Last week before the start of school
The start of the school year inaugurates some changes in the dojang. We’ve got a number of black belts who have been around during the summer months, but most of them are now off to college. Most of the area high schools start classes on Monday as well.
Attendance always drops off a bit during the summer. The last two weeks, the intermediate adult class has been decimated. Last week, there were three students. One of those students is now working in China for the next 15 months. This week — exactly one student showed up. This is a class that has had as many as 15 students, though most often is 8-10. The beginner class this week had six students.
Overall, we’re a very top-heavy dojang. We have a lot of black belts, including a lot of instructors holding advanced rank. But over the last 4 months or so, we haven’t really had any new students join the adult classes. One of the cardio kickboxers has had a couple of TKD classes, but that’s about it. The next most junior students are a couple of white belt with yellow stripe boys, and they’ve been here for a number of months already.
Obviously, this has been a very difficult last couple of years for the dojang, with our head instructor contracting leukemia around two years ago, and ultimately passing away earlier this year. The instructors have remained devoted to the dojang, but we’re just lacking new bodies coming in the door.
Hopefully the start of the school year will bring in some new students. But it certainly isn’t all bleak — the class after the class-of-one had 18 students, all red or black belts.