Why KarateBuilt Aligns With Montessori Schools: Discipline, Movement, and Self-Directed Growth! With Chief Master Greg Moody and Senior Master Laura Sanborn
Montessori schools don’t need more programs. They need aligned partners.
This episode of Success Training is a practical, values-driven conversation about why KarateBuilt works so well with Montessori schools and how that partnership serves students, educators, families, and the broader community. I’m joined by Senior Master Laura Sanborn, and together we walk through the philosophy, the structure, and the real-world applications behind our Montessori outreach.
Everything we do starts with the KarateBuilt Charter, not as a slogan, but as a filter for every decision. We’re a highly disciplined martial arts school, but that discipline is self-directed, not forced. Students learn to do what they’re supposed to do, when they’re supposed to do it, even when it’s difficult. That mirrors the Montessori approach exactly: independence, responsibility, and growth at the student’s own pace.
We also measure success differently—not by who we exclude, but by constant student growth. Where a child starts matters. Where they end up matters more. Progress is individual, not comparative. A black belt isn’t “better than” someone else; it’s earned by meeting personal standards of excellence. Montessori educators will recognize that philosophy immediately.
In this conversation, we break down why KarateBuilt aligns so closely with Montessori values: self-discipline, focus, respect demonstrated through action, and learning that integrates the physical and the mental. Movement isn’t random. Every drill has purpose. Every exercise has a lesson behind it.
We also get very practical. We outline exactly what we can provide to Montessori schools, such as PE and movement classes, character education, life-skills workshops, bullying prevention, educator support, scholarships, awards programs, and even fundraising events where 100% of proceeds go directly back to the school. No required equipment. No special rooms. No financial burden. We bring what’s needed, adapt to what schools already use, and make it easy.
Transparency matters. Families are welcome. Parents can watch, participate, and understand what’s being taught. Teachers are supported, not sid
elined, and schools maintain full control over how these programs serve their students.
If you work in or with a Montessori school, this episode isn’t theoretical. It’s a blueprint. A clear explanation of why this partnership works and how it strengthens students far beyond the classroom.
Sincerely,
Ch. Master Greg Moody, Ph.D.
P.S. The Transcript: Why KarateBuilt Aligns With Montessori Schools: Discipline, Movement, and Self-Directed Growth! With Chief Master Greg Moody and Senior Master Laura Sanborn
Chief Master Moody
Okay. Thanks for being here, everybody. This is our success training. We’re specifically talking about how we can work with Montessori schools and what KarateBuilt can do for Today I’m here with Senior Master Laura Sanborn. As always, I appreciate you being here, ma’am.
Senior Master Sanborn
Hello sir. First we want to talk about why we do this or why we do everything.
Chief Master Moody
It’s all based on the KarateBuilt Charter, and there’s three big pieces of this. One piece of it is that we’re a highly disciplined martial arts school.
We do everything around doing what they’re supposed to do, when they’re supposed to do it, and learning to push ourselves even when it’s difficult.
KarateBuilt is a highly disciplined fashion. The second piece is that we measure our results based on the student’s constant growth.
Wherever you start, we’re going to be helping you achieve excellence above what you started with, from where you started.
And then the last thing is about taking responsibility to lead with integrity, and our students show these characteristics outside of the school.
Outside of the school, not just inside of the school. One reason that we’re really excited about working with Montessori’s and we have a lot of success working with Montessori’s and why we do this is all of our instructors are required to do community service.
That’s part of their training. That’s part of what they do. The second thing is we want martial arts to have a great image in the community, and sometimes it has a bad image because of MMA or movies.
So, we want to give it a very good image in the community. Lastly, of course, if somebody would like to do martial arts, we’d love for them to think of us at KarateBuilt.
Now why Montessori school? And why does karate built specifically align really closely with Montessori schools? One key piece is our training is built on self-discipline, not forced discipline.
This is all, again, pushing people a little bit further than they were before. It’s to teach them to be disciplined on their own, not by us telling them what to do.
Second thing is we’re on real focus and real focus on what the student can achieve. All the movement that we practice and everything we do has some mental aspect to it.
We don’t just have respect as stuff that we do or signs that we put up. They show it in everything that they do.
They consistently make progress just like in Montessori schools and growing at the rate that they can based on their own abilities and skills.
It’s not about comparison to other students. So, a student doesn’t get a black belt in our school. They’re better than the kid who’s, you know, got the belt below them.
