Mount Laurel Martial Artist, Peter Liciaga, meeting with the "Instructor's Instructor"

Peter Liciaga, Mount Laurel martial artist and 4th degree master from Dinoto Karate Center met with Kyoshi Dave Kovar in Edison NJ for a ProMac seminar (Professional Martial Arts College).

Kyoshi Dave Kovar has been teaching Martial Arts professionally since 1978. Kyoshi Dave is a multi-style Black Belt (10 black belts! see video below) who has been committed to ever-improving his Martial Arts skills. His passion and dedication to helping instructors become the best teachers they can be is unparalleled in the martial arts industry. Kyoshi provides tips and insights to martial arts instructors around the world through workshops, bootcamps and seminars. To learn more about Kyoshi Dave, visit his blog HERE.

(Kyoshi Dave Kovar's 7th Degree Belt Test)

Master Liciaga and Kyoshi Kovar discussed effective instructor training strategies and principles, nutrition and the role of the martial arts master, and serving our communities through our martial arts instruction.

"Kyoshi Dave is a great friend and a great mentor. I appreciate the work he is doing and look forward to sharing everything that I learn from Kyoshi with all my students," said Master Liciaga.

Here is a quick video chat with Master Liciaga and Kyoshi Kovar:

This blog is part of Peter Liciaga's effort to promote the Ultimate Black Belt Test Program ( http://www.ultimateblackbelttest.com), which is an undertaking of The 100. (http://www.the100.us/), and a part of Peter Liciaga's Dream 100 Project.

Dave Kovar's Lesson in Comprehension

When I met with Kyoshi Dave Kovar to do his instructor training workshop, one of the first things he said was, "I Have Great Comprehension!"


Kyoshi Dave Kovar



"I have great comprehension. When I finish reading a book, I understand it extremely well…probably better than most people. Do you know how I know that? That’s easy…Mrs. Austin, my sixth grade teacher told me I did. After giving an oral report to the class on an assigned book, she pulled me aside and said “That was a really good report. You have great comprehension. Don’t ever forget that”.

Well I haven’t…and to this day, if I read a book, I’m confident that I will understand it really well. Now the honest truth is that my comprehension is probably just average at best, but I still hear the message Mrs. Austin instilled in me 40+ years ago. Her message helped to shape me. We should never underestimate the power our words can have with the people we share our life with, especially those who look up to us."

As an educator, I am constantly aware of how my words help shape the people in my life. Whether I am at home, at work or teaching martial arts, I am always looking for opportunities to encourage, motivate and inspire.

As a master instructor at Mount Laurel's Dinoto Karate center, one of our my main objective's is to seek out and train future teachers and instructors.

Here is a short list of what I look for in a potential teacher/instructor:

1. The Gift of Gab. Love to talk and share their knowledge.
2. The Gift of Words. Love the power of words to encourage, motivate and inspire others.
   and...
3. They must LOVE People. A teacher must love to work with people, especially children if they are going to WORK with children!

How are you and your words helping shape the people in your life?

Our Dream 100. resource site is designed not only for our black belts and advanced students, but for our future instructors as well.

Visit the Dream 100. and explore it.

This blog is part of Peter Liciaga's effort to promote the Ultimate Black Belt Test Program ( http://www.ultimateblackbelttest.com ), which is an undertaking of The 100. (http://www.the100.us/ ), and a part of Peter Liciaga's Dream 100 Project.

5 Core Beliefs (from the Dream 100 website)

Over the next several weeks I will share great lessons from Kyoshi Dave Kovar's Instructor Boot Camp manual on the Mount Laurel martial artist's Dream 100 resource site. Familiarize yourself with the concepts and principles and do your best to incorporate them in your life, not just on the training floor but every where you go. These are concepts for life. If you want to find out more about Kyoshi Dave, go here.

Share, if not teach, these concepts to everyone you know.

Let's get started...yes?

