Black Belt Grading Process 2022
After decades of adjusting and amending our grading process to improve student outcomes, we find ourselves continually struggling to solidify a process that addresses all the problems and roadblocks being experienced by our black belt candidates.
We all are in agreement that the biggest issue our candidates face is mental, not physical. They tend to intellectualize their training and consistently fail to take physical action with their intellectual breakthroughs. As their teachers we can tell them where they are lacking but we have no control on how they ultimately go about addressing our feedback.
An ideal process acknowledges and embraces certain absolutes and values:
Not everyone is able to earn a black belt.
We (teachers) tend to be too involved.
Our grading process should provide bread crumbs to help the candidates find their way. It should not be providing stepping stones.
A candidate should always question their skill, never their effort.
Our students tend to channel their focus to serve the grading process as opposed to pursuing mastery.
There is a black belt standard and that standard is absolute for each individual. It is about each candidate's effort, not just their skill. When we say effort, we are talking about more than just their blood and tears. We're also talking about the sustainable process they use to achieve mastery. This defines their standard:
Ideal - 60% test result after 100% effort.
Not ideal - 90% test result after 60% effort.
Mastery of the curriculum - not just the syllabus.
Moving forward, we have agreed upon an approach to address historical challenges while reinforcing the ideal of mastery over mindless training to pass a test within our students
We will eliminate student access to the CPRS fitness document so that, ideally, a candidate's first exposure to the specifics of the fitness test would be their grading day.
We will remove absolutes for the students. All quantification of their progress will be only for the Board, not the candidates.
The I Ho Chuan year will be the main tool the Board will use to decide Pass/Fail.
The grading day will be the main tool the Board will use to convince the candidates that they earned their promotion or that they did not earn it.
Rather than always seeking to modify our grading process to improve outcomes, we will leave the process alone and focus on modifying our teaching to reinvest in the tools we already have at our disposal by improving their efficacy:
Bring three main focuses into every class:
Warmup
Skill drills with intensity
Main lessons/meat
Continually focus on curriculum in our teachings and redirect and encourage our students to do the same in their learning. Remember - we have a curricular standard, not a syllabus standard.
Jeff Brinker