They get a black belt because they met their own standards that we pushed them for excellence, and it may be different depending on different kids.
There’s a lot of similarities with KarateBelt and Montessori schools. Anything to add there, ma’am?
Senior Master Sanborn
Well, we really match with their, the Montessori idea of self-directed learning, that each kid is going to be individual and each kid is going to learn at their own rate and at that what they want to learn and how that gets tied into what they need to know.
We do the exact same thing where we know each kid is an individual. You’re not going to have two kids that learn at exactly the same rate at exactly the same abilities that are interested in the exact same parts of martial arts.
But there are parts of it that need to be tied together for everybody. They still get to do it individually.
Chief Master Moody
Yeah, that’s right. And again, that second part of our charter that we met. We our results, not based on who we exclude, but on students’ constant growth, and we still want them to be successful.
We still are working on their, when they’re a black belt, we want them to be great, but the great is based on them, not based on other people.
Some things that we can provide, and we’ll go quickly through this. The thing we can provide is PE and movement classes.
Our instructors will donate time for any of these things. This is a safe, structured physical activity. We’re not going to, when we do PE classes, sometimes we’ll get a school administrator saying, well, we don’t want them to learn to kick and punch each other.
Well, if you ever looked at a playground, you saw kids kicking and punch each other. What we’re going to teach them is when it’s okay and when it’s not.
It’s really not okay unless they’re in danger of serious injury or death. We are going to be teaching self-defense that they can use, and it wouldn’t be anything that would hurt another kid or doing anything.
So that’s an important thing to remember when we do this, but also, with character and education and life skill talks, this ties together with it.
We can do workshops even without the physical part on all these different topics. And these mainly come from material we’ve been doing and our instructors are experts because they do it every single day in our classes.
This came from my original book, Life Skills of Leaders. And then an expanded version for bullying, very specifically, this is Bullying Truths, Misses, and What to Do.
Those are both Amazon bestsellers, and these are part of what we do when we do the physical work. But we can also do very specific work in these areas if that’s something that you want to emphasize in your school.
Anything to add there, ma’am? Yes, sir.
Senior Master Sanborn
One important thing about what we do is we can come in and work with what they have or what we bring with us.
There’s no requirement for specialty investment of materials or a room just for us that they have to save for us and put mats down, anything we’re teaching, whether it’s the character education or whether it is the physical education, we bring what they need with us and we share.
We’re going to share our stuff with them, not require that they come to us and buy specific stuff from us and have specific targets or anything else.
Chief Master Moody
We’ll provide everything, like any materials you need, we provide it. But also, what you alluded to, we can take the materials you use because our guys do this every day, all the time.
We can take any materials in these areas that you use and we can integrate them with what we’re going to provide to you or just use your materials.
We don’t have to, you know, it doesn’t have to be anything that we supply, although we’re happy to. Our instructors can also be guests, PE teachers, workshop leaders, we can do all kinds of different stuff.
This is really useful at the end of the year. We’re recording this around holidays, so at of the year, this is when a lot of schools really want us to come in and help them with lots of things.
Another area, this is one of our favorites, and I think the school’s favorites, is we’ll donate money to the school.
Now, the way we do this is we can create some special classes or events that you guys can charge, or we can charge business as a community or parents if they wanted to do one of our classes, and 100% of that money goes to the school. We don’t take any money for this whatsoever.
In fact, more than that, we provide all the materials that are needed for any kind of activity that we do, and 100% of that goes towards your school.
This can be applied to books, programs, teacher support, PE programs, anything that you like. So, schools love us to do these kinds of programs.
Yeah, I would say that’s the number one thing that schools like. Go ahead, ma’am, you were going to say something.
Senior Master Sanborn
I was going to say that one of the things that’s important. What we do is we love the transparency of our program.
We are very happy to have their parents come in and watch any of these classes that we teach, or take them with their child as we teach it.
We’re very happy to have the whole family there, seeing it, participating in it, and understanding what’s being taught.
Chief Master Moody
For sure. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, that even makes it better. We want them there. We’re happy to have it.
We would much prefer that the families and parents are also part of it. We also offer some scholarships for students.
If you have a student that needs extra discipline, we have tons of referrals we get for kids with ADHD, with autism, with Down syndrome, with other special needs, for kids with defiance disorder, all kinds of different things that might be going on with the child.
Sometimes they may not have the means or know how to get started. we’d be happy to work with them and even give them a scholarship if that’s going to be important.
