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Recently, one of my students told me that a friend had questioned the name Canada’s Best Karate. Their argument was pretty simple: How can we call ourselves Canada’s Best Karate when there are other martial arts schools whose students win more tournaments, collect more trophies or produce better competitive fighters? It was a fair question. My answer was that the word “best” in Canada’s Best Karate has never meant that we believe every one of our students should be a better f

A recent CBC News report, “Why the ‘boy crisis’ is more than just a school problem”, examined a troubling trend in education: boys are falling behind girls academically in Canada. The report points to lower academic achievement and graduation rates, greater disciplinary problems and declining engagement among boys. It also raises a concern I think many parents of young boys will recognize immediately: some boys seem to have a particularly difficult time fitting into the envir

Over the years, I've watched thousands of children earn their first belt in karate. It's one of those moments that might not seem particularly significant to someone looking in from the outside. After all, it's only the first step in what can be a very long journey. But I've learned not to underestimate that first belt. For many children, it's the first tangible evidence that they can walk into an unfamiliar environment, learn something difficult, work at it, and get better.

One of the most common phrases I've heard from children over the years isn't "I can't." It's "I don't care." It usually happens just after something doesn't go the way they hoped. They lose a game. They struggle to learn a new technique. They don't get the mark they wanted on a test. Suddenly, the activity they were excited about yesterday "doesn't matter anymore." At first, it can sound like laziness or a bad attitude. But in my experience, that's often not what's happening