Blog 14: Independent Component 1

• LITERAL
  (a) “I, Lizzeth Acuna, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”
  (b) My mentor, Fabian Villalobos, aided me in successfully completing my independent component.
  (c) My mentorship log is to the right. =>
• (d) My goal with my independent component was to gain more experience and a better understanding of teaching karate. Throughout the last 3 months, I've consistently gone to my mentorship and observed my sensei's teaching style. Not only have I helped  out in running and teaching the class, but I actually had my sensei assess me in my teaching. On a particular occasion, in mid December, my sensei had me teach all four classes all on my own. He sat on the side and wrote notes on what I had to improve. All in all, I feel that I did accomplish my goal.
• INTERPRETIVE 
  Over all, my main job was to practice my teaching skills. I have a myriad of pictures of me teaching. I also took notes on my sensei's teaching style and way to describe some techniques in particular. And just to be sure, I took pictures of the tournament in which I participated. 
  
• APPLIED
  Actively teaching and constantly getting feedback not only helped me get answers for my EQ, but it also helped understand karate better. By constantly asking my sensei about the techniques he teaches and why teaches them the way he does, I was able to learn a lot more than what I would have expected. For example, instead of teaching a knifehand strike with the traditional shokotan technique, he teaches it with a traditional budokan emphasis because he found that it's more effective. I also found out that there's a lot more similarities in the technique style between different oriental martial arts. Also, since part of my component involved going to a tournament, I was able to unofficially interview a sensei that has studied many different karate styles. He described how the fighting stances tend to vary a bit between the styles, but that somehow a horse stance is basically the same for all styles.  

Evidence

             As part of my evidence I have pictures of me attending tournaments, me helping teach, and of some of my notes.