Newsletter
Newsletter 2/2011
Total Kids Defence Tigers
A.E.T.F. REPORT
Newsletter 2/2011
Total Kids Defence Tigers
‘TKD Tigers’ – Total Kids Defence Tigers is a very professional life-skills course created for children between the ages of three and six. Children learn about strangers and bully awareness, leadership and teamwork, fire, water and road safety, fitness and healthy eating. Throughout the course they learn basic Taekwon-do techniques, the terminology and five tenets of Taekwon-do (Courtesy, Integrity, Perseverance, Self control, Indomitable Spirit) in a very simple way adapted for the youngest pre-school kids. All these skills are acquired through specially created educational games and physical activities. At the end of the program children feel better, safer and much more confident. They are also ready to fully enjoy the Junior Taekwon-do classes.
I asked the Team of TKD Tigers to answer some questions about their wonderful program and their very professional organization. I received very interesting and helpful responses, which you will find below in the interview and some additional attachments. If you need further information, the Team is more than happy to answer any question.
- When, how and why was the idea of TKD Tigers born, and who came up with it?
The TKD Tigers program started as an idea back in 2002, which after 5 years of exhaustive research & tireless development was finally released to market in Feb 2007. The creators of the program felt that children needed more than just simple play-groups or physical activities in sports, especially for children between the ages of 3 to 6 years. There simply wasn’t any real option for young children on the market and joining a martial arts class at such as a young age wasn’t something parents really felt appropriate for their children. More importantly however was the fact that many kids simply weren’t being taught at an early age key life-skills elements and the founders felt there was a huge gap in the market not addressed by other products for this age range.
Since its inception the TKD Tigers mission has always been to provide the world’s best life-skills education program for children, teaching them how to stay as safe as possible in dangerous situations at home, school and play, not least how to deal with the pressures of growing up concerning bullying and peer pressures; in essence – and as the late great General Choi stated – our aim is to educate the young to build great leaders of the future.
The program was founded by husband and wife team, Richard & Lucinda Cassidy, who still run their own schools (Tigers and Taekwon-Do) in the South of England. Richard used his educational background in Child Psychology to help found the principles and goals of the Tigers course, given his experience in teaching beginning back in the 1990’s and Lucinda brought life to the Tigers course putting in place the structure and systems it uses today, giving it fantastic creative direction, to help ensure children and parents remain captivated by what this course is all about, feeling part something truly special and ground-breaking, that is changing the face of children’s education on a global basis.
- What are the main aims of TKD Tigers?
When the course first started out it was created to teach children key life-skills in the areas of fitness, health, nutrition, staying safe (especially against strangers) and making the best moral decisions in the face of peer pressure or bullying situations. Over the years, since its launch in 2007, the Tigers program has developed to bring much more in terms of life-skills education to children. New elements of our course teach children key lifestyle changes, how to stay healthy, how to avoid dangerous or potentially life threatening situations, the importance of friendships and above all appreciation of their parents and the core values of family, something that is missing in many parts of the world given the pressures and stresses of today’s society. So in essence our aim has been to ensure we make a positive influence in children’s – and their parents! – lives through what our course teaches and above all ‘how’ it teaches those core value lessons. Through many years of pain-staking work we have created a program that has seen great success in all areas it was intended to succeed in, with references, examples and stories from parents, teachers and children who have all been a part of this wonderful program.
- What is the organizational structure of TKD Tigers? (the board of directors, the director, where is the head office etc.)
The business is still run by the founders Richard & Lucinda Cassidy. Richard is the business director filling the post of President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), with Lucinda working in partnership as the businesses Chief Creative Officer (CCO), overseeing the direction of the course content, material and focus from all sides across our global markets. Our Vice President & Chief Operations Officer is Mr. Harry van Schaik, a well-known figure in Taekwon-Do circles generally but also a very successful entrepreneur and multiple business owner in his own right and the true driving force behind the business today.
Our global sales operations are headed up by the very well-known and respected Master Hutton of Scotland, who has been a phenomenal influence across our markets in ensuring our instructors grow their operations successfully and our customers understand the true value of what the course brings. Our Trainer in Tigers is Mr. Philip Lear who is also known the world over in Taekwon-Do Circles, not least a hugely successful instructor in England heading his own organization and schools network. Mr. Lear is also one of the Co-Founders of the TKD Tigers company in 2007.
For our Marketing and PR, we have recruited Mr. Ivan Viguurs from the Netherlands. He has extensive experience in Taekwon-Do and other martial arts and has its own professional gym. Above all, he worked five years in a similar position at a Dutch listed international company. With his endless ideas and determination, we are convinced that we start building more reputation quickly. Finally our director of Finance is Mr. Peter van de Bovenkamp, who took the post over 9 months ago, taking on a huge task to get our business accounting running smoothly to ensure our prices are kept as low as possible for our customers and our success path clear.
