Class Management

Rank in order of importance - the art, the student, the school. This is a question every black belt is presented with before they are promoted. There are no wrong answers as all three affect each other to such a degree that there is logic supporting just about anything.

Logic or not, there is one answer that is more correct than the others. That answer is:
1) The School

2) The Student

3) The Art

Over my 40+ years of being immersed in the martial arts business, I can confidently share that the majority of martial arts businesses fail. The reason they fail is because they are run by marital artists, not business people. Tell me how it served the art of Kung Fu to have the vast majority of Kung Fu schools fail? How did their failure serve their students? Obviously the school has to be the priority because without the school there are no students. Without the students the art becomes extinct.

To ensure the long term viability of a marital art school, you must ensure you are taking care of all three - the school, the student, and the art. Because of how they are entwined, you cannot ignore any one of the three. However, you must prioritize what must be prioritized. Hence the ranking.

As instructors, we have responsibility to our students. They have to be our priority. That means we develop a relationship with every student and ensure that we are serving them AND we ensure that the student knows that. Taking care of the student goes beyond your direct relationship with the individual student. It must extend to CLASS MANAGEMENT.

Class management is how we organize the group and how we nurture standards of behaviour and rate of progression. Class management takes care of the majority, not the entirety. Therefore the instructors not leading the class must pay attention and take care of the struggling students so that the leader can focus on keeping the class moving forward for the majority.  Every time the class leader has to stop the flow of the class to address a question or a problem, the entire class shuts down at the same time. Strong class management ensures a positive flow and outcome for the majority of our students.

School management is different from class management and it is the highest priority - always. School management falls onto the Master Instructors. The Master Instructors, especially the Chief Instructor prioritizes school management and modulates their efforts and strategies based upon the evolving needs of the school. There are going to be a lot decisions made for the sake of school management that may require a compromise to our preferred approach to class management. Regardless, school management must take priority so our approach to class management must always respect the decisions and strategies of the chief instructor when it comes to class priorities, class behaviour, instructor strategies, school curriculum, class rotation, student hierarchy, and syllabus development and implementation.

Understanding why we do things in a certain way or why we set our priorities the way we set them makes complying more effortless. However understanding and agreeing, while important, are not necessary - compliance and absolute support is.  That is what it means to be part of a team and that is what it means to be a leader.

Jeff Brinker

Annual Events

To maximize engagement and overall student retention, it is important to spread out our extra-curricular events throughout the calendar year. Moving forwards we will be scheduling our events as follows:

January/February - Chinese New Year Banquet *

January - Black Belt Presentations/Ceremony

March - Syllabus Review/Revision

April - Tiger Challenge *

May - Forms Bootcamp

June - Farmers Day Parade/Demo

July - Canada Day Demo

August - Back to School Week/Kwoon Renovations

September - Potato Bake

October - Breakathon *

November - Syllabus Review/Revision

December - Silent Auction

*Indicates viewable opportunity for Children’s Class parents.

The bi-annual Syllabus Review/Revision will give us the opportunity to address any syllabus improvement opportunities twice a year.  This will ensure consistent collaboration and engagement for all instructors. It will also allow for syllabus stability and a ‘cooling off’ period where we are able to consider changes for a while before we actually decide to implement them. This will ensure less knee-jerk reactions to specific issues happening in specific classes.

Also within this schedule of events will be various Sil Lum Seminar Series events scheduled for Saturdays.

Student Ratings

The student rating field in our database is a powerful retention tool used to track each student’s motivational journey.  Everyone’s Kung Fu journey is unique and every one of us ride a rollercoaster of motivation that sees us go through long periods of at each end of the motivational spectrum. We all can’t be ‘on’ 100% of the time.

Our ranking system is simple, with each student rated on their present state as follows:

• A - self-sufficiently motivated

• B - requires motivation to be reinforced

• C - unmotivated

Our mission as instructors is to prioritize our focus on the C students to turn them into B students. Our second priority is to turn our B students into A students. Our third priority is to ensure our A students remain A students.

