Arrowhead Martial Arts Academy

My Granddaughter started attending instruction at this dojo at the age of 10. In the beginning, everything went well, the had good instructors that seem to work well with children and she seemed a natural fit who excelled in all of her training skills. After receiving much praise from her instructors, her parents decided to invest additional money to move her up to first the Black Belt program and then the Masters program. Over the next 5 yrs she continued to lean and progress receiving her preliminary Black Belt one year ago in March. She was also named a junior instruction assistant and made 2 trips to Las Vegas to attend an instructors seminar. Yet, in the last year everything changed, all the instructors were fired and replaced with new people who are now nothing but yes men for the greedy owners of this business. These owners no longer seem to care about their students at all other than how much money they can extort from their families. There is a Creed displayed on the wall that the students are expected to adhere to both in the dojo and out. It talks of honesty, integrity, effort, respect amount other traits. In this last year my Granddaughter has fallen out of favor with the powers that be in this dojo primarily because she entered high school this year and wanted to explore other things to fill her free time with. She took a week off from classes over the Christmas holiday and the took her teaching jersey away from her, mind you she was only a volunteer who was spending 6 days a week there without pay, she was on their demo team and she volunteered for every party the dojo threw, yet, she took a week off and they took her jersey, which might have been justified if they had been paying her to be there, which of course they were not. Six months ago she was testing for her 1^st degree Black Belt, was 10 minutes late for her endurance test and was arbitrarily denied the opportunity to continue testing, while four other students also missed parts of the test were allow to continue. This is discrimination in its most basic form and is a big part of the «life lessons» now being taught by this particular dojo. In the last 6 months she has learned much more about discrimination favoritism ect than she has about martial arts. These negative human traits are taught to us all as part of life and it is not necessary to pay someone to teach them. So, after 5 yrs. of hard work she has quit her training at this dojo because it became obvious to even a 15 yr old that the priorities of this business are money 1 – 9 students 10. Our family is now out $ 10,000. + my granddaughter is discouraged and this business is completely unconcerned about any of it. So, while martial arts training in itself is a very valuable set of life lessons, I would ask you all to look very closely at what is taught, how it is taught and by whom it is taught before enrolling your child and investing the large amounts of money involved. This particular dojo with is selfish greedy owners and their inflated egos would be the last place I would be placing my child or investing any of my money. They also have a shop in Glendale, I would suggest you stay away from there as well.