THE FIVE CORE BELIEFS

There are 5 core beliefs that you must embrace if you aspire to be the best black belt, master, teacher (person) you can possibly be. They are:

1. You are the friendliest person in town...and where you are (the dojang, your job, or school, every where!) it is the friendliest place in town! Everyone should feel welcome. You say hello to everyone, greet everyone, if appropriate, shake their hands. What if every where you went there was someone there that would be responsible for insuring that you have a great experience? Wouldn't that be great? Well, guess what? You are it! You are that black belt training for mastery! So....every where you go lives must be transformed because YOU are there! No small task. That's why it takes a "master", yes?
2. You are the healthiest person (and cleanest) in town...and every where you live and work is the cleanest place in town. Think about it. Going to shop or business that is not clean does not instill confidence that you (or your children) will not have the healthiest experience or the BEST service in town! My goodness, it's dirty and with germs, simply because they did not see you as important enought enough to sanitize and clean.
3. You only train in and teach "great" classes, never just "good"...and all the classes you train in and teach / assist are GREAT classes...because YOU are there! Have it your purpose to train hard and to teach / assist the best classes you will ever teach / assist!
4. You are excellent at communication. The ability to communicate to students, parents, other instructors (and even to yourself!) MUST be an on-going endeavor. Master the art of communication.
5. Every day you spend quality time sharing your martial arts experience with someone new AND inviting them to find out more about martial arts. With all the GREAT things that are happening in your life because of your martial arts training --and there should be GREAT things happening!-- you must spend quality time "sharing/telling your story". You can do it in face-to-face in person, or through emails, letters, postcards, or blogging, Facebook, Twitter, video's, pictures, etc -- any and every way possible...get creative! I truly beleive that you (we) are a light in someone's world. There is a saying that says, "would you light a candle just to cover it?" As black belts striving for mastery, we become a light for many who are challenged just like we are with personal growth and development. Martial arts has become the environment the we have developed and continue to hone skills that bring us growth and significance. If we can be a light, even hope, to just one person, should we not let it shine?

This blog is part of the Ultimate Black Belt Test Program (www.UltimateBlackBeltTest.com), which is an undertaking of The 100. (www.The100.us), and a part of Peter Liciaga's Dream 100 Project.

The Best School Systems Invest in Teachers

Mount Laurel's Dinoto Karate Center Invests in their Teachers!
On May 20th and 21st, Dinoto Karate Center's Master Erika Dinoto and Master Peter Liciaga will be traveling to Trenton NJ to participate in workshops on martial arts school management, organization and student services. These workshops will insure that Dinoto Karate Center continues to be the number one family martial arts center in Mount Laurel NJ.

Master Erika Dinoto and Master Liciaga will then share what they learn with all instructors and CIT members.

To see what our Dinoto Karate Center teachers curriculum, visit our Certified Instructor Training Resource Site HERE

How the Best School Systems Invest in Teachers

Article: NEW YORK, March 16, 2011—When the rankings of the best school systems in the world were released earlier this year, Americans were shocked: our former number one standing slipped again, this time to number 26.

The rankings showed a new trend: the highest-performing school systems in the world are mostly in Asia.

What are the Asian school systems doing right? And what can the United States learn? Asia Society invited top education ministers from China, Hong Kong SAR, Japan and Singapore, to sound off on these questions.

There was no lively debate. The answer was clear: invest in teachers.

[[read full article at http://asiasociety.org/education-learning/learning-world/how-best-school-systems-invest-teachers ]

Project Based Leadership Training at Dinoto Karate in Mount Laurel NJ

Project Based Leadership Training (PBLT) is a launching point for YOUR project, for your vision, for you to be a bright shining light in your martial arts school, community and world!
Your project will be your unique 'thing' that will set you (and Dinoto Karate Center) apart from your average martial artist (and everyone else for that matter). It will help you teach the world that what you do as a martial artist at your martial arts school is VERY important and significant. It will set you and your martial arts school apart from the average martial arts school down the street... very important!



PBLT is that it's the perfect launching point for any project that you decide to do.

