We’ve had a bunch of Rave Reviews lately from some of our Super Star Clients!

Here’s a quick clip from Mr. Mark Kline of Kaizen Martial Arts in New Jersey!

Here’s a great clip from Mrs. Sandi Stevens McGee of Can You Say Geronimo Gymnastics in Alabama

If you’re a powerful parent, please go to Dr. Robyn’s Blog which is created just for you!

See you there!

Dr. Robyn and Jason Silverman

1. Dodge Ball: The children line up in two lines facing one another.  Each team has several soft balls to toss at the other team’s legs.  If you’re tagged by a ball, you’re out!  The children learn honesty in action.
2. Noodle Games: The “It” Child is given a pool noodle.  All the children are told to run around the training floor.  If the child tags another child with the noodle, that child is out.

The other day, Master Pena told me that during the noodle game, one of the 5 year old children raised his hand and said, “so and so is not being honest. I tagged him but he’s not being honest and sitting down.”  What’s interesting here is not that the child is speaking up, but the words he’s choosing to say.  He is showing that he understands the concept of honesty and can use it correctly to illustrate a point.

Please don’t forget for one moment the impact of what you choose to teach everyday.  You are critical in your students’ development.  Through Powerful Words, your curriculum, and your creativity, you are creating leaders with character.

If you’re using any other honesty games, please let us know so we can post them up for everyone in the Powerful Words family to use!  We always loved “bowling” in which the children were the pins!  The children jump over or side step a ball or other soft object (we always used the tops of the heavy bags that slid right off the bases) that were tossed by the teachers or teen helpers.  The kids loved it.  Again, if you got tagged, you needed to be honest, and take yourself out of the game.  Last one standing was the winner.

Have a great honesty month!

I found this awesome youtube clip on Platinum Level Powerful Words Client – Chris Herrman’s Website and thought you’d enjoy it. Isn’t it amazing how a video like this can cause you to experience such distinct emotions? How did you feel while watching it? What kind of video could you post on your site that causes your prospects and students to feel the way you want them to feel…inspired, excited, welcomed, etc.?

Enjoy folks – hope you’re having a great weekend…it’s a thousand degrees here in Boston!

best regards,

Jason M. Silverman

Powerful Words Character Development

Please feel free to forward us any exciting milestone’s like this and we’ll be thrilled to publicize them (and brag about you!)

Have a wonderful Weekend!

Jason M. Silverman
Powerful Words Character Development

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Entire Family of Black Belts in Bryant Prove Kicking Together Means Sticking Together

Seattle, WA June 6, 2008 – For the first time in Bryant history an entire family is earning their black belts tonight.

Dr. Marcio Sotero De Menezes, wife Rosario and their 15-year-old daughter, Gabriela, and their 12-year-old son, Paulo, will celebrate earning their black belts this evening. The Sotero’s, along with 6 other local black belt students, ages 10 and up, will be featured at a ceremony tonight at 7:00pm in the Eckstein Middle School Auditorium (3003 NE 75th Street, 98115).

Program Director and Instructor, Astre Kay, said, “The most rewarding part of my job is seeing the progress and growth in students and the amount of support they get from their families. After working here for 3 years I’ve found that the families that kick together stick together.”

Interspersed between performances by students as young as four years old, our newest black belts will be demonstrating some of the skills that they have developed over the last several years as students at Alpha Martial Arts. Black belt mother and wife Rosario Sotero de Menezes said, “Confidence and positive self-esteem are benefits of martial arts for individuals of all ages. In my experience there is nothing more confidence building than mastering a self-defense technique to the point that you feel you could use it in a confrontation or perfecting a form so that your body flows effortlessly through the movements.”

Chris Herrman, Executive Director and Master Instructor of Alpha Martial Arts, believes earning a black belt is a process of physical and personal growth…far more than most would suspect. “Alpha Martial Arts curriculum and the Powerful Words Character Development system provide our students with the opportunity to learn about, practice and experience first hand, the skills that will help our students to become grateful, helpful, leaders in our community. Our school stresses the importance of developing an Attitude of Gratitude. This is one of the many ways we build black belt leaders from the inside out.” says Herrman.

