Dojo Kyle Jiu-Jitsu continues to practice and practice the resiliency lessons by offering regularly scheduled classes through Zoom videoconferencing.
As everyone tries to live their normal lives through this period of staying at home, Dojo Kyle Jiu-Jitsu co-owner Will Caldwell says he believes he is providing parents an hour of relief from their children and providing kids with a sense of normalcy and fun.
He said most of his students have adjusted nicely, but a few kinks need to be ironed out.
“Zoom is pretty easy to set up, the kids understand it well,” he said. However, there are a couple of kinks – like students forgetting to mute their channel and then their sibling acts silly disrupting the lesson.”
It was important to Caldwell to make this transition because he teaches his students that to get a black belt, you must be resilient.
“I teach them that they can’t just throw in the towel when the first obstacle occurs. This is especially true now with everything happening and when things go back to normal,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell said that yes, it’s difficult to provide detailed feedback and maintain interaction, but it has allowed him to see his students in a new light, like seeing their pets.
“Personally, I enjoy seeing everyone’s dogs, but a huge fringe benefit of social distancing situation is that I can tell my students are excited to see their classmates. I always make sure to leave time at the end for everyone to catch up,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell said that knowing everyone is keeping strong during this time might be the most valuable part of keeping his karate classes online.
