Intelligent Curriculum® SEE IT HERE!

Hi, Tom Callos here, I'm team coach for the Ultimate Black Belt Test -and I'm the head of the martial arts association known as The 100.

My new venture, as you see it here, is called Intelligent Curriculum® --partly because the internet allows us, as martial arts teachers, to design and display our school's curriculum and everything that has to do with communicating to students, parents, and potential members, in a new, dynamic, and intelligent way.

Just take a look at how attractive the simple blog is that I've designed as an example -and see how I've made two entries as examples of how your own students could be seeing YOUR curriculum.

The other reason I call this work "Intelligent" is that looking at your school's curriculum in a new way, laying it out in a more complete and educational fashion, and doing it all in a format that gives you SO MUCH control over the what and why ----well, it's very intelligent, very "today," and let me tell you, it's going to be very good for your school/business.

Can You Bring Me 100 People?

To: UBBT and 100 Folk

Re: Staff and Students and a Mission

My friends, YOUR SCHOOL is so much more than a “karate” or “taekwondo” or “kung fu” school. Your brand of martial arts is a quantum leap ahead of what the typical martial arts school used to be. And, of course, you’re not just teaching a richer brand of physical martial arts –you’re educational approach has evolved to a place where your work impacts lives deeply.

And not JUST the lives of your students, but everyone in their/your sphere of influence; If you tackle Project-Based Leadership Training (PBLT) you are making inroads, change, and improvements in your community.

Let me remind you of one of my favorite quotes from my Peace Flashcard set, Peace is More Important Than Punches:

This might be THE ESSENCE and the core of our philosophy. “Self-defense” is believing, understanding, and taking action on the idea that you CAN and DO make a difference. You are not powerless –and you are not a “victim of circumstances.”

But wait, we (UBBT and 100 folk) take this idea a step further. It’s not enough to have an empowering philosophy, ACTION on IDEAS is where it’s at. We are THE ACTION HEROES of this Century –and every student who comes into our domain is empowered with the ability to turn all these wonderful notions, ideas, and slogans into ACTION IN THEIR LIVES –and of course, since it’s NOT always about YOU –in the WORLD.

Our training is then, in essence, ACTION-HERO Training.

There will be a day, if I have my way, when a martial arts school is synonymous with community service, with mobilizing its students for projects that burn with the talk we talk so well. The education you provide your students will have everything our teachers taught us, like a concrete foundation, and from there we will build a structure on top of that full of rich experience and modern, functional, centered beliefs. You see, this is self-defense for today.

How YOU Can Help This Work, RIGHT NOW:

We need people--special people. We need more of the kind of people who see their martial arts journey as something more than memorizing 12 forms, a couple of dozen one-steps, and some self-defense.

I’m looking for people to join the UBBT, the UBBT Student Program, and the UBBT for Kids, who are willing to try new ideas –to take action in their lives and in their schools and in their communities.

I’m looking for people who would be willing to eat healthier –and not just for themselves, but to serve as role models for as many people as we can possibly reach through our collective work (millions?).

What if we had a website that was FAT with hundreds of people each working on themselves in extraordinary ways? Imagine the power of 100 young people exploring healthy eating –while working on their martial arts. Could those 100 inspire a 1000 others? Could we get this “school” of people living in different cities all over the world to create something –like a school without borders –that changed the world for the better (at the very least the “martial arts world?”). We could! And guess what, it’s never been done! We could do it!

When I started studying the martial arts in 1971, we (the martial arts community) met in magazines and tournaments. In the 1980’s we met through an audio cassette tape sent out by EFC and thru conventions, seminars, and tournaments. Then we met through a box and DVD’s. Today we meet here on the internet –and it’s rich and content heavy and in an instant messages and ideas and results are transmitted to groups of people who come together for, well ---good reasons.

Even this lecture I’m giving you now, which at one time might have been an outline for a full presentation at a convention, is delivered to you in the comfort of your own home or office.

I’m looking for 100 people to Join us in the Next 30 Days

I’m looking for UBBT members, I’m looking for YOU to bring in special people to the UBBT Student Program ($75 a month), and I’m looking for kids with a interest in joining a national experiment in martial arts activism to join the UBBT for KIDS ($9.95 a month).

Now what I’ll give your students who become a part of these programs, is...

· A consistent daily, weekly, and monthly education in human potential through the martial arts. We’ll expose them to thinking that supports YOUR work –and we will talk about the richness of the martial arts, about mission, about change, about being centered, compassionate, aware, and conscious.

· I will talk with them about the power of what they are doing when they step onto your mat.

