However, because of the parts of the class that Oedewaldt insisted on doing himself, I don’t think I affected much change. I think this may be the last year that I help out at the Boy’s Club, because I can’t bear to suffer under robotic, antiseptic, condescending instruction anymore. I think I may start coming to Mapleton to help out instead.