Blog 20: Exit Interview

Content:

(1) What is your essential question and answers?  What is your best answer and why?

My EQ is "What is the most important factor to effectively teach karate to young children?" My three answers are: having experience and good teaching skills can guarantee that a sensei can know how to teach and cater to every student learning needs in order to optimize their learning, knowing how to respond to emergency situations greatly helps a sensei ensure that they are prepared to take care of any situations that might arise when teaching, parental support/involvement greatly helps a child be more willing and able to learn better. My best answer has to be having experience and good teaching skills. The reason for this is that in order to teach karate effectively you need to have a deep understanding of how and why each technique is the way it is, and this is learned through experience. As for the good teaching kills aspect, its important to know how exactly how to teach karate, as it is a bit different than most teaching. In order to teach karate, you must need to know how to earn the respect of your students and establish a class, and to do that, the first thing you need to do is know how to address the students' different learning needs and cater to them. By incorporating these concepts, you are bound to successfully teach karate to young children, which is usually more of a challenge.

(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

Although it was a yearlong process, the point where I sorted out my best answer was through my 2nd independent component. Through said component I further explored each of my answers through research, testing it out myself, and conducting interviews. After compiling all I learned, I decided that having experience and good teaching skills was my best answer. 

(3) What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

To be honest, the only problem I faced was not knowing how to incorporate all of my answers into my independent component. I know that I wasn't required, but in order for my project to be more complete I felt that it was important. At first I was worried that I would be too much, but it was with time and actually sitting down to think it through that I was able to figure out a way to touch base with all of my answers without going over the top or bitting off more than I could chew. In the end it all worked well. 

(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

The two most important sources I used to find my answers are my mentor and an article I found about teaching to different learning styles (Attempted Validaiton of the Scores of VARK: Learning Styles Inventory with Multitrait-Multimethod Confirmatory Factor Analysis Models). My mentor was of importance because he himself is who taught me how to teach and has continuously done what he could so that I could improve. My sensei was important for me to find all three of my answers, but the article helped me solidify my best answer. But now, in the given case that my mentor did not count as a source for any given reason, I would cite my interview with Sensei Frank Marquez, as he helped me place all of my answers in perspective and narrow down the most effective one.