How to decipher the curriculum conundrum?
The question remains, how do you most effectively structure your class schedule to make the best use of your time and have the best student outcomes?
Obviously, I’m not advocating or suggesting that you should eliminate classes for younger students, but, in so many schools that are following the latest trend, they’ve overcomplicated there life, and made it very difficult to have a logical student progression through their upgrade programs.
The most efficient model is much simpler. What has proven to be extremely successful is a core group of classes for ages six through 12 or so, and then, perhaps, a couple of support classes for younger students, ages 4 and 5.
Classes for those youngest students have one goal and that is to develop their skills, so they can be very functional in core classes. In most cases, within 3 to 6 months, younger students can be very smoothly integrated into a core age group class, with very little transition anxiety.
Remember, the goal is to prepare students for core classes and your upgrade programs. Many schools that divide each group too aggressively tend to overcomplicate their upgrade process. There’s absolutely no reason that younger students couldn’t or shouldn’t gain experience in higher-level training systems or upgrade programs, provided there’s adequate value for the students, and adequate support structure to help them be successful in those classes. In fact, I think you would agree that students that start lessons when they are younger tend to have the best long-term outcomes. So, it is congruent to expect them to participate in your higher-level upgrade programs, and achieve GREAT results!
Again, the key is to provide enough value for students at their level, which then creates an overwhelming desire in those students to upgrade. In some cases, this could be an integrated leadership program; in other cases, this may be more advanced physical skills, or, perhaps, a specialized safety or social-skills curriculum component.
Of course, the goal is high-quality student outcomes. So, it is important to make the right decisions for your students to be productive during the class.
It is also very important to think about whether surrounding younger students with older, and, in some cases, more focused students, will be a positive experience for those students. In most cases, it is.
An interesting model to ponder is WeightWatchers®. At its core, WeightWatchers is simply a mastermind group. It’s a group of like-minded individuals, who come together to draw strength from each other’s stories, share successes and information, and create a strategy for all to be more successful. Keep in mind that WeightWatchers is the most successful weight-loss system ever devised by humans. For the most part, the reason for that is because of the mastermind principle.
Ideally, you should try to create that same level of support in your martial arts school. If a WeightWatchers client has a bad week, and adds a few pounds, then the rest of the group helps to support that person and push him or her through to the next goal. What would happen if the majority of the group put on three pounds? Obviously, this would enable the rest of the members to justified their individuals failures, and, perhaps, be less focused on their goals.
In essence, you want to create the culture of a highly successful WeightWatchers group: Every week, the members are discussing their successes and helping to pull the members from the bottom to the top of the group. The equivalent at your martial arts school is to create that core class to be the success story, thereby, bringing students from the bottom of the curve to the top.
In conclusion, it is very important to make appropriate decisions about where students should be placed initially, but also be sensitive to the fact that, in most cases, it’s more productive to surround younger students with students who will be good examples. Then, of course, it becomes a simple matter to develop systems to push the students at the top 5% of their classes.
