Dear All, I am wondering how you all go about accepting students from other schools. With so many different pattern sets, so much variance between required quality of technique etc. How do each of you go about qualifying a students rank when accepting them into your program? Tae-Kwon Spooks
I don't believe a student should be downgraded for something they've worked hard for. it might not be to your standard as the new instructor but the student earned it at their old school. i would explain that they would need to have a bit longer going for their next grading to get up to scratch though...
If they're from a different school/organisation but studied the same style, then as Mitch and the Skameister said. If they're from a completely different style, they start at the bottom. Just like everyone else.
I'd bring them in at their current rank but they need to learn all the new material before testing at a higher rank....
What would you think of say a WTF stylist joining an ITF school or vice-versa? We had a WTF yellow belt join our school a while back and it didn't take long for him to adjust but a WTF black belt might be a different story all together. They would have to learn the syllabus the ITF way from scratch.
Making students from a completely different style, whatever the grade, start from white belt makes things a whole lot less complicated.
Depends. What does your rank reflect? Ability, or memorization? If a WTF black belt joins an ITF school, you can say whatever you want and assign whatever ranks you want to, but you've still got a WTF black belt in your school. If he's murder on the mat and is going to stick around enough to become one of "your guys", you might as well give him his ITF black belt for ability. If your ranks are more like merit badges for collecting all the 'moves' for the next belt, then it's obvious. Check off the tricks he's memorized and give him his rank accordingly.
We get a lot of students with martial art background. If they hold rank in another system (non-TKD), we usually tell them to wear their old uniform and rank for the meantime. We make sure they start to get the proper ground in TKD (white belt material) but also throw in material that is closer to their level (for example, a Judo black belt needs to learn the TKD basics but can deal with some more advanced stuff to keep his/her inetrest up). Once they decide they want to train under our system and rank in it, we ask them to get a white uniform and belt. Depending on how long they train before deciding this, how they've progressed in learning the curriculum, and how well they are training, we sometimes will use their first test to "place" them at a higher level. Once they get "placed", they are responsible for all the previous material (and patterns) as well as the current level. So far, it has worked pretty well - some like being placed and some prefer to work up from white. If they hold rank in "Taekwondo", regardless of the federation (we've had WTF, ITF, and ATA students), we recognize the rank and have students wear it. If they are a color belt, we work with them to get them up to speed on what we expect at that color (if we have it, otherwise, we 'transfer' them to the approriate color). Black belts are recognized at that rank. We offer formal "recognition" for a certification of that rank from us but it requires a regular test (just like any of our candidates would do) of all the curriculum to that point. Once they earn the recognition level, they can progress upwards from there. For example, we had a 3rd dan from the ATA who trained with us for a few years and he learned all of our forms and material and tested for his 3rd dan ITA certificate. The main thing I find is that it's usually pretty quick to find out what a student's goal is. Generally those with rank in TKD or other systems are deciated hard working students who have had to switch schools for a reason. Given an outline of what we require to earn rank, most work hard to do so. For those few who just want to "train", they don't need rank from us. For those who want to "collect rank", once they see that they have to learn and demonstrate the whole curriculum, they move on.
Our school always lets other karate people keep their rank unless they'd feel more confortable starting from scratch in order to pick up our style. I think it's beneficial to keep your grade. We've had a couple of guys from China who were kyokushin black belts and clearly pretty hardcore but who insisted on training as white belts as they considered it offensive to our teacher to wear a black belt that they hadn't earned in his class (no matter how much he suggested otherwise). They soon got bored of doing white belt stuff and stopped turning up. If they'd worn their own belts and trained as black belts, they'd have had a lot more variety to keep them interested.
The Enshin guys have a nice way of dealing with this for people who are outside their system but have some experience. You train with an orange belt on, which doesn't indicate a grade in their system, it indicates a grade in something else. Mitch
If they earned black belt in another Taekwondo organization, they can usually keep their belt and rank while they adjust to our technique and forms. Exception to this is if they are just really bad, either from lack of training or bad training. If they come as a color belt from another organization or style, they start over. To me, it makes no difference if they hold black belt in karate or some other style. You start over again while you learn a whole new way of doing things. What we've found is that very few black belts from other organizations or styles keep coming, Taekwondo included. They tend to become marked, especially in free fighting, and struggle to adjust to our technique and way of doing things.
so what happens when they want to go up a grade? I'm very interested in this whole subject as i am currently swapping from ITA to ITF (Sine Wave....is really gonna mess with me i can tell, seems to be on a parr with silk reeling) Gutted to lose the ITA cat 2 moves, but i figure these will no doubt reappear in some different guise eventually EDIT: Currently i am being allowed to keep my former rank.
2 or 3 moves are used in place of single move e.g. if each normal move equaled a quaver a CAT2 move would equal semi or triple quaver
I think the way my current teacher did it was fair enough. I had 1st black belt from a tiny little organization that used itf forms. He had me start at white. I took a couple gradings which I guess convinced him I'm dedicated, so then he jumped me up to the belt he thought I deserved-red(2nd gup). I didn't stay at red as long as most students and stayed at brown even shorter. It took me about 16 months in total from the day I started at the school for him to allow me to test for black. To me it was worth the wait because now I have an internationally recongnized rank(kukkiwon) and I'm eligible to compete in wtf tournaments. At first it was kind of a bummer that we train almost exclusively for olympic sparring, but I'm young and fairly athletic, so might as well get into the sport while I still have a chance at getting good at a highly competitive level.
