The Warriors of Ash school always encourages students to branch out and learn as much as possible. We've had a lot of our students come and express interest in reaching beyond what we offer and desire to create space for learning. We think this is amazing, and we carefully considered how to make this possible for students in a way that was consistent. While we always encourage impromptu studying and unofficial studying among students, for those wanting to create something more structured and officially a part of the Warriors of Ash we have created a guide for new instructors.
For any student hoping to lead a study group, please review this policy. If you have knowledge/experience/interest in a particular activity and want to start a study group, we have a hard prerequisite that you must be actively training with us for at least 6 months. We need to see regular attendance at the school. Also, be aware we have limited slots for this and we are far more likely to grant study group slots to senior students/patch holders and those near their tree patch, but earnest effort is not going to be ignored.
The steps from there are the following:
1. Submit a syllabus. This is a detailed breakdown with a summarized version at the top of the topics of discussion, the sources you gained this information from, what the classes involve, each session's total length, the length of the group overall (is this until a particular source is completely gone through, or a hard-limit of 3 months, or indefinite?), etc. You may always gauge interest from students unofficially before you start working on things, but nothing will be official until the WoA council approves your group.
2. A date, length of class, and time that does not interfere with current classes and works best for you. This need not be weekly, but it does need consistency. "Every other Monday" or "Once a month on the 3rd Monday of the month" is something that is easy for us to schedule and easy for students to remember. These are not official WoA class calendar items, but if they are consistent for more than 3 months we can start adding them to the calendar. (This will need to be requested after the 3 month mark.) Keep in mind to be courteous to other instructors. If your study group involves a lot of grappling and is very physically challenging, you may not want to schedule it on the same day just prior to a class which already does a decent amount of grappling to ensure students are fresh in mind and body to learn at both your study group and at an instructor's class.
3. These are not official classes, and so while we are not charging extra for them the best way to handle these are that current dues-paid members or members in the work-trade program are able to attend these only at this time. We can revisit this issue if your study group gains followers to the point of consistency that it can become a class. Regardless, these groups would count these as hour efforts, so 1 hour study groups on a Monday can be logged in on the school's attendance sheet to help earn patch hours.
4. You must show up At The School. It doesn't matter if no one responds in comments that day or not, you must be consistent in your own attendance of these study groups once they are posted. If you are approved to run a study group we will give you access to the school. (Note: If your study group involves reading or something that is better done indoors and you'd like to support a local Fairview establishment you may make a request when you submit your syllabus to the council.)
5. It is your job to post on social media reminding students the day before/day of that your study group is going on.
We hope this guide helps serve you all seeking ways to continue to improve our local non-profit school, and we appreciate your earnest effort in learning and teaching others many kinds of martial arts.