Category Archives: Class Posts

The bell went, “ding, ding, ding” to signify the start of a new three minute round as two men from opposite sides of the ring met at the center and touched gloves. The sound of leather jump ropes whipping the air, faster and faster as the round progressed, was heard in the background, but overpowered by the rhythm of the speed bags. The hunger in each pair of eyes grew more intensely as each fighter envisioned their next battle towards glory guided by just one man with a pair of mitts.

Greg Ardon, the man behind the mitts, is the owner, founder and head coach of Ardon’s Sweet Science Gym (ASSG), home to many professional and amateur fighters in boxing, kickboxing, mixed martial arts (MMA) and Thai-kickboxing.

“Every time I train somebody for a fight, it feels like I’m actually fighting,” said Ardon. “I feel like I need to warm up as well.”

Watch this video and get a closer look at one of Ardon’s youngest adult fighters, Adam Amro.
 

 
Angel Garcia, a 24-year-old professional boxer, has been training with Ardon ever since he started boxing at the age of 12.

“He is my manager as well as my everything,” said Garcia. “We talk about business, family matters, whatever it is, he’s the man.”

Ardon considers all of his students and fighters as part of one huge family.

“We may come from different backgrounds, different families, but once they work on my team I feel like they’re my brothers, cousins, etc.,” said Ardon. “When one of them goes in the ring to fight, I feel like I’m going in there too.”

Watch this video and get a closer look at one of Ardon’s pro fighters, Villi Bello.
 

 
Eric Castro, a 23-year-old amateur boxer and Thai-kick-boxer, turned his life around once he met Ardon and started training at ASSG.

“When I first started, I was involved in gangs,” said Castro. “I’ve actually got stabbed.”

Since then, Ardon has taken Castro under his wing and he’s become a successful amateur Thai fighter, with a record of six wins and no losses, and is an assistant trainer at the gym.

“Greg is a great role model to me and he has a great heart, a big heart, sometimes too big,” said Castro. “Even if his students can’t afford it, he’ll give them an opportunity to train.”

A family man, Ardon loves spending quality time and training with his children, ages three and four.

“They love training, they’re my champions,” said Ardon. “They’re always going ‘pow pow, pow pow,’ that’s boxing for them.”

When he’s not holding pads and mitts, Ardon enjoys other activities outside of the ring.

“I love dancing,” said Ardon, “I love music and, of course, I love spending time with my wife.”

Christopher Vallaro, a 29-year-old amateur MMA fighter, has been training at ASSG for almost six years and is looking to turn pro in the near future under the direction of Ardon.

“His energy just makes you a humble person,” said Vallaro, “He’s one of the greatest people I’ve ever met and I learn from him everyday I’m with him, so I’m very thankful to be one of his students.”

Ardon has two contenders, Amro and Bello, heading into the ring for a Thai-kickboxing event on Friday, May 16, 2014.

“Whatever happens will happen, but we are ready to win every time we go in there,” said Ardon. “In a fight you can expect anything, but in our mind we are going to do our best.”

Watch Amro and Bello take on their next opponents at the east versus west Thai-kickboxing event, Friday Night Fights.
 

Watch the results from Amro and Bello’s fights!

On May 1st, Free University, March against Monsanto, CUNY Divest as well as many other groups joined together at Madison Square Park and held what is known as May Day to celebrate their 3rd year festivity. This Event was held just a few blocks away from Baruch College’s Vertical Campus located at 23rd and Lexington. This is where a lot of people gathered and formed different groups to discuss social issues . Protesters and activists had different things they wanted to fight for. Some fought for worker’s rights, political change and others fought for a change in the educational system.

One of the groups that was participating was a group called CUNY Divest. This group is about students, professors, and other types of people who work at CUNY that want CUNY to divest from fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels such have the ability to damage the environment and built areas. Fossil fuels also contain radioactive materials, mainly uranium and thorium, which are released into the atmosphere. These things can have a very harmful affect on the climate which is a concern of this group.

“Well I’m doing this because I think well first of all I think climate change is a huge issue going on right now and I think that the people responsible for climate change, the fossil fuel companies, are jerks, they are damaging communities, they are extracting resources from the earth to the point where its creating this climate change and it is affecting the global climate. It’s creating droughts, flooding, extreme natural disasters and I just think that our school shouldn’t profit from the use of fossil fuels.” says Denise Lescano, member of the CUNY Divest.