Tigers is now a part of a group company called the “Cooperate Association Carilu Education Services Group” and is head quartered in The Netherlands where the COO, Director of Marketing and Finance reside. In the future Tigers has big plans to ensure the success of the program in global markets and The Netherlands presents the best opportunity for companies such as Tigers, giving us a great platform for global operations and long-term growth success.
- Can you tell us a little bit about Supporters of TKD Tigers? (Puzzle Psychology, Stay Wise, etc.)
The Tigers program has many professional organizations supporting it, from experts in psychology (behavioral and developmental), nutrition, physiology and safety, focused specifically on the ages between 3 – 7yrs. It took us quite some time to find the right organizations to partner with and we’ve invested a great deal in both time and effort to ensure our course material (for both student and instructor) is first class in the industry and 100% certified.
We are growing our partner list quarter by quarter, because it’s vitally important that we maintain our leadership through our key partnerships. In each country there are many different organizations that deal with child safety, health and well-being; what’s important is that we’ve sought the right partners and have built a close working relationship with them, as trusted advisors to our company and course material.
The Tigers program wants to continue to excel in quality and professionalism. Having spent over 5 years developing the Tiger program we continue to make improvements and optimizations so that our customers get the best possible from everything they do with us.
The program was developed in collaboration with various specialists as mentioned above, however most importantly is that we have a syllabus designed by senior Taekwon-Do Instructors and Masters, with the backing of Grand-Masters in I.T.F, ensuring that the program remains the best possible course for children between 3yrs – 6yrs, before they promote into the wonderfully written I.T.F Children’s program, which lends a great deal of its idea’s from the Tigers program, albeit adapted for the older age range specifically.
Supporters of TKD Tigers
- How was the program of TKD Tigers developed from the beginning until now?
It took over 6 years of exhaustive research and development to finally launch tigers in the marketplace over several years ago, not least many “trial and error” situations, with both parents and children. What became very apparent was that we needed to ensure we inspired our children at lessons to really become involved in the material being taught, so developed our key games principles around role-playing scenarios and interlinked games, so that themes run throughout the lesson structure and term lifecycle were consistent and cleverly repetitive. We all know that any human mind learns through repetition, but when combined with a fun and correctly balanced challenges, the result is astounding.
Without a doubt our ability to create specially crafted games to support the modules we were instructing our students on, was a major breakthrough in teaching children of this age-range. Furthermore we continued to develop our handbook, solving a very complex issue whereby the book would appeal to both Parents and Children, yet still be applicable to both age ranges. This is where Lucinda came in again, and after working with our chief graphics designer for many months, we created a world that children could easily relate to, ensuring that the lessons they learned where enthralling and captivating, but most of all memorable. For the parents we gave them a great guide through the course, so that they work in more detail with their children at home, to reinforce what we’re trying to teach in lessons.
Most importantly we learned that you simply cannot teach children between the ages of 3yrs – 5yrs (and in many cases 6yrs!) basic forms, patterns or line-work, because it simply became too mundane and negatively challenging. Furthermore instructors were unable to enjoy teaching these lessons plans and given the challenges in trying to have very young children remember very technical points in Taekwon-do movement and application, just caused a great deal of unnecessary stress and ultimately disdain at teaching children this young Taekwon-Do in its original and purest form. Therefore what we did at Tigers, was take the key elements of Taekwon-Do and incorporate them into the course in a way that children could relate to and remember, without too much focus on technical ability, so that we were building a foundation for the kids, to better serve them when they promoted into Taekwon-Do at the ages of 5yrs or 6yrs.
We wanted to make certain that our course spoke volumes to both children and parents, but without losing the key elements of Taekwon-Do training and focusing very importantly on life skills, physiological, sociological and developmental psychology of children. We have come a very long way and have a great many more things in store for our instructors and students!
- Which countries are already involved into TKD Tigers?
At present TKD Tigers is active in Dubai, Belgium, Croatia, England, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, Spain, Sweden and Wales. Furthermore we are working at the present on Poland, New Zealand, Australia, Columbia, Canada, Kazachstan, Russia, Slovakia and USA.
Our aim is not to grow big fast, rather, we want to support our instructors and existing students as best we can, making certain the schools are growing successfully and that those who’ve supported us are offering something truly unique and unmatched in the marketplace for this age-range. Whilst we need to ensure the survival of our business through carefully managed growth, our focus is on improving what we already have and ensuring the best recorded student retention rates for our instructors, through first class highly professional materials, course content and business support.
- Are you able to tell us how many instructors, students or TKD Tigers schools are in Europe?
The TKD Tigers program is being run in over 200 schools across Europe, with a further 50 schools due to open in various regions over the next 3 – 6 months. Our projections for the year are for 500 active schools, offering over 1500 separate sessions, getting young children into pre-Taekwon-Do training, offering a natural progression into the I.T.F Children’s program; promoting a better level of student at each of the important points of the developmental psychology age brackets. In terms of students we have passed the 3000 mark already and that’s not counting those family members who decided to join the Taekwon-Do schools of the Tigers Instructor, as a result of seeing the benefits of this wonderful program.
