For those at the YMCA, etc.

[IcemanSK]

I'm coming up to the end of 1st 11 week session of my class. I won't have testing until we're into the next session. How do (or do you) celebrate the end of a session to encourage students to come back? Not just for that reason, but how do celebrate the end of a session?

 

[Kacey]

I'm coming up to the end of 1st 11 week session of my class. I won't have testing until we're into the next session. How do (or do you) celebrate the end of a session to encourage students to come back? Not just for that reason, but how do celebrate the end of a session?

I never have, and I've been in a Y for 8 years, running on 7 week sessions. Students come back because they enjoy the class and want to continue learning - the ones who only stay to test quit after the next testing anyway, or quit because they are not cleared to test. The closest I get to a celebration is reminding students when dues are due; 7 weeks is kind of hard to keep track of, and I really wish they would go to a monthly or bimonthly billing cycle.

 

[tshadowchaser]

The Y in my town as a bunch of wanna be social clinbers and people who look sown on any non member. They park blocking peoples drivways and the man running the Y will not even make anouncements over the PA to ask people to move their cars. I had 5 towed in a week when I lived near the Y,

I think most Y classes are way to watered down, No disrespect to those teaching at Y's it just the rules in most Y's lomot what you ca teach and the amount of contact you are allowed in class.

Self defence classes are one thing but much of what i have seen as "karate" comong out of the local Y looked more like arobics (sp)

 

[IcemanSK]

I never have, and I've been in a Y for 8 years, running on 7 week sessions. Students come back because they enjoy the class and want to continue learning - the ones who only stay to test quit after the next testing anyway, or quit because they are not cleared to test. The closest I get to a celebration is reminding students when dues are due; 7 weeks is kind of hard to keep track of, and I really wish they would go to a monthly or bimonthly billing cycle.

Thanks for your input, Kacey. I'm kinda frustrated because I only have em twice a week for an hour @ a time. I never think its enough time to 1) get them ready to test. 2) Make em sweat. 3) and have em have bunches of fun in the process. I want it to be contagious fun & yet have them be good technicians, too. I want to test them every 4 months. That seems like enough time to me.

The downside of a non-profit school on a session system, I s'pose.

 

[bushidomartialarts]

the more successful programs i've encountered do some sort of graduation at the end of each session, and taylor their curriculum to that timeline. 7 weeks of two hours a week is in no way sufficient to advance a full belt level, but you can do tape or stripe testing. even just a public class where your students get to show off a little would probably do the trick.

now, you could go overboard like one program i worked with (briefly). sessions were 8 weeks long, one hour a week, and it would take about 3 sessions for a student to advance enough to gain a belt in their traditional system. at the end of each session, everybody tested for a belt. from white you went to white with a yellow center stripe, then to yellow with a white center stripe, then to yellow, then to yellow with an orange center....

ending a session with some sort of acknowedgement of a job well done is just good class management, regardless of what you're teaching.

 

[Fluffy]

I don't have sessions, my club is ongoing. I have monthly dues and some are on 3 month, 6 month or 12 month programs for a reduced rate. After 12 weeks they will test and the cycle continues. IMNSHO, I would suggest you drop the sessions.

 

[Kacey]

I don't have sessions, my club is ongoing. I have monthly dues and some are on 3 month, 6 month or 12 month programs for a reduced rate. After 12 weeks they will test and the cycle continues. IMNSHO, I would suggest you drop the sessions.

I would love to drop the sessions - it's hard for members to keep track of when dues are due - but the YMCA does not provide that as an option. The current 7 week session length is based on their calendar year when the facility had 3 weeks in which no classes were held - the week of Christmas, the week of New Year's, and one week in the summer when they shut everything down to clean it. Now that many of the classes are held over those times, I'm hoping they will shift to a monthly payment system - but it hasn't happened yet.

Also, unlike many of you, my class is 90 minutes twice a week - not 60 - which allows me to get a lot more done. Also, we have the room the class is in for 2 hours, and there's not a class in there before us, so students can come early and/or stay late if they want extra time to practice or extra help from me or anyone else in the class.

