| Friend,
Thus far this week, we've discussed how price impacts scheduling, and how attention span, student age, and performance expectations need to be factored into scheduling and curriculum design.
Today, I want to start looking at how curriculum and scheduling intersect when both are designed for scheduling efficiency, teaching efficacy, and student retention.
The Sin of Over-Teaching
When we consider student retention, most of the factors involved are psychological and emotional. Sure, students quit for mechanical and environmental reasons, meaning their schedules change at work and they can't make it to class anymore (we're going to talk about this soon, by the way), or they move away, or they start a family and simply don't have the time to train anymore.
However, for the most part the reasons students quit have more to do with mental and psychological reasons than anything else. They're intimidated by sparring. They think the instructor is indifferent to them. They feel like they're not progressing in class.
Or, they think reaching their goal - typically, black belt, but it may simply be the next belt - is an insurmountable goal. This is actually a quite common reason why students quit training.
And, instructors are often guilty of causing students to think they can't achieve their goals. Not purposely, of course, but we are.
More often than not, it's because we try to give students too much. We want to teach them everything, thinking that the more we give them, the better. So, we load up our curriculum, adding this on and that on and this other thing too...
...until after a few years, we've burdened the student with so much to learn, so many techniques, that achieving a black belt (or that next belt) seems like an insurmountable goal.
This, my friends, is the sin of over-teaching.
What Does Earning a Black Belt Signify?
Question: What is the goal of achieving black belt?
Is it to master the entire martial arts system in a few years? No, of course not. Ask any instructor, and nine times out of ten they'll say, "It's to master the BASICS."
Aha! So, by that measure then the first rank of black belt is merely an indication that the student has learned the basics, and can perform them at a high level of skill.
If that's the case, then why do we try to teach them EVERYTHING before they reach black belt?
I remember when I was studying hapkido, a very technical art. The master instructor I studied under used to always harp on how hapkido had over "Three-thousand techniques."
"Three-thousand?" I'd think. "Who in the hell has time to learn three-thousand techniques? And, how am I going to learn and remember all those techniques when I test for my black belt?"
Well, what I later discovered is that the style only has about 150 core techniques. And no matter what the art is you study, when it comes right down to it most systems really only have about 150 (or about a dozen dozen) core techniques.
Take BJJ. Sure, there are thousands of set-ups, escapes, and submission variations. But the core skills of the art can be distilled to about 150 techniques that you learn by the time you hit purple belt.
Same thing goes for other arts. Besides hapkido, I've also earned black belts in taekwondo and karate. In both arts, there are about 150 core techniques and a handful of patterns (hyung, kata) that exemplify the core skills of each art.
Again, if this is the case, then why do we try to teach so many things to our students.... overloading our curriculum and making earning a black belt or that next belt seem like an impossible task?
Let's Go Back to Our Discussion on Outcomes and Goals...
If the goal of earning a black belt is to prove that you have mastered the basics, then I contend that's what your student curriculum should focus on.
Moreover, it is my experience that a curriculum should be evenly weighted at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. Each level should have a set of core techniques, roughly 50 or so, that you teach that are appropriate to the expected skill level of students at that stage in their training.
So how does this break down by the numbers? - 150 core techniques divided by 3 skill levels = 50 techniques per level
- 50 techniques per level divided by 12 months = roughly 4 techniques per month
- 4 techniques times 3 months = about 12 techniques students will be tested on each quarter
Meaning, in order to organize your curriculum for retention, and prevent front-loading or back-loading techniques and overwhelming your students, you should divide it up so that you're doing the following: - Only requiring a dozen or so core techniques to be learned by students each quarter (three month period) -
- Only requiring 50 or so core techniques to be learned at each skill level (beginner, intermediate, advanced) for belt testing purposes -
- Only requiring 150 core techniques to be learned before black belt -
Now, that doesn't mean that you're not teaching more than that in class. All it means is that, for the student, they know they're only going to be tested on core techniques when they grade for their next belt.
And obviously, when students test you're grading them on other things, depending on your style or system. For example, in systems like BJJ, sparring is going to be a core component of testing - that's a given.
But by breaking your curriculum down in bite-sized chunks and mapping it out evenly from white belt to black belt, students won't feel overwhelmed by what they have to learn to achieve black belt.
How This Impacts Scheduling
It also means that you don't need a ninety-minute class so you have time to cram everything in that you want your students to know. You can easily structure a class so that you're covering what students need to know in 45 - 60 minutes.
And since you're only focusing on teaching students a few core skills each month, it also gives you time to go deep and show them variations on those core skills, as well nuances about each given technique.
Also, it gives you leeway to add variety to your classes. When you're not trying to cram in three dozen things in every class, you can easily cover the core stuff you need to tackle that day. That means you also have time to teach "fun stuff" and "cool stuff" too.
But besides making your curriculum easier to digest, there are other benefits to breaking your curriculum down in this manner: - Organization - It helps you organize your classes, so you know exactly what students are working on at each level and in each class. This means you'll never have to walk into a class and "wing it."
- Thoroughness - Ever have a belt exam and realize that half the students don't know a key technique? Often, this is because for some reason or another it got overlooked in the months leading up to the exam.* By breaking your curriculum down in a logical sequence of bite-sized chunks, you can be sure your students are getting the complete curriculum, with nothing overlooked.
- Simplicity - The less moving parts your school has, the better. Simplicity leads to efficiency, and efficiency leads to higher profits. By breaking your curriculum down in this manner, you are simplifying your job. This means less work and stress for you, which is always a good thing for a small business owner.
Right now, I bet you're asking, "But Mike, how do I implement this in real time?" That's where the rotating curriculum comes in, which will be the topic of tomorrow's email. Stay tuned.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
Quick-start Guide to My Books and Resources: - Looking for a list of books and resources I've written? Click here! - Looking for low-cost business coaching to grow your dojo? Click here…
P.S. - * This happens a lot when you structure your curriculum by belt rank and not by which segment of the curriculum students are working on. Here's what I mean:
Say you have a kid's beginner's class with white, yellow, and orange belts. And say that the white belts need to learn "X" technique for their next test, and the yellow belts "Y" technique, and the orange belts "Z" technique.
This means that at some point you're either teaching the white belts techniques they don't even need to know for their next test, or that you have to split your class up into groups and jump from group to group teaching different techniques. It also typically means that you never really get to cover it all sufficiently, and that you're always rushing to cover everything in each class.
What a mess! Tomorrow I'm going to explain how to eliminate these issues by using a rotating curriculum, so make sure you read that email.
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