This tool is only as useful if it is understood and used consistently. While Sifu Rybak is responsible for ranking all the Young Dragons, 2nd Degree Brown Belts, and Black Belts, Sihing Vantuil is responsible for ranking all the Lil leopards/Tiny Tigers, and Sihing Csillag is responsible for ranking all the Teen/Adults; every instructor should be contributing to the process by being very vocal if they see a student ranking that they do not feel is accurate.  We all have unique, personal relationships with each of our students so we all have personal insights that will be useful for assisting the Program Directors in ensuring the student ratings are accurate.

To ensure the relevance of the student rating information, we need to have confidence that each rating is accurate and current.  To meet this requirement we must set and respect the following policy:

• To build trust in the student rating data, all Program Directors will confirm and update each of their students’ ratings on the last day of each month. This will give us a continuous baseline for reliable minimum accuracy of 30 days.

• The entire instructor team will contribute to the process by ensuring they are vocal and engaged in policing the accuracy of the ratings.

We will further refine our policies as our experience and needs dictate. Those refinements will be discussed in our monthly meetings and this living document will be updated accordingly.

Jeff Brinker

1 on 1 Attendance Policy

To reflect the difficulty inherent with having to double enter appointments into Square so we can track student use of One on One opportunities, we are not going to do it. What we will do though is chart by exception. This means we will assume that everyone who books a one on one is attending their one on ones. If they are no show, you need to inform me in real time so that I can record it. I stress real time because best intentions rarely translates to follow through. Also, if I need to generate a report, I do not want to have to poll you all first to ensure the data is correct. I need to be able to count on the data I am mining out as being 100% accurate.

Can you guys please confirm that you agree with and understand this approach? I am good with discussion if someone has an idea that may be better. 

Guiding Principles

The best way to structure and properly build our curriculum starts with deciding what we want our end product to look like. What type of student (black belt) do we want to produce? This is outlined by our Curriculum Ideals. 

Currently, my curricular ideals are not completely defined. While they clearly state what each stripe colour represents, there is not enough guidance provided for developing the intangible internal qualities of the green stripe. 

Similarly, the tangible external qualities of my curricular ideals are not concisely defined. They should be able to be reduced to basic principles that are present in every technique and application. These principles should apply to both offence and defence so that you can weaken your opponent by eliminating one or more of the principles from his vocabulary of motion. Perhaps these are the ‘Eighteen Concepts’ I am always referring to. 

Requirements for belt testing are not the same as the requirements for striping. Striping should be about building up the character of the student and instilling the foundational values that will help them develop into a solid SRKF black belt. Therefore rank testing should be about the keystone principles and six harmonies to ensure the proper style foundational basics are present along with a constant progression of those same foundational basics. 

If we continue with seven stripes (black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, white), two of the stripes (white and red) would contain the physical foundation upon which a skilled black belt is built. These two stripes would constitute the testing portion of the syllabus because these two ideals contain the information that defines how we move and adapt - our style. The other five stripes would represent supporting ideals that are important but not necessarily tested on.

This approach will only work if instructors are holding the line on striping standards. If we clearly define the standard then the standard must be consistently enforced. If an instructor does not understand the standard, the onus is on them to educate themselves by asking questions and suggesting revisions to help refine our standard definitions.

Jeff Brinker

Striping

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

Instructor Engagement

Instructor Teamwork - Part 1

Please review the video below and make any comments below to get the dialog started. I misspoke in the video concerning having 2 instructors for every 1 student. I had meant to say 2 students per 1 instructor. If we took the Csillag girls out of those numbers we still would have had a ratio of 3 to 1.

Drill Success

Some prep material for our next meeting . . .

Instructor Team Focus

So we're a couple of weeks into the new season with a bunch of new students. I've heard a couple of instructors wonder if we should cut off enrolment as the classes are getting big. These comments have me concerned that some of you may be feeling overwhelmed and if so, you may revert back to your comfort zone and wipe out all the progress we have made in the past few months.

I want everyone focused on engaging the students on a meaningful level and to keep your focus on the students' learning, NOT your teaching. There is a difference.

Please watch the short video below and add your comments and/or questions.