My goal was to retain the 7 coloured stripes moving forward but I think we may be best served by adding purple and brown to our striping rainbow. This will allow us to retain all the current curricular values, separate fitness into its own category, and give the students extra striping goals.
Suggested breakdown is as follows:
If we were to retain only 7 stripes, my intent would be to combine the fitness with Keystone Principles again and Applications with Grappling.
All that being said, I still have to resolve my vision of only testing on the important stuff (keystone principles and 6 harmonies). If we have exhaustive striping requirements, the students' focus will be spread pretty thin and they may not spend enough time on the important stuff.
With that in mind, perhaps reducing the stripes is a more appropriate approach. If we go with: 6 Harmonies, Dynamic Control, Fitness, and Keystone Principles, and Leadership and Lifestyle — that would drastically narrow the students' focus. With Leadership and Lifestyle and Fitness being aspects that are developed outside of class time, that will help keep their focus narrowed to forms, weapons, and keystone principles. I would even consider removing weapons from the mix.
IF we were to remove applications and grappling out of the students' syllabus but leave it in the instructors' syllabus, we would have the ability to keep the students' focus narrowed while keeping the instructors' options open. As long as the instructors are able to connect the dots and see how the applications and grappling help produce the overall product, nothing should get lost in the mix. In this case we will have things that we teach that may cover 100 items but we only test and stripe on 20 of those items.
I need to think on this some more. In the meantime, I would appreciate your input and guidance.
Jeff Brinker