· I will engage them in the Alabama Project (and invite them to attend). I will talk to them about fitness, about acts of kindness, about PBLT, about Intelligent Curriculum, about helping you, and about the mission YOU are on to make your path to mastery a rich and daily spiritual practice.

· I will talk to them about the kind of history we are trying to make (and you know what, we could make history. We could change the entire western world’s view of what the martial arts are about –beyond the ring, beyond the mat).

· I will encourage them to stay your student –to practice with awareness, and to help you in your mission to make a difference in your community.

· I will bring resources to the table, videos, books, ideas, authors, heroes, and concepts you don’t’ have the time to dig up. Your students will come to YOU with ideas –and they’ll feel like they’re a part of something big, something extraordinary.

What you’d have here is the first real, authentic, functional MARTIAL ARTS ASSOCIATION. You are, in essence, hiring me as a staff member –and my job is to INSPIRE. I inspire student and teachers to see their martial arts as a deep, important, life-enhancing practice. My job is to boost your sales by boosting your presence in your community.

Can you help? Can you bring me students you know would blossom in this kind of environment? Do you have members you’d like to groom for this kind of activism and activities? Any future leaders out there who might benefit from the relationships they would make in our group?

Bring ‘em on!

This year I’d like to move forward in the world with the power of 100 people committed to crafting a new mission in the martial arts world. 100 people doing acts of kindness, 100 people reading, training, talking, and exploring diabetes education, anger management, PBLT, and so on.

I can HELP YOU be a better teacher –and it won’t cost you a penny.

Can you help the UBBT grow to a place where we are recognized as the most amazing martial arts group in the world? Will WE have a chance to speak at TED (www.ted.com)?

HELP! Let’s Grow! Let’s see what 100 highly motivated, pro-active people bring to our table.

Tom Callos

The POWER of the MOMENT

I’m Tom Callos –and I am an educational activist, working in the martial arts industry.

For the most part, I teach school owners, instructors, managers, and their staff members how to run martial arts schools in a way that is efficient, effective, fun, rewarding, and profitable.

There are a number of other organizations and consultants who do this kind of work too.

However, I have a very different slant to my advice and methods than do my contemporaries in the martial arts world.

I focus on business practices and concepts that are about raising the social consciousness of the owner, the staff, and students; I promote a kind of martial arts education that deals with issues far beyond the scope of what, traditionally, has been dealt with or discussed in martial arts schools.

I teach my clients how to embrace self-defense in a way that is relevant to today. I help them learn how to teach things that reside outside of the realm of kicking, punching, and grappling; things that people living in today’s world need to know about protecting themselves, their families, and their communities.

While most consultants, including myself, will deal with business statistics, sales procedures, promotional strategies, and all of the other obvious and basic necessities of running a business, I believe in a kind of martial arts that is an authentic path to mastery, a kind of martial arts that transcends the profit-and-loss statement.

The Power of the Moment

My clients and I have launched an authentic and experiential leadership training program –as until now, many schools claim to teach leadership, but very few have a sound method or curriculum to do so. We are championing the first-ever anger management teacher-training program in the martial arts industry. People might think that martial arts teachers know a lot about anger management and teach it to their students, but until now that has not been the case.

The martial artists I work with are coached in a new kind of Intelligent Curriculum®, a new kind of educational mission for their schools, and we craft a new stance, a new position and role for the martial arts school in the community.

A martial arts school, as I see it, should be a place where the student learns as much about peace, as she learns about the opposite of peace. Students should be inspired and directed to take their martial arts out of their dojo (school) and into the world. Anger management, environmental self-defense, dietary self-defense, community involvement, meditation, empathy training, and sustainable living represent a part of the new kind of “self-defense lessons” taught in schools that recognize what I call the power of the moment.

That moment is the opening that comes every so often; that moment when the young and impressionable student is listening to his or her martial arts teacher like only a child can –with that wide-eyed acceptance, that fully open mind, ready to grow, instantly absorbing, and highly impressionable.

When that moment comes, as I have seen it come so many times, my job is to make sure the teacher knows what power his or her words, influence, actions, and position wields.

It is at that moment that we want our hero at the front of the class to speak not about defeating an opponent or striking another human being or winning a tournament; we want to hear words and ideas that inspire compassion, awareness, respect for self, for family, for the community, for the global community, and for the planet.

We want a seed planted and/or watered at that moment; something that has the potential to sprout into a kind of wisdom and happiness that is uncommon, but the deepest wish of every mother and father. My clients are the kinds of teachers who are acutely aware of the power of the moment; they live to create those moments –so that they might make a true contribution to a better and more peaceful world.

