Certified & non-certified instuctors

[Raven]

Bare with me people, I'm new here only 2nd post. I read in one of the topics in this forum about people questioning if their school is using non-certified instructors to teach class and Mr Whitman responded by saying in a nutshell that no school is to use non-certified instructors which I totally agree with 100%. I took Kenpo classes for 5 years and during my first few months of training I would get an instructor that would have a red belt. Kenpo does not have a red belt in their ranking system. When I asked the owner of the school why they had a red belt, he said that is an instructor belt. I then asked well what rank would that make them in our belt system. He tried to avoid the question but I was persistent. I did not want to pay good money for private instruction and not have a very good teacher. I had the owner of the school teach me at first, a 3rd black and could tell a big difference in the teaching. The red belt teacher was telling me I was doing a certain technique wrong that the owner taught me. I found out the red belt was for the lower rank fill in teachers to wear instead of their real belt. Turns out he was only on his second belt. I guess the owner understood my concern because he took over teaching me the next 4.5 years. I can honestly say I would not of went back to that school if that would of continued. Mostly because I was new to the system and thinking that this red belt teacher was of high rank and was not impressive at all I therefore thought that Kenpo must not be a good style of martial art. Right or wrong I think new students look at intructors skills and think if I continue in this style for so many years thats how good I will be. And it becomes a reflection of the system rather than the teacher. I think one step that can be taken to avoid this would be to have a database on the national web site of all students who have become certified instuctors. Tracys kenpo karate does this. If you have a school your interested in you go to the national web site look up the school get the instuctors name and then go to their black belt link and can find out their rank, date tested etc. Like I said at the beggining of this post bare with me I'm new here this may already be done or for some reason cannot be done.

[johnwhitman]

I think this is a good idea. We've discussed this, but haven't implemented it yet. Maybe we'll move it higher on the list of things to do!

[Mr.T]

I don't think it's quite that simple. Belts are, for all intents and purposes, not a indication of anything except what that person is allowed to learn/practice at that moment. Of course you are right for making sure you are happy with your private instructors.

It's my opinion that private classes should only be with someone capable of judging your rank or for sparring purposes a better opponent.

At the same point, I do understand the reason for having a 'teacher's belt' or advanced students training for instructors status. A lot is learned by training others and many advanced students can be (in some circumstances) judged on their own personal training by how they teach. It's silly IF you are a talented practitioner at a school and have been doing it for a long time but must pay $5000 to become an instructor.

I think certified instructors are necessary to preserve a teaching style, verify if the person is worthy of instructor status, besides the obvious business practice of branding. It all comes down to who is doing the teaching and selecting who can teach and not some relative ranking system.

[Kadima]

Imi used to say that once you became a green belt you were an instructor whether you liked it or not.

[KravMDjeff]

I tend to take Kadima's point of view. Instruction happens in a lot more ways than simply by the instructor.