There are a couple of things we have been working on in the background to help solidify the ‘we are a family’ philosophy of our school. Before I go into what those are, let me share a bit about what they philosophy means.
While we each have our own separate lives and families, the kung fu school and its instructors and students are also a family. The head instructor, usually with the title of Sifu or Sigung (Father, Grandfather), is the head of the family. They will sometimes delegate responsibilities to other instructors or senior students, often called Siheng (male) or Sijie (female) depending on preferred pronouns. While we only use the titles of Sifu and QiSheng (founding grand master) in our school, the idea remains the same. The older students by time and rank are there to help the instructors help the younger students. Many years ago, there were no sashes, belts or any form of rank recognition. Instead, you were simply either a junior student or senior student based on how long you had been training.
In our school, we like to consider our members a part of the kung fu family. We train together towards a common goal. All of us are trying to reach success in the martial arts and growth in our own lives. That means when we are in class, we help each practice by being respectful towards each other, being a safe, reliable and realistic sparring and self-defense partner and by following our school’s guidelines whether we are in class or not, like the Shaolin Institute Code and Creed.
Like most families, we sometimes do things together to keep the family strong. To that end, we are planning on implementing two things. One, in December we are thinking of a class pizza and movie party. We are still finalizing the details, but know that it is coming soon. We want to be respectful of other’s holiday traditions, so we will work to collaborate on a date that works for as many as possible, but most likely it will be on a Saturday during our normal class times. Secondly, we have been remiss in awarding things like Student of the Month and other yearly awards. Most of it has to do with lower numbers and other logistics like that, but we also want to make sure that we are being fair to all involved. To that end, we are looking to start laying out criteria for each award and how we are going to implement them going forward. Stay tuned for those to be made available.
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Head Instructor Shawn Morris