We consider this “our business.” We spend only the smallest amount of time necessary working on how to run our businesses so that we can pay the bills and have money left over (like all business owners); we spend the majority of our energy on coming up with the most innovative, creative, interesting, and powerful ways to create moments of deep learning, constructive and useful attitudes, and the kind of awareness that promotes peace of mind –and peace in action.

Engaged Martial Arts

In my programs, the teacher must transform himself into someone who makes the pursuit of genuine martial arts mastery a deep, personal and spiritual daily practice. You can recognize my clients because they are training to be in the best shape of their lives; they are eating and living with full consciousness of what they consume; they define and engage their heroes; they practice meditation; they read; and they take on projects with their students that benefit their respective communities; projects that show, firsthand, how to apply their training principles to life —off of the mat.

My members are grounded, real –and exuberant people.

Among our ranks is an Academy Award winning filmmaker; there are songwriters, environmental and civil engineers, artists, attorneys, authors, world champions, school teachers, counselors, journalists, grandfathers, grandmothers, fathers, mothers—and all of them are martial artists with a desire to make a difference, here and now, through what they teach and how they teach it.

That is the mission of this work, which is now made up of my work and the work of my clients.

It manifests itself in all sorts of interesting projects, such as (to name a few):

The Alabama Project
Each year we build and/or remodel a house in Alabama with housing activist Pam Dorr (click on the link to see her video-profile from the Hallmark Channel) and students from the famous Rural Studio. In 2009 we will be renovating a two-room schoolhouse in Hale County, Alabama, one of the last remaining Rosenwald Schools in the area.

I use these projects to empower martial arts teachers to step out of their schools and engage their communities in all sorts of unique ways.

Our involvement with architects, artists, engineers, and activists is my intentional training program to show teachers how to break down the barriers between disciplines. Participants in these projects inevitably return to their own communities and begin to engage in activities with their students that teach lessons far beyond blocking punches and breaking boards.

Peace is More Important than Punches
One of my most important missions is to help martial arts teachers teach Peace Education to their students. In 2007 I developed a set of teaching flash cards called “Peace is More Important Than Punches.” A number of schools have started using these cards to introduce peace-thinking to students. One of our members, Ms. Debby Young, is helping to have the cards translated into Swahili –for use in the new Kenyan Library System.

The Dietary Self-Defense Program
Several of my clients, members of the UBBT and The 100, are working with a new dietary self-defense program. Components include posters, flash cards, and written lessons meant to be added to the curriculum of all martial arts schools, regardless of system or style.

The Environmental Self-Defense Initiative
In 2006 I called upon all martial arts teachers in the international martial arts community to adopt the Environmental Self-Defense Initiative, which asks schools to require their young students to do 5 to 10 “acts of environmental self-defense” along with their regular belt-testing curriculum to earn their green belts.



MADDCAP™
MADDCAP™ (Martial Arts Defeat Diabetes® Community Awareness Project) is the first-ever diabetes teacher and student training program in the martial arts world. More info may be seen at http://www.defeatdiabetes.org/.



The Veterans in Martial Arts Program
I have called upon all martial arts schools in the international martial arts community to give free lessons for the remainder of 2008 to all returning veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. What is Enlightenment? magazine is the first publication to publish this request, in it’s May, 2008 issue.

The UBBT ECO-Adventure
Each year I take a number of clients on a 4-day eco-adventure along the Pacific Crest Trail, just outside of Lake Tahoe, CA. As a result of this program, dozens of clients are now making outdoor education a part of their programs.

The Anger Management Teacher Training Program
The first anger management teacher training program in the martial arts may be seen at http://www.angercoachonline.com/

The Elder Circle Project
Still in development, this project seeks to involve grandparents in martial arts schools. We are proposing that at least once every quarter, a teacher invites one or more grandparents to come to the school and share his or her life story with young students. We intend to develop this idea for use in all interested martial arts schools.

What a pleasure it is to put all of this in this blog!

Tom Callos
tomcallos@gmail.com
530-903-0286

A Call to Associations

A Call to Every Martial
Arts Association in the World

To: Every Supply Company, Every Consulting Firm, Every Billing Service, Every Magazine, Every Association of Every Style and who have Come Together for Every Reason under the Martial Arts Sun

For a Moment, Put Profit Aside
Money's a darn fine thing. It buys stuff. I value it as much as the next person. I think a portion of everyone's day, of their life, should be focused –like a laser beam –on making enough of it to make ends meet (and then some).