To learn more about PBLT... visit http://www.leadershipstudents.com/index.asp and familiarize yourself with this site, there's a ton of information that Tom Callos (my ubbt coach) has published on the subject as well as important information presented by my good friend and the sites developer, Gary Engels.

Community activism in the form of practical and helpful projects! It's a no brainer as it's impossible to show the true meaning of martial arts with just kicks, punches and blocks!
http://www.leadershipstudents.com/index.asp

Below is a tutorial on how to add/start a new project:


Here other direct links:
Start a New Project
Edit Existing Project
Complete Your Project

PDF Documents:
Project Planning Guide
Project Completion Form

Mount Laurel Martial Arts School Designs Curriculum for Karate Teachers

Mount Laurel New Jersey's Dinoto Karate Center creates a new curriculum exclusively for martial arts teachers.

One of the unique features of Dinoto Karate Center is it's Certified Instructor Training program (CIT). The CIT program not only offers our students more advanced techniques and higher-level training but offers them the opportunity to become certified as officially licensed instructors at our academy. They are also offered the opportunity to become a staff member and earn a living from their martial arts. This program is a fantastic idea. We believe that no one should be instructing a karate class in the name of any organization without having received a certificate of approval from a reputable martial arts academy.

Certification should be a prerequisite for being an instructor. It makes no sense for a martial arts school to allow someone to instruct as a karate instructor when they have not been qualified to lead and run a class.

Furthermore, it would be intelligent --and make good sense-- if there were programs designed to ensure that the people who teach martial arts were qualified in a few specific areas:

• Basic communicational skills
• Basic health
• Basic nutrition
• Basic instruction for all ages (as young as 3 years old!)
• Basic exercise
• First aid & CPR
• Class curriculum design
• Class organization
• Technical diagnosis
• Basic coaching / mentoring
• Basic business principles

Are these topics given any attention at all in the current offerings of instructor training in the martial arts schools in your community?

Visit our instructors website HERE.

For more information about this and other programs, please visit us at http://www.dinotokarate.com/ or call us at 856-235-0414.

President Obama & the First Lady at the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention

http://www.stopbullying.gov/ 
President Obama & the First Lady at the White House Conference ...

http://www.whitehouse.gov/
The President and First Lady Michelle Obama discuss how we can all work together to end bullying as an accepted practice and create a safer environment for our kids to grow up in.


Read Transcript

Master Liciaga teaches Dinoto Karate instructors

Master Liciaga teaches motivation to Dinoto Karate Center's instructors on March 5th, 2011.

Tweeting Martial Arts...and more!

For the past several months I’ve been posting videos, photos, commentary and insights in the various areas of martial arts training - self-defense, fitness, diet, anti-bullying, anger management, verbal self-defense, training for over 50, girls self-esteem, boys positive self-image...oh, yeah, even some kicks, punches, grappling and weapons training. Some of you have been to my Facebook page for Peter Liciaga to see more photos, watch videos or ask a question (http://www.facebook.com/pliciaga). Others have followed my tweets at http://twitter.com/#!/peterliciaga where you’ll see even more comments and videos but mostly my thoughts on what I’m experiencing at any particular moment during my own training to 5th degree black belt.

I’ve also linked off both of these sites to http://www.peterliciaga.org/ , my BETA site being designed and built for parents, educators and martial artists to connect and communicate with community projects, resources and experts in several fields. Here’s a link to a couple of channels with videos I’ve been able to load up during my training:

• My Training Chronicles
• DKC Channel
• Kids Teaching Kids Channel
• Self-esteem For Girls
• Words of Wisdom Channel
• Chronicles of Doneghy (martial artist over 60)

What’s great about all of these different mediums is how they allow both the martial artists and the students (or soon to be student) to learn more about great martial arts, all at the click of a mouse. In one case, you can “fan” me on the Peter Liciaga Facebook page and my updates and self-defense article links will show up periodically on your wall. You can encourage family, friends and neighbors to do the same and they will see those same updates. If you want to read my articles and see links to other media from my training, workshops and events, then you can go to Twitter and follow me at PLiciaga. Twitter allows me to communicate one-on-many or one-on-one with people interested in the kinds of projects and training I’m working on at that moment.

