from the December, 2014 issue of Kiai!

Our Week at Mother McAuley

By Senpai Amy Jones
2nd Degree Black Belt and TW Violence Prevention & Self-Defense Program Manager

In the last week of October, Thousand Waves had the opportunity to teach self-defense to over 200 girls at Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School.  Located on the south side, Mother McAuley is the largest all-girls Catholic high school in the country.  We were in every PE and Health class all week – 8 periods of either 45 or 35 minutes.  Period 4 was the most lightly populated, with 16 girls.  Period 7 had 52! Some periods, like 7, were actually two classes that were combined.  In all, 239 girls spent five days learning physical self-defense techniques and boundary-setting skills.  

I was there every day, but I wasn’t alone.  On Tuesday, Sei Shihan Nancy was my co-instructor.  On Wednesday, Senpai Jordan joined me.  On Friday, brown belt and self-defense instructor Erin Epperson was in the co-instructor spot.  And both Monday and Thursday featured Senpai Ryan.  This gave him the opportunity to see how far the girls had come over the course of the week.  On Monday, virtually every class was quiet as mice.  We encouraged them to find their voices, to get louder, and by Thursday, he was definitely able to tell the difference!  I could too, but since he didn’t see the middle days, the change was especially obvious to him – as was the increase in self-defense skills generally.

On Wednesday, Senpai Jordan was a teen whisperer – she found out more about the girls in that day than I did all week.  By the end of the day, she had decoded and explained to me the girls’ skirts (each year wore a different pattern of plaid), and came away with anecdotes the girls had shared that really helped me understand what their day-to-day lives were like.

Erin and I had lots of fun on Friday.  As I said, we were there the last week of October – which meant the last day was Halloween.  Most of the girls came to school in costume.  The pictures we have from the week are from that day, which explains why it looks like we were teaching a cadre of Minnie Mouses,  Blackhawks team members, and Captain Americas (though a few girls apparently took the opportunity to skip their uniform for a day without putting much effort into an actual costume).  The girls showed us their power by running a circuit striking and kicking into target pads and completing a rousing, energy-intensive challenge using all of the physical skills they had learned all week.  It was a little bit funny to watch because of the costumes, but it was also very inspirational to see how far these girls’ skills had come in just 5 days.

I’m looking forward to February, when we’ll have the chance to go back and do it again for another week, reaching another group of 200+ girls.