In the 1980’s, US coal burning supposedly released an extremely large amount of radioactivity into the atmosphere which was said to be more than the Three Mile Island incident. The incident mentioned was told to be at least 50 tonnes, possibly more which is still a very dangerous amount of radioactivity pumped into the atmosphere. If coal burning was reported to be worse, then one can only imagine how much of the radioactivity was pumped through the air. The effects of what radioactivity can do to the human body can vary as shown during the Chernobyl incident in Russia which is still affecting that area severely.

CUNY Divest participants are very worried that the continued investment in fossil fuels will affect the students, faculty workers are and will impact everything from the environment.

A participant from another group By the name Mickey Z, is also worried that animals in the city such as the horses that pull the carriages around are inhaling dangerous fumes. The horses are inhaling dangerous exhaust fumes from cars which are fossil fuels.

“The number one priority is how the animals feel because they are the ones stuck living in tiny stables, standing all day on concrete, their noses close to exhaust fumes, pulling around carts and they’re not getting anything for it while the tourist industry and drivers are getting something. I think the priority is the animals needs.” says Mickey Z.
Common fossil fuels are: coal, oil, and natural gas. Gasoline which is used in cars is just refined oil and when burned, causes CO2 to rise up into the air which in turn causes warming and holes in the O-Zone.

If this stuff is harming the O-Zone with the large amounts of it the human population puts into the air, we can presume that in NYC alone, this is bad for the horses carrying carts.

Mickey Z states him and his group deals with fur trades, puppy mills and more of these types of things. By giving this information out to the people who come by, he is educating everyone of the harm animals are being put through on a daily basis with the exhaust fumes, fossil fuels powering the factories that make the furs for the fur trades. Yet despite all of these things, tourists and the carriage drivers are making money.

Free University was on of the co-founding groups in This years Mayday and has been participating since May 1st, 2011. Free University was created to present a critical alternative to what colleges and universities can look like and also be used as a objection to tuition hikes for students. Providing free education to those who want it helps give a chance to challenge the fossil fuel and pollution controversy as well as keep people aware of animal rights and controversies such as the case with Monsanto and other companies.

Nine out of every ten girls who start practicing martial arts will quit before they get to the high-ranking black belt and beyond. Michelle Gay is not one of them.

Now 46 years old, Gay has been practicing Japanese full-contact karate for over 20 years and is now a karate Shihan, or a master teacher. She is currently a fourth-degree black belt and started her own karate school, the Society For Martial Arts Instruction (SFMAI) Karate-Do Kenwakan.

“You know, it’s just tremendously fulfilling,” said Gay at her west 18th street studio, “Like it’s a really great life to who I get to be for people as a leader and as someone who empowers people and actually provides an environment for them to discover the innate power that they have, the innate beauty that they posses, the grace, and to just have them take wherever they are to the next level.”

Apart from being a Shihan in her own karate school, she is a Laban Certified Movement Analyst, Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist. She’s given many self-defense classes in colleges and universities like Baruch and NYU to demonstrate that boys aren’t the only ones who could get tough and have some butt-kicking fun.

Gay has won multiple tournaments, both nationally and internationally. In 2001, she took party in the Canadian Kyokushin Knockdown Division and came in 2nd place. In 2002, she received the Fighting Spirit Award at the Seidokaikan “Knockdown Kings” tournament in New York City. Not to mention, she is a 5-time World Oyama Knockdown Champion, named after karate master Masutatsu Oyama.

After so much triumph throughout her martial arts career, Gay is brought to tears when she thinks about what her particular practice has taught her after so many years.

“It’s taught me that I can belong somewhere,” she said, “Just to really be myself and to have a place to really develop myself and it’s taught me that it’s possible to be powerful without being forceful. It’s taught me that I’m way, way, way more powerful than I ever thought I was. That I can take way more than what I thought I could, that I’m more than my feelings, my body sensations, and it has had me go beyond that almost right from the beginning.”

One thing about martial arts though that gets Gay frustrated is when people say that karate, like most sports, is a “man’s sport.”

“Oh my God!” she groaned, “Well it’s predominately male so that’s just what’s so right and I have had the experience for many many years that I was a woman in a man’s world called martial arts. And I’m not that anymore. It’s not a conversation anymore. It’s crazy talk!”

Currently, Gay has many female students, some of whom have completely dropped off the radar and very few who have made it to the higher ranks of a black belt. She hopes that those women she’s had a privilege to teach continue to make it amongst the best.

“I just want women to be fully self-expressed in their bodies and not have to be nice and polite,” she said.

And although she’d never had a physical confrontation outside of class, she has the same mentality as she does within her class.

“Who you are on the mat is who you are in your life,” she said.

After 20 years, Gay has two words to describe her practice.