Finally there is DinotoKarate.com and what I call our current “work in progress” as we finalize a number of enhancements that will make it the “go to” place for you to communicate and connect with anything that has to do with martial arts and self-defense. For instance, if you would like information about bullying, there's our Stop Bullying Now Project; or if it's anger management for children, you have Anger411. Or, how about 10 Simple Lessons for Self Defense for Youth? From my Flip Camera or my Smart Phone to my laptop, my online channels and websites, I was able to create video lessons, even a brief commentary, and immediately post them to my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pliciaga), my Twitter page at (http://twitter.com/#!/peterliciaga) and my here on my blog.

If you had been following either or both of these platforms, you would have been able to share in these experiences and share them with your friends as well. As you know, friends are always looking for information and ideas about martial arts, safety, bullying, protection, including developing the discipline to lose weight and get fit.

My ultimate goal is to be able to provide insights to both you and your freinds that will inspire a healthy lifestyle. This month it’s the Mardi Gras Spring Fling Celebration at Dinoto Karate Center , as you’ve seen from my many updates. Next month I’m off to Greensboro, Alabama with my camera and laptop to help build a home for an elderly lady, make some repairs in the community and teach some seminars/workshops to the youth along with 50 to 100 fellow martial arts masters and their students. Stay tuned.

More importantly, tune into my where-abouts and "up to's" via whatever medium you feel most comfortable with and I’ll do my best to keep you in tune with what I see, hear, learn and experience. For one more way to see what I’m up to, visit http://www.peterliciaga.org/

Peter Liciaga is an Education Activist, Master Martial Arts Instructor, Self-Defense Expert and Key Note Speaker working with youth, parents, educators and community leaders.

What should you expect of a martial arts teacher?

Yes, what SHOULD you expect from a martial arts teacher?

You should expect --and get common courtesy, yes? Of course. You might even expect uncommon, beyond-the-norm courtesy I would think? After all, isn’t a good deal of the martial arts about learning and practicing respect?

You should expect the teacher to be in good --to excellent --physical shape. An exception to that rule might come from a teacher who has an unexpected health condition or who suffers as a result of a disabling accident. Stephen Hawking, for example, is still without question a brilliant theoretical physicist, despite his physical limitations. But, in most cases, your teacher should be an example of the benefits of the lifestyle that the martial arts promotes.

You should expect your teacher to be knowledgeable, beyond his or her art. It takes more than a knowledge of kicks, punches, grappling, or the ability to break boards with your head, to be the kind of teacher one imagines a “Master” of the martial arts to be. It takes some life experience, some mistakes, some losses, and some mileage on one’s life odometer to accumulate a little "wisdom" (common sense).

In the group of instructors I am a part of, The One Hundred, each of us is listed on this site: www.flavors.me/masterteachers. Each member listed there maintains a “project portfolio,” a record of the things we have done --or are currently doing --that, as the head of the project, Tom Callos, says, “Shows how we take our martial arts out of the dojo and put it to work in the world.”

Some of The One Hundred members are new teachers, so their project portfolios are just getting started, while other teachers on the team are veterans of dozens of remarkable community-based projects.

“In the future,” says Tom Callos, “all martial arts teachers will be judged not only by their physical skills or experience, but by how they’ve applied their ‘mastery’ to things in the world that lives outside of their schools.”

One thing you should definitely expect from every cognizant martial arts teacher is a chance to try his or her classes before making any kind of commitment to attending regularly. Ask for an introductory course (we will provide you with one free of charge), to try some classes before determining whether the school is a place you would like to spend time at.

If and when you’re ready, call, write, or stop by our location, here:

Peter Liciaga/Dinoto Karate Center
127 Ark Road, Mount Laurel NJ 08054
856-235-0414
masterliciaga@dinotokarate.com

For more info about Martial Arts in Mount Laurel go HERE