making room to grow
The video recording of one of my favourite recent Patreon chats is now up! On October 9th, 2021, we meandered through the parallels between the commodification and popularization of sashiko stitching/embroidery and the development arc of a martial art; the history of MMA; the challenges of determining an art's authenticity and effectiveness in HEMA; Phil … Continue reading Live Chat Recording: Sashiko, Martial Arts, and the Commodification of Practical Things
The trick to creating freedom to experiment, learn from error, and develop self-reliance, is a structure that actively supports those behaviors. I talk a lot about how you can't teach students to be independent thinkers and active problem-solvers if your class structure is built around obedience and rigid adherence to pre-set patterns. You also can't … Continue reading No Such Thing as Unstructured Space
I originally wrote this piece as two separate Facebook posts, published a few days apart. The first was a very personal vent about some of what I've been dealing with over the past few months, and the second a concrete call to action for folks in my martial arts community. I'm sharing both here in … Continue reading Disposable Women and Martial Arts: An Essay in Two Parts
If I could give one single bit of teaching advice to everyone, it would be: Let your students do it wrong more often. I know it's hard. You want to help them. You want them to know what you know. You want them to do things right so that they can get more "good" reps … Continue reading Learning vs Knowing
The following post was originally published on the Valkyrie Western Martial Arts Assembly blog on July 30, 2019. When we tell other martial arts instructors and school owners that we offer sliding scale pricing for events at Valkyrie, one of the most common responses that we get is: "But don't you lose a lot of … Continue reading Sliding Scale Pricing, by the Numbers