Dinoto Karate Center - Action Karate Mount Laurel

I’m unbelievably proud of our Junior Leadership team.

As somebody who grew up in the Martial Arts, belt promotions every 3 months is the heart-beat of the school. It’s an intense day, with a lot going on. It is the day we show up for ourselves and our tribe.

Back in 2020 we had to stop doing in person belt promotions because…well you know why. For a while, we did belt promotions for an entire week to keep the number of people in the school down for virus safety.

Last year on my never ending to-do list of how to build our community back to what we know we can be, I started working on bringing back our single day belt-testing.

After the first one, two things became obvious.

This was a must do. It felt right. The energy in the school was electric. Frankly, it felt like home.

This was going to be hard. All of our Junior Leadership hadn’t seen a single day belt promotion ever. Most of our teenage instructors could only kind of remember what that felt like. From a leadership perspective, covid killed a whole lot of institutional knowledge.

Like in all things, it was easy to say, hard to do, and worthy of the challenge.

Friday’s belt testing went like clockwork. Like always, I got too much credit. The magic is how far our leaders have come.

From Master Hearn making sure the belts were laid out correctly.

Our Jr Leaders pre-framing each other when they came in word for word what I shared with the early birds coming in.

We even had someone on photo duty for all of our parents.

Like we talked about Friday night with the 5 year bamboo tree. It comes from the watering we’ve been doing for the past several years.

I’m so proud of the courage, confidence, and communication skills our leaders had on full display yesterday.

Instructors: Master Hearn, Ms Gupta, Ms. Knowlton

Jr Leaders

The Floating Mr. Augustin
Worm Savior Ms. Kolanko
Dash Squared the beasts on the field
The Golden Mr, Difazio

P.S. One of my favorite parts of the promotion was watching all our Jr Leaders take a break to hang out and have some snacks before their Black belt Promotion time 🙂

NERF War's parents Night Out was a HUUUUUUGE success.

The kids didn't want to leave when their parents came to collect them. Battles were waged, alliances forged...and the real victory was the friends we made along the way.

Quick Shout out's about this weekend
This weekend just wouldn't have been possible a year ago. At the end of the day, neither myself or our team was ready to pull this off without me burning myself into the ground.

Master Hearn has proudly taken over our Birthday Parties and Birthday Celebrations for students. (You may notice she's already more consistent with the birthday signs going out). When I showed up at Mae's party--intentionally 30ish minutes in--I didn't really know what to do with myself without getting in the way. And, while I'm doing my best impression of a houseplant in the lobby, the parent's and grandparents raved about how fun the party was.

Then, we did a quick sweep of the school and it was time for her to run the parents night out.

Also, shout out to Knowlton who with about 12 hours notice (sorry) was our number to for the birthday party and made sure the 23ish 3,4,5 year olds are safe and sound.

During the NERF wars PNO, Ms. Kolanko solved our what to do for our first Tweens and Teens social (details incoming), and gave me three ideas that are genuinely Karate Culture Genius

Also this weekend, Master Cline and Master Pagurek put together some ideas to refine our Ko Dan Ja (Master test), which is coming up in October.

..headway was made on some secret projects, but... well they're secret.
______

TLDR I'm incredibly proud of our team of Instructors, Ko Dan Ja, and our Leadership team.

Milan is inspecting the Gold Medals for next weeks BOARD BASH...

I think he's excited XD

This is what I woke up to this morning :)

❄️❄️❄️SNOW DAY SPECIAL❄️❄️❄️
50% OFF! 3 CLASSES + UNIFORM. CALL US AT 856-235-0414 😀

Trunk or Treat for Kids: Free Community Event is happening from now to 1:30!!!!!! Come have some Halloween fun

We're set to have an amazing senior black belt test tomorrow.

Here's the live link for anyone who can't make it :)

Black Belt Master's Test KA DAN SA | October 20, 2024 http://www.dinotokarate.comBEGINNER CLASSES ENROLLING NOW! KID'S KARATE IN MOUNT LAUREL TEACHES DISCIPLINE & SELF CONFIDENCE!!http://www.dinotokarate.comGive...