Learning balancing, kicking and punching

A sixth degree black belt specialist whose title “shihan” means master instructor, Shihan John Busto and some of his students, visited the summer program at Lawrence Middle School on July 25 to introduce the students to karate.

The summer program at the middle school teaches reading and math to about 35 incoming fifth to eighth graders every Wednesday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. for six weeks, until Aug. 15. “They do very hands on reading and math programs; there are different themes every week and this week is Olympics,” said Rina Beach, the assistant principal at the middle school.

The themes are meant to make the program more exciting, said Beach, and for this week’s theme the children decorated cupcakes in red, white and blue, and the students read about the history of the Olympics, the countries involved and sports played.

“Each week we do a fun activity that correlates with the common course standards; last week we focused on fractions with pizza games, and at the end we made pizza bagels,” said Kelly Dowling, a sixth grade teacher at the middle school.

Jennifer Talenti, the seventh grade dean and ESL specialist at the middle school, brought in the martial arts specialist. The visit was tied to the Olympics because of the teamwork and dedication involved in karate. “You learn to better yourself through physical activity and you learn to control your body,” said Talenti, who takes a women’s self defense class daily.

Busto, who has been doing karate for 32 years, and has owned his own studio, Busto’s Martial Arts in Plainview, for 18 years, brought five of his students with him. Juliana Talenti, Sam Beattie, Alex Beattie, Patrick Hanley and Joseph Talenti, ages five to seven, who have been taking martial arts for about four years. “They will teach the students basic martial arts movements and demonstrate martial arts techniques to show what years of education can do,” Busto said. “It’s not just an after school activity for them, they bring it to other aspects of their lives, like their attitudes at school and at home.”

He had the students practice balancing, taught them how to bow, to promise they will use karate for the right reasons, showed them how to punch and kick, demonstrated the attention stance, and held up boards for them to strike in half.

“My favorite was the board breaking; it’s really fun and I never broke a board before and now I know how too,” said Kalib Deniceolo, 10, from Inwood.

Samantha Wilks, 10, of Lawrence, agreed. “I like when we did the punching the boards,” she said. She is interested in karate now because, “It’s fun and you can keep learning more stuff.”

At the end of the session, Busto presented the students with white belts, which is the first level of martial arts that can be reached, followed by more advanced colors such as brown and black. Reaching the higher levels excited Sunny Unger, 11, of Woodmere. “It seems interesting how you get different belts,” she said.