However, with that being said, for the reminder of this short request, I'm putting the making a profit part of the money thing aside. I'm not denying it makes "the world go around," I'm not suggesting it isn't important, I'm simply addressing that which has little or nothing to do with making money to show a profit.

Martial Arts Associations - Groups I'm Asking You To Consider the Following

Martial arts associations, whether you have 10 members or 10,000, I'm asking you to recognize your power. You have the power to reach your members –and, quite possibly, to mobilize them. You have the power (albeit sometimes a lot less than you would like), to influence people, to educate them, and to inspire them to DO SOMETHING.

Now, most of the time, you're trying to get them to buy stuff or pay dues, which is good. But there's something else you could get them to do –and it's that something else that could play a significant role in a better image for the martial arts, for the kind of attention we want, and to prove that the arts are really what we say they are (something special).

Let's Start with Something Very Simple.

Imagine this: If you had 500 members (or 167 members, each with two "significant others"), and each of those 500 people did 10 acts of kindness for 5 other people, you would have impacted 2500 people and be directly responsible for 250,000 acts of kindness.
What human being wouldn't appreciate a little more kindness in his or her life? Simple, yet it is something that we have never done –and something, I think, indicative of the values we promote.

Let's take it to another place:

Imagine if one of the billing services in our industry created a program that allowed students to voluntarily donate an extra $.10 to a dollar every month over and above their tuition. With a $.25 donation, 10,000 students could accumulate $60,000 in 24 months. Now imagine we gave that money to Oprah and let her gift it to the most worthwhile activist on her long list of people working on amazing and world-changing projects. How exciting would that be?
Think about what we could do with four or five times that much.

Century, NAPMA, EFC, APS, UFC, the WTF –everyone, everyone! What profits would be lost in utilizing the simple idea of combining forces to do something absolutely extraordinary? Something so stunning, so solid, so enlightened, that the good from it could light the face of a million martial artists --and possibly, a million martial artists to be.

It's not about profit, it's about the opportunity. It's about the martial arts and what is not fighting. It is about a lot of people doing very, very little –to show how much can be done. I'd like to see a half-dozen of the most prominent business owners in the martial arts world use their influence to do something amazing.

I'll bet you if these men and women led the movement, a whole lot of teachers and students would step in to help.

Why not? Why not in our lifetime? Is Oprah the only one who has the chutzpah to step up and take ultra-positive action in the world? We could do it –and a million "karate kids" could own a piece of it.

Note: Of course, in no way do I mean disrespect to any martial arts group; I simply dream of what we could do if we put down our company names, set aside our styles, groups, and differences, and just did something completely unexpected.

Tom Callos

Interview with Diana Lee Inosanto

Meet Diana Lee Inosanto and listen to her talk about her directorial debut with her film The Sensei

She also talks about the movie's connection to Bruce Lee.


Click on the Image or HERE to listen.

Most interesting!

5 Reasons to Change the Way You Belt Test, NOW

Professional martial arts teachers: When it comes to belt testing, whether it’s a green belt test or a black belt test, it is a mistake to get tied into a tradition of testing. What we want to get attached to is THE RESULTS that our testing process produces.

Some of the things we want to affect through the process are:

• We want our students to be technically proficient (stances, kicks, and other maneuvers).

• We want a student to have an attitude that is congruent with his or her belt rank.

And in a perfect world:

• We want our students to have a sense of TEAM, with fellow classmates.

• We want them to have a set of experiences, from their training, that have had an impact on their life outside of your school.

At a test we’d like to hear:

“I’m a better, more patient father, because of this training.”

“Because of my test, I have healed some old relationships that needed healing. This training gave me the incentive and the courage to do it.”

“I’m more fit now than I was in college.”

“I could never get myself to eat like I knew that I should, but this training changed that. Now I apply the same discipline to my diet as I do to my workouts.”

“The training has touched me deeply, in ways I never would have expected.”

The bottom line? We want our testing to be positive, to be powerful, to be indicative of our BEST work. So, with that in mind, here are my 10 reasons, no, make that WAYS, to change the way you belt test, now.

Reason 1: More Time to Affect Change

Make your test last longer. Like a month or two or three or in the case of high ranking students, a year (like the Ultimate Black Belt Test). Why? What’s the hurry? Aren’t 100 push-ups or three reps of a form a day for a year WAY better than 1 rep of a form on test day? Which is better for you as a teacher, challenging and helping a student to develop daily discipline, or having them kick-it on one day? In the long run, teaching a student to shape his or her day in a way that affects the future is better than teaching them how to shine on a single day.