“Karate Love,” she said with a smile.

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New York went green on April 21 to April 24 in a few of the city’s popular hotspots like Union Square and Grand Central.

Earth Day New York hosted an annual event to commemorate Earth Day, celebrated on April 22. The eco-fest took place near Grand Central Terminal, nestled in a hidden area of The Campbell Apartment on Vanderbilt Ave and E. 43rd Street.

Various organizations in attendance either sold merchandise or informed people on environmental issues by providing pamphlets, handouts, small booklets and throwing in free gifts.

Many New York environmental groups like Earth Day New York, founded in late 1989, aim to educate the public and promote awareness of the environmental issues the world and the United States are facing like climate change as a result of not recycling and composting. They also mention other alternatives people can incorporate in their daily lives to help the earth.

The eco-fest had few visitors at the beginning and then more and more visitors trickled in during the day.

Jacklyn Mallon, a New York resident attended the eco-fest with the intention of learning something new.

“I wanted to learn, see if there was anything that I needed to learn, mostly compost, what else I needed to learn about green and to use it,” Mallon said.

Earth Day, an annual event, traces its roots back to the 1960s when Senator Gaylord Nelson demanded politicians to resolve the environmental issues and educated the public on the problems affecting the planet. After many Americans demonstrated in various US cities, Congress established a new agency called the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970, according to the EPA .

Eco-Fest from Stephanie on Vimeo.

Inside Homeschool from Azaria on Vimeo.

It’s 8:39am Monday morning and Christian Charles races out of his bed to catch his favorite shows on PBS. He quietly sits at the end of the couch as he watches the curiosity of a little monkey named George. Next he learns how to solve problems with Peg and her talking cat. By 10:00am, he is exploring the prehistoric jungle with Buddy and his family on the Dinosaur Train. At 10:30am, the exploring comes to an end and the textbooks come out, class begins.

According to National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), “There are about 2.2 million home-educated students in the United States. There were an estimated 1.73 to 2.35 million children (in grades K to 12) home educated during the spring of 2010 in the United States (Ray, 2011). It appears the homeschool population is continuing to grow (at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past few years).”

In America, where there are so many different pathways for parents to choose where and how their children receive an Education, homeschooling is become more popular. Brian D. Ray Ph.D of NHERI says, “Homeschooling – that is, parent-led home-based education – is an age-old traditional educational practice that a decade ago appeared to be cutting-edge and “alternative” but is now bordering on “mainstream” in the United States. It may be the fastest-growing form of education in the United States. Home-based education has also growing around the world in many other nations (e.g., Australia, Canada, France, Hungary, Japan, Kenya, Russia, Mexico, South Korea, Thailand, and the United Kingdom).”

Homeschooling is not funded by government taxes, and the curriculum is not dictated by the Board of Education. Although parents are responsible for purchasing the resources for the child, homeschool parents are given a variety of different curriculums at which they may choose to teach their children. They are not subject to teach only what’s given to the school within their district.

There are many different reasons to why a parent or guardian might want to homeschool their child. Rosemarie Charles explains, “I wanted my children to have a Christian based upbringing, a Christian based environment. And what they were teaching in public school there was nothing Christian about it.” A lot of parents decide to homeschool their child because of the way they see the children from public school act around them.

“I could see around me the other kids that are in school, and their behavior, how they carry on, and no manners no respect. And I didn’t like that,” she continued.

Flexibility is also among the top reasons why parents homeschool their children. Child actors are often homeschooled because of their intense work schedule. It works out perfectly for young stars like Jaden smith, who might have film by day and go to school by night. Homeschooling provides them with schooling that compliments their work schedule.

Many parents who are interest in homeschooling worry that their child will not be socialized, which is one of the major stereotypes that homeschoolers face. Most homeschool parents say their children have great communicating skills because they are placed in an environment where they develop and grow with people of different ages and grades as themselves. “When you’re in school you are all the time around your peers, your age group. So they only know how to relate to their group their age. Now homeschool kids, they’re well rounded. They can communicate they can get along with adults, they can get along with younger, older, middle age no matter what kind, what age, what size people,” said Rosemarie.

“They’re not weird!” Rosemarie says, which is another taboo that has been placed on homeschoolers. “No, they’re not weird. People stereotype because they think they’re home, they’re just sheltered in, they’re in this box and then that’s it. When they go out in the world they don’t know how to survive because they were home all the time sheltered. No it’s not.”

As homeschooling increases in popularity in the years to come, we can expect a shift in how children are educated. And this unknown learning alternative will soon be mainstream, well known and respected.