As the class continues to grow, I am able to get more concessions from the Y - as the Y provides more concessions, the class becomes more attractive and I get more students, and more of the new students I get stay - but it took me years to get it to this point in the spiral.

 

[IcemanSK]

I don't have sessions, my club is ongoing. I have monthly dues and some are on 3 month, 6 month or 12 month programs for a reduced rate. After 12 weeks they will test and the cycle continues. IMNSHO, I would suggest you drop the sessions.

I would also love to drop the sessions. However, the powers that be decided it is the best way to intriduce new programs to kids. While I agree it works great for an art class to be 11 weeks long, it doesn't fit well with a MA program. I'm going to test them after 4 months. Even at that, some of the little ones will not be ready.

 

[Kacey]

For younger students who cannot be ready in 4 months, I have started with a partial test - for example, a student who can do approximately half the requirements (say, half the pattern, and all of the required kicks), the student would get one stripe, on one end of the belt, instead of a full promotion (one stripe on each end of the belt). I usually only do this for students testing to 9th gup; after that, they just test more slowly - although I do have a couple of developmentally delayed adults, and they test in smaller chunks because it takes them so much longer to learn new things, and deserve to have their accomplishments acknowledged as much as anyone else does.

I have seen other schools in which smaller, partial testings are done at regular intervals (usually only for students under 10, and sometimes the cutoff is younger); students must test for a certain number of stripes (usually not the same color as the stripe for a full rank) before they can test for the full rank - this lets younger students see their progress. Testing fees are generally not charged for this - sometimes, it is part of a formal testing; other times, the intermediate stripes are awarded for demonstrating a technique, pattern, or application in class, either for the instructor or for another, sufficiently senior student. I have also seen students receive certificates of completion for finishing the entire session - these are easy and cheap to make on a color printer.

 

[tshadowchaser]

A couple of questions about teaching at the Y.

Have you ever heard of a Ymca not allowing someone to teach because it would be a conflict with someone else because they had a professional ( read any school makeing or chargeing money) in town?

Are you allowed to teach your full program or are you limited by the YMCA as to what you can teach and do?

Are you allowd to have any contact in your sparring

 

[IcemanSK]

A couple of questions about teaching at the Y.

Have you ever heard of a Ymca not allowing someone to teach because it would be a conflict with someone else because they had a professional ( read any school makeing or chargeing money) in town?

Are you allowed to teach your full program or are you limited by the YMCA as to what you can teach and do?

Are you allowd to have any contact in your sparring

I don't teach at the Y, but I was part of a fulltime school that started as a Y program. They were a feeder program for a big school in town. I've also seen other programs that had no outside affilliation to a large school & did quite well. The full program was taught. Contact sparring was a regular thing for us when we were at the Y. Perhaps its different now. Have you run across these issues yourself?

 

[Kacey]

A couple of questions about teaching at the Y.

Have you ever heard of a Ymca not allowing someone to teach because it would be a conflict with someone else because they had a professional ( read any school makeing or chargeing money) in town?

No. I have heard of Y's not allowing competing programs into the same facility - which is good, in my opinion; the Y where I teach has Yoga, Tai Chi, and TKD - but won't allow 2 classes in the same art, because it dilutes the student base, but they don't really care what's taught (or by whom) outside the building, as long as the members are happy with what is taught in the Y.

Are you allowed to teach your full program or are you limited by the YMCA as to what you can teach and do?

I teach my association requirements, and some extra. The Y has never limited what I could teach.

Are you allowd to have any contact in your sparring

Yes, I am. The limits on my students' sparring are imposed by my insurer (hand and foot pads, headgear, mouthguards, cups for males), not the Y - although the Y does require me (and all other independent contractors, which is most of their program instructors) to carry their own liability insurance.

 

[tshadowchaser]

Thanks for those answeres.
i have heard a few things mentioned about the local YMCA and one of them is that they will not allow a martial arts class because one long time instructor in town once taught at the Y and some kind of arrangment might have been made that no one else could ever teach there except him or one of his students. I'm about to find out in a short peiod of time because i have a friend that wants to teach there.
Glad to here that most Y's let you teach what is needed in your system