Furthermore, a really good black belt test is a chance for the general public and your other students to see what you have created. They get to see a master craftsman and his or her
”products.” Well, what’s better, to have a day of your work on the showroom floor, or to take 100 days or more, and show your skills that way? A test that lasts a month, 6 months, or a year gives you that long to talk about the process, to show the process, and to enjoy the process.

Reason 2: More Time to Share

Everyone on your test should be writing and/or filming the PROCESS. Each member should be keeping an on-line journal documenting the effort and learning experience he or she is going through. Those public journal entries will make your candidates better writers and communicators; they will open the process to people who might never have been able to see, hear, or experience the journey of martial arts testing; and the record of the time your students test will ultimately become cherished memories that anchor the student to your school and the process with vivid intensity.

On line journals even have a way of guiding those students who come later; they serve as examples of effort, growth, and expectations.

Reason 3: More Time To Change

I can’t get nearly as much done in a day, no matter how hard I work or how organized I am, compared to what I can get done with just a hour’s worth of effort, every day for an extended period of time. In a perfect world, when a student comes up in front of you to test, they would bring with them this overwhelming body of evidence that shows you how hard they are working, how seriously they take the process, and how committed they are to your ideas. You can’t get someone to stop everything they are doing and commit themselves like an Olympian to your testing process, but you can get them to commit some time, each day to it. To elicit real, authentic, live-changing change, you have to give a student more time –and not just “time,” but QUALITY time.

Reason 4: It’s HARDER This Way, Without Being STUPID

Torturing student on the day of their test, trying to break them down –or being afraid that you might break them down or injure them, is not the way to go about testing. Torture them for a month or two or three or even a year! But push them in small digestible, non-injurious ways. Bring them to their black belt test having coached them through 1000 hard reps of their form over 6 months or a year, instead of driving them to exhaustion, like some kind of college frat-house hazing on the day of their exam. Make the 1000 reps over a period of time their “test” –instead of asking them to show you a form on one day. It is immensely more difficult to apply consistent, daily discipline to one’s life, versus doing something really good on one day.

What you really teach students through requiring them to SEE THEIR TEST as a daily thing, versus a one day or one week event, is that giant accomplishments, massive transformation, is achieve with DAILY activity, not cramming.

Reason 5: You Can Teach More Skills, More Stuff, if You Have More Time

You can’t get a student to read a book in your classes, but they could do it at home, if you give them enough time. What if all of your black belt candidates had to take an on-line anger management training program –and they could do it in 10 minute increments, at home, over a month or two?

Well, what you could do is talk about it to prospective members, to the media, to all sorts of people –and what more did you have to do? Did it change your classes? Did you have to invest more time?

You see, stretching out the testing process lets you coach your students with ideas and practices you wouldn’t have been able to implement any other way. And can you see, in your mind’s eye, the LIST of things you require? IMPRESSIVE, yet because of the time frame, not impossible –and in fact, quite do-able! If you REALLY want to have a life-changing, lasting experience with your students, WHY NOT?

Reason 6: IMPRESS (for a purpose)

Which of these two mini-tests are more impressive:

Test 1

Forms 1 to 12

10 rounds of sparring

Self defense drills 1 to 10

Running 5 miles

250 push-ups and 250 crunches

Break 10 boards (I’m not a board-breaking advocate, I think it’s a waste of natural resources, but I’ll use this example t make a point).

Test 2

500 recorded repetitions of all forms.

500 rounds of sparring.

1000 self-defense techniques, practiced at full speed.

A 500 mile run.

10,000 push-ups and sit-ups.

Breaking 500 boards

Reason 7: You Need to Change Your Test in a Way That Gives You a Unique Selling Proposition.

Tests are, for the most part, all the same; and the results we’ve been getting, well...it’s OK. But I ask you: Can’t we do better? Can’t we at least TRY some new methods to see what happens? Do you know any other school that is doing it? Do you want to distinguish the QUALITY of education you provide –from your competitors? Of course you do!

There are a LOT of reasons to change your testing process I haven’t mentioned here; but I have one final and grand suggestion for you.

START THIS PROCESS of reinvigorating testing, of making it vital, relevant, authentic, and more powerful by DOING it yourself, FIRST. Show what can be done; LIVE the process. You will benefit (are you currently in the best shape of your life? Why not?), your students will benefit, your school will benefit.

Come live the Ultimate Black Belt Test and learn more this year than you have in the last 10. That, my friend, is an invitation!

Tom Callos

Interview with Author Dan Millman about the Martial Arts

Click this banner to listen to an interview with author and martial artist Dan Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior) conducted by Tom Callos, May 1, 2008.