Every other Thursday afternoon, officers of the Girls Self Defense Club (GSD) have been teaching a dozen third to fifth grade students critical self-defense skills at Foothill Elementary.
Leading the workshops has been junior Mona Chen, the club’s founder and president.
At a recent session, she began by demonstrating the proper technique for doing a jab cross, emphasizing avoiding common mistakes.
The younger students around her excitedly shuffled their feet and raised their fists, eager to try the move themselves. The other club officers held up pork chop pads for the students to charge forward and practice punching the target.
All club officers of GSD have over eight years of experience in karate or taekwondo. Chen and sophomore secretary Prerana Murthy are both second-degree black belts; junior co-vice president Haley Pham holds a first-degree black belt; and junior co-vice president Sandya Iyer and senior treasurer Kayla Bingel are both nearing black belt status.
Despite being more organized and better prepared after they began the lessons in the spring, the officers were once again struck by the level of chaos the new students brought to the sessions. However, they are confident that things will settle down as the children get used to the structure and flow of the workshop.
Ever since they formed the club last year, the officers have been interested in teaching essential self-defense skills to younger students.
“Teaching children self-defense will really benefit them in the future,” Iyer said. “It spreads awareness early on in knowing how to protect oneself from dangerous situations.”
Chen received an email this January from Tree House Extended Day Child Care, the district’s afterschool program, which offered volunteer hours to club members who were willing to mentor elementary school students. The officers of GSD found this the perfect opportunity to expand the club’s impact beyond holding biweekly lunch meetings. After sorting through logistics, the club began teaching weekly at Foothill Elementary this March.
Many of the officers had little experience working with young children. The class did not go smoothly at first, officers said, with many students hyper and restless.
“It wasn’t easy getting the kids to focus as many of them had too much energy,” Iyer said. “Mona planned too much for the first day and we didn’t even get to half of it because we couldn’t manage the students. However, we quickly found out that using their favorite games as an incentive keeps them more engaged.”
Chen borrowed several games and drills used by her martial arts studio, which proved successful in the workshops. The object of one game was to stand perfectly still while the officers attempted to distract them or make them laugh, which tested their self-control while having fun.
This school year, the officers switched to biweekly sessions, which is more convenient for both them and the Tree House program. The officers instituted a new structure for sessions this semester: 10 minutes of warm ups and relay races, 10-15 minutes of reviewing curriculum from last class, 5-10 minutes of social-emotional learning, 20 minutes of learning new material and 10 minutes of games at the end of class, if the students behave well.
“The key difference between these kids and the ones I’ve taught in my studio is that the students in our workshop are just here because their parents can’t pick them up,” Pham said. “We have to put a lot of effort into engaging them because not all of them are truly interested in self-defense.”
Added Iyer: “It takes a lot of patience to work with the kids, but I also find it really fun, because I get to teach what I learned to others. Once they get a better feel for the basics, we’ll be able to teach more techniques and they will understand self defense a lot better.”