You guys identify schools, you identify the recipients. We do everything else. We’re happy to do all the work. All of this stuff that we’re talking about, we want this to be as easy as possible for you.
That’s why we donate our time for it. Setting these kind of things up is a great way for us to give back to the community.
Another thing is educator support. I’ve done a lot of classes. In fact, teachers ask me all the time to come in and do the bullying prevention course for their school.
Our instructors can do that as well. We give discounts to teachers and educators. That’s for their whole family, not just for the teacher.
If their kids or their spouses want to come and take classes, we have a lot of teachers that come to our school.
We’ve done faculty breakfast during planning weeks, recognition programs, a lot of teacher training as well. We really want to support the educators in any way we can.
Another way we do this that I forgot to mention and put on here is a lot of schools give out awards for their top students or the students that-
Have perfect attendance and we give awards out for those kids so they can get services and free lessons, free uniforms, everything.
We give all of it to them if they’re a top student. So that’s very, very easy. Schools just contact us and we’d be happy to help you with what to do next.
Anything to add there, ma’am?
Senior Master Sanborn
No, sir. That was the last one on my notes. We love working with Montessori schools.
Chief Master Moody
Again, you know, the reason that we do that is, number one, our instructors are required to do community service, so we want to help you in particular with Montessori schools because what we do align so closely with what your goals and visions are and what the purpose of Montessori is.
The second reason we love to work with Montessori schools is we want martial arts to have a great name in the community.
And again, sometimes it gets a bad name because of TV and media and other things. The last, of course, we’d love it if they want to do martial arts.
So, think of us first. And that’s it. We’d love to work with any Montessori schools. You can go to our website or you can go to the contact form page, and there’s a form there.
Or you can call us directly at 480-575-8171 and we’d be happy to talk to you about anything regarding any of these programs for your school.
Anything to wrap up, ma’am?.
Senior Master Sanborn
No, sir, I’d love to go to Montessori schools. I’ve taught summer schools and everything else at Montessori, and they’re always a great place to go.
Chief Master Moody
We appreciate it. Thank you. We appreciate you guys. Thank you very much. And we’ll look forward to working with you at your school.
P.P.S. Get Dr. Moody’s Book on Bullying – Click Here
KarateBuilt.com and KarateBuilt Martial Arts have been selected as the nation’s #1 martial arts schools for EIGHT YEARS IN A ROW!
KarateBuilt L.L.C. was founded in 1995 by Dr. Greg Moody, an 8th-degree Black Belt and Chief Master Instructor, KarateBuilt Martial Arts and Karate for Kids offer lessons for pre-school children ages 3-6 and elementary age kids ages 7 and up are designed to develop critical building blocks kids need – specialized for their age group – for school excellence and later success in life.
KarateBuilt Martial Arts Adult Karate training is a complete adult fitness and conditioning program for adults who want to lose weight, get (and stay in shape), or learn self-defense in a supportive environment.
Instructors can answer questions or be contacted 24 hours of the day, 7 days a week at 866-311-1032 for one of our nationwide locations. You can also visit our website at KarateBuilt.com.
About Dr. Greg Moody: Dr. Moody is an eighth-degree black belt and chief master instructor. He has a Ph.D. in Special Education from Arizona State University (along with a Master’s Degree in Counseling and a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering – he actually is a rocket scientist). He has been teaching martial arts for over 25 years and has owned eight martial arts schools in Arizona and California. Chief Master Moody is a motivational speaker and educator and teaches seminars in bullying, business, and martial arts training, around the world. See more at DrGregMoody.com.
Dr. Moody is also a licensed psychotherapist and maintains a practice at Integrated Mental Health Associates (IntegratedMHA.com) where he specializes in couples therapy and men’s issues.
The KarateBuilt Martial Arts Headquarters at KarateBuilt LLC is in Cave Creek, Arizona at 29850 N. Tatum Blvd., Suite 105, Cave Creek AZ 85331. You can locate the Chief Instructor, Master Laura Sanborn there directly at (480) 575-8171. KarateBuilt Martial Arts serves Cave Creek, Carefree, Scottsdale, and Paradise Valley Arizona as well as Grand Rapids, MI.
Also, check us out on Today in Business and Educators Observer!
Here is Dr. Moody’s Amazon Author Page with over 16 of his Amazon Bestselling books: Click HERE
P.P.P.S. From a parent:
“Since joining this program, my son Herman is more disciplined, motivated, and unstoppable in every challenge he faces!” – Emily Green