Chris Herrman is the Executive Director and Master Instructor of Alpha Martial Arts and has helped thousands of kids, teens, and adults to embrace a positive and healthy lifestyle.

For a Lively and Information Packed Interview, Contact Chris Herrman.
Photos and Video Cheerfully Provided.

# # #

Well, we’re starting to get some amazing feedback from many of our Powerful Words member schools about their Teacher Appreciation Week Events. We’d love to hear and share your stories as well – so please let us know how it went (videos, and pictures are always appreciated!!!)

Success Story #1:

Evon Thornton from East West Martial Arts in Chestertown, MD called me last week to tell me how exciting her teacher Appreciation Week was…She had 26 school teachers attend AND 4 School Principles!!! WOW! This was all done with a relatively small enrollment…it just goes to show that Mrs. Thornton obviously teaches with passion and has some raving fan students that wanted to show their gratitude to their teachers. Well done Evon!

Success Story #2:

Mike Brooks from Zandri’s Martial Arts (a very smart marketer) shared these YouTube videos with us to show how well his teacher appreciation week went…the videos speak for themselves! Well done Mike!

You can (and should) read more at Mike’s Blog by clicking Here and Here

As many of my personal coaching clients know, I am a big fan of using YouTube video to help enhance your school’s google rankings in addition to creating a BUZZ at your school.

I’ll update you soon with more success stories about Teacher Appreciation Week!

best regards,

Jason M. Silverman

Powerful Words Character Development

Here is an excerpt from an Important article in Bay State Parent Magazine’s May issue.

GYMNASTS Tumble & Vault Themselves Into The ER

NATIONAL STUDY SAYS GYMNASTICS HAS ONE OF THE HIGHEST INJURY RATES OF ALL GIRLS’ SPORTS

BY jennifer lucarelli

THE FACTS

• 600,000 kids, mostly girls, participate in gymnastics

• Nearly 27,000 gymnasts get serious injured each year, according to the national study. These numbers are similar to ice hockey, soccer, and cheerleading.

• Most injuries happen at schools and recreation centers, where supervision is lacking.

• Injury rates tend to spike during Olympic years, of which this is one.

THE STUDY

Contrary to what some parents may think, gymnastics is considered by some as the football of girls sports when it comes to injuries.

Though it’s a graceful and exciting sport to watch and participate, a new national study, the first-of-its kind, shows gymnastics has one of the highest injury rates of all girls’ sports, ranking it among contact sports like hockey and soccer.

The study, conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio, compiled gymnastic related injuries from emergency rooms nationwide from 1990 to 2005.

The data revealed that children age 6 to 17 averaged 27,000 injuries per year. That totals nearly 426,000 injuries during the 16-year study.

“Many parents do not typically think of gymnastics as a dangerous sport,” said study senior author Lara McKenzie, PhD, MA, principal investigator for the Ohio hospital in a release. “In fact, many parents consider it an activity. Yet gymnastics have the same clinical incidence of catastrophic injuries as hockey.” Read the rest of the article.

I had the pleasure of being on Dr. Drew Pinsky‘s radio show the other day (April 29th) to talk about the Miley Cyrus issue and the impact on parents and tweens. For your convenience, I took out all the commercials and just left the actual discussion between Dr. Drew and me. I believe the interview was about 15 minutes long.

Enjoy!

click here to listen to the interview

Greetings All,

I’d like to share a fabulous e-mail that we received about Gratitude Month and it’s effect on an instructor and school owner…Please forward us your best gratitude story for the month!

best,

Jason M. Silverman

———-

Hi Jason and Dr. Robyn,

Kristin C. Quintana
Owner, Chief Instructor
Kuk Sool Won(tm) of Menlo Park

A portion of this article was posted on Dr. Robyn’s Powerful Parenting Blog as a service to Powerful Words Member Schools.

