Developing Promotional Requirements for Junior Students

Key Questions:

1.      Does my governing body already have a plan in place for promotions?

2.      What sort of training program do I want to run for kids?

3.      How much information do I expect my youth students to learn between promotions?

If the answer to the first question is yes and you aren’t a member of the curriculum development group for your governing body, the rest of this particular blog entry, like the one for Seniors, may just be interesting reading. If they don’t, this should be a good read for you.

For Question 2, you have to decide what your goal for your youth is. Do you want competitors? Will you teach confidence building or self-esteem? What about an anti-bullying program? Will you teach pure traditional judo to them? Maybe you’ll combine them, I do. What you choose here guides your choices for promotional requirements.

I personally follow the USJA Junior promotional exam and choose the things that I think are the best fit for me and my students. Specifically I took all of my requirements for the brown belt and below students and split them into appropriate chunks for each level. I chose to split them that way so by the time my juniors make it to Junior Tenth Degree they’ll be at the same level as my senior Yonkyu and ready to jump right into the adult class at that level and preparing for Sankyu.

The third question’s answer really depends on how you promote. Do you promote every month? Do you run your classes year-round or on a school semester basis? Do you test them even if they don’t know the material required or do you test them when they’ll pass? Whatever your choice, think about it long and hard to help you determine how best to teach your students so they can achieve their goals.

I use a school semester approach with my promotions at the end of each semester. This has worked fabulously for me over the last few years because it provides ample time to prepare the students, even if they miss a class or so!

My process for planning a semester starts with the local school district calendar and a copy of my promotional requirements. I determine how many training days I have and how many critical-to-quality promotional elements I have. Once those are known, I plot a sequence that is logical to me and engaging for the students putting it down to a planning calendar. When I’ve got that done I go to my favorite calendar making program (MS Publisher because it’s nice and easy), make the calendar for the levels, print them to PDF and post them and the promotional requirements for each to the club Facebook page and just the updated calendars on the club website.

What’s your process for developing promotional requirements?