What is a Sensei?
- vmilewski
- Aug 28
- 4 min read
Moving from Sensei to O'Sensei: The passing of my teacher.
I started my karate journey 34 years ago. I’ve trained constantly since the day I started, including training three days before my daughter was born and two weeks before my son was born—I would have been on the floor closer to his birth date, but I couldn’t drive anymore because I was too big to get behind the wheel and still touch the pedals. That tells you all you need to know about my physical stature. I’m not very tall.
In nearly three and a half decades, I’ve only had one Sensei: Sensei Daniel Schroeder, whom I now call O’Sensei, as do my students. Before my now O’Sensei’s passing on February 24th, 2025, I had one O’Sensei for 34 years—Master Tadashi Yamashita.
I mention this because my idea of what a Sensei is and should be is colored by the two men who have served in the capacity of my teachers. I have always—since day one—considered my teacher to be Daniel Shroeder. Master Yamashita served as his longest and arguably most influential teacher.
For the purposes of this post, and most future ones, when I refer to O’Sensei, I am referring to my Sensei, who achieved O’Sensei status for me upon his death. Before that, he was simply “Sensei.”
Sensei means teacher. That’s how he viewed it. That’s how I view it still today.
And yet, for me O’Sensei was far more than that. You don’t have to like your teacher to learn from them. Certainly, you never have to love them. To understand the Sensei-student relationship, you have to accept that it changes over time and circumstance. Three and a half decades is a long time for that relationship to evolve.
Our family spent Christmas with O’Sensei for decades. We became friends in the way the best of parents and children become friends, without the negative baggage of hurt resentment that sometimes comes with adolescence and young adulthood.
Every week, O’Sensei and I discussed what we were reading. Every week we exchanged our favorite books. When O’Sensei started writing fiction, I read it and together we rewrote several of his chapters while discussing characters and where their story arcs would and should land. We were still working on his story when he died. At the end and for about 18 months before that, I taught Kobudo while he watched from his chair.
At his ceremony of life, another of his long-standing students, who is a world champion and runs more than one very successful dojo, said something that stuck with me. I’m paraphrasing: No one understands our relationship but us. That’s true for me too. In most things, O’Sensei was the teacher. In one or two, I was. And that was okay with him. O’Sensei was as eager to learn as he was to teach—sometimes more so. I loved that about him. I will spend the rest of my life aspiring to be as joyfully open to learning from my students as he was about learning to write.
You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t written a word about teaching karate.
It’s all karate-do. All of it.
How we do anything is how we do everything.
Karate is a way of life. The best way I’ve found so far. It’s steeped in honor, integrity, sincerity, commitment, diligence, love of craft, and working to perfect it every day. That is aspirational and practical. Will every day be better than the last—no. Can you choose to get back up after a bad day or series of days kicks the wind out of you and you’re not sure you can breathe, much less train—YES.
O’Sensei used to say, SIX TIMES DOWN, SEVEN TIMES UP. While he didn’t invent that saying (myth says it was Robert the Bruce, while in a cave preparing to fight for Scotland’s freedom), he lived it.
And that’s what differentiates a Sensei from a karate instructor for me. A Sensei helps you get back up when you get knocked down—and you will—even if it takes seven times and you’re finally up and still standing for round eight. A karate instructor…well, a karate instructor simply teaches their students movement; no small thing, but less than what I aspire to be.
But then, I’ve got 34 years of excellence from O’Sensei Schroeder to pattern my teaching on. The good, the great, and the ugly form and shape us all. I’m taking the very best of my O’Sensei, adding the best of what I have to offer, and bringing that to my students at Midwest Shorin Ryu Health & Wellness Center as well as to my new students at MSOE.
It is my hope that I’ll grow as they do.
With diligence, solid craft, and sincere training, it is my hope that my students will see me as more than simply a karate and Kobudo instructor. I hope I earn the title SENSEI as I’ve experienced it and defined it.
Yours in this crazy, wonderful, #DOJOLIFE,
Sensei Morganne MacDonald ~ August 28, 2025m