After writing about the prevalence of bullying in our schools yesterday and alluding to the violence in video games, I wanted to bring something to your attention. Here is an example of an enhanced, newly re-released addition of the “Bully” video game that came out last month. It focuses on bullying and violence in schools.

The One Side of the Argument

In the game, the main character, age 15, uses violence to deal with bullies in school. He is described by the makers as “Jimmy Hopkins, a teenager who’s been expelled from every school he’s ever attended.” The player gets points when Jimmy kisses girls, plays pranks on teachers and beats up his enemies. Believe me, I wish I was kidding.

Especially after several examples of YouTube videos showing bullying, a video game promoting violence in school is disturbing. While no guns are used or blood shed (thank goodness), it certainly isn’t a calm day at Bullworth academy.

This is the kind of media that makes parents believe that martial arts is bad for children– the main character in this game learns some of his moves in wrestling class. Those of you who teach grappling, wrestling and judo know that the aim is NOT to teach children and teens to fight.

The game has been suspended in Brazil and has received a lot of negative publicity in the US, Australia, and the UK.

While some gamers actually say that bullying is not glorified in “Bully,” what they are neglecting to acknowledge is that the game adds to the number of acts of violence that a child sees and virtually “experiences” during a typical day.

As we know from extensive research, the average person has viewed around 200,000 acts of violence by the time he reaches 18 years of age. In addition, research has shown that repeated exposure to violence in media can indeed make children and teens more violent and aggressive. It does have an effect on their brains, perhaps temporarily, and what may be the effects over time?

Children’s viewing of violent TV shows, their identification with aggressive same-sex TV characters, and their perceptions that TV violence is realistic are all linked to later aggression as young adults, for both males and females…Results show that men who were high TV-violence viewers as children were significantly more likely to have pushed, grabbed or shoved their spouses, to have responded to an insult by shoving a person, to have been convicted of a crime and to have committed a moving traffic violation. Such men, for example, had been convicted of crimes at over three times the rate of other men.

–Huesmann et al, University of Michigan

The Other Side of the Argument

With every point of view, there’s an opposite one. This topic certainly seems to ruffle some feathers.

The makers are quick to underscore the positive side of “Bully.” Namely, actions do have consequences. If you stay out past curfew, the screen will blur and you’ll become sleepy. Then you’ll pass out. If you skip a class, a group of adults will voice their disapproval. And the incentive for attending the twice a day classes? Your character may get an enhanced ability to flirt with girls or a great recipe to make stink bombs and other prank devices.

Oh, good.

Interestingly, the makers didn’t make a feature that allows the students to post their beatings up on YouTube.

Seriously though, old friends, Dr. Larry Kutner and Dr. Cheryl Olson of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media (and authors of Grand Theft Childhood), performed extensive research that actually supported the playing of video games like “Bully.” They found that that after several years of study that (1) the claims that violent games= violent children was unsupported; (2) Only kids who played over 15 hours of violent video games may be affected; (3) Kids who didn’t play video games at all might be at risk of having low social competency; (4) Kids who play video games have the ability to test new skills and make mistakes and correct them in a fantasy world. Check out this interview with them. (Thank you to Amy of Shaping Youth for the great link).

The big concern that playing violent video games will turn your child violent…there is absolutely no evidence of that…if you look at the violent crimes of teenagers over the last several years its gone down and down significantly and if you look at video game playing, it;s gone up and up significantly.

– Dr. Lawrence Kutner

Reaction

I have to admit, even after reading the research, I’m still unsettled about this– intuitively, I’m just not into the idea of children and teens playing violent games. How does it serve? It seems so counterintuitive that I just can’t endorse it. I mean, what ever happened to Monopoly and Operation? It sounds to me like we still have more research to do. And is it OK that kids who play video games for over 15 hours per week are, in fact, negatively affected? I don’t think so. What do you think?

My verdict?

Perhaps we should send next month’s Powerful Words curriculum to Bullworth academy? It looks like they need a little help in the area of compassion. I certainly stand behind that intervention.

Here’s to you,