- How do you help instructors in existing schools? (do you provide any kind of educational resources, complementary courses etc.?)
One of the most important and unarguably critical parts of any system that purports to help instructors teach young children a course of this type must also ensure that there is a fantastic network of support for all instructors. We know from experience that teaching is hard enough, let alone trying to come up with new ideas, systems and games to keep the children interested, not least communicating effectively with parents, in a way that ensures the highest possible student retention rates.
At Tigers, we’ve tried very hard to cover all of this and ensure that our instructors get the support when they need it. Our back-office team works on a daily basis to keep our system updated and course material up-to-date, ensuring someone is always available to help where possible.
We have plenty of online services for Instructors and Parents, with our recently launched on-line web shop, www.carilushop.com we have all the information required to order materials making certain instructors and representative’s needs are met so that they can focus growing their schools and succeeding in the mission of Tigers life-skills education.
We have a great marketing team now supporting the field in getting the message out to parents, teachers, children’s organizations, fitness center and of course instructors. Our aim is to continue to grow our very strong brand presence and bring new customers to our existing members as often as possible.
We have a very comprehensive and experience training system for all instructors and assistants, with expert materials to help ensure things run smoothly every step of the way. We run update courses every year in every region we’re established and constantly send updates via electronic communications on the latest teaching practices and psychology updates, when applicable.
Our Instructors also receive regular newsletters and newly developed games at least once every 12 weeks at present and we plan to increase this to a monthly basis as our team grows. Behind the scenes, we are working hard to expand the support to instructors and schools. We are always open for feedback and suggestions about what we do and can do to make things better for our instructors, students and parents.
- The mentality and the way of rearing children are different in European countries. How do you adapt the program to different countries, or is it universal and suited to all countries?
We took a great deal of care in ensuring that the course we created could be easily adapted to different social and religious structures across what is clearly a very diverse market in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
For the most part our core course principles remain the same, given that the themes around Strangers, Teamwork, Emergency skills and Bullying are universal. The basis of our program can be used multi-functional for all countries. The program includes some topics that need a slight adjustment. To give an example: in some countries the traffic light functions slightly differently than described in our manual.
Our CCO, takes a great deal of time in ensuring that our course guidebook is adapted to each country, and that national customs and traditions are respected, not least core family values. We also update this in our course material, so that when we train instructors in each country, we keep teachings in line with local expectations.
- How does 'being a Tiger' change kid’s life?
Where do we start! We have scores and scores of wonderful commendations from parents, teachers and even children themselves, telling us how much Tigers has made a fantastically positive impact on their lives. Stories from children with severe confidence and behavioral issues, through to students who were involved in an attempted “kid-napping” incident and used what we taught them to avoid the situation and get to safety. We have many great stories about how we’ve helped improve the behavior and discipline of these very young children at home, teaching them how to appreciate their parents and their home much better than they had ever done. We often find that by educating the parents in our course material, we make a much more positive influence on the children and vice-versa. Our course extends far beyond technical training on a specific martial art, it’s about educating the family institution; which is the most precious thing we have in our lives and which remains the foundation of a healthy mind for developing children at this age.
Our mission is to teach children a set of core life-style principles, which they learn through physical and emphatic understanding, so that the lessons learnt become a tangible part of their psyche, so that what they learn sticks with them for life. In short, we are simply following General Choi’s mandate of “Educate the young, to build great leaders of the future”.
- What are parents' impressions of TKD Tigers?
We couldn’t be more overwhelmed and touched by the wonderful support & feedback we’ve had from parents, carers and even educational professionals, for what the Tigers program has helped children achieve. We could literally take up pages upon pages of this article with some of the letters of thanks we’ve received and heart-warming stories of children’s lives changing, through this program.
What is very important to us is that the parents see this program as something they can positively be a part of, influencing their child’s progress and working hand in hand with the instructor to work on any aspects of their children’s lives that matter, in the home, at school or at play. We learned very early on that without parental support and involvement, teaching this age range would simply be a disaster, because we all know how fickle young children are, who like to change their opinions from day to day, week to week and month to month. We created a very clever system that ensured Instructors were not required to become “class parents” being told by parents to discipline their child (anyone who teaches a martial art will relate to this request!) because they’re not doing this, or they’re doing that when told not to, etc. etc.
The Tigers course involves the parents through the course book and we want to ensure that parents can reinforce the key lessons being taught during the sessions at the training hall. We allow parents to set some clear goals for their children that directly affects course progress and achievement (and where parents don’t want to get involved, this doesn’t affect the child at all, but naturally we want the parents involvement), ensuring that the children will work as hard as they can to do the best they can to achieve all that has been set out for them. With the help of parents the Tigers course teaches children the values of hard work and effort and this is why parents are so grateful for the course and astonished by what it allows them to achieve where others have failed so often.
- What are the instructors' impressions of teaching Tigers?
Instructors are amazed on how comprehensive our Instructor training program is, every instructor from Masters to starting instructors are so thrilled at the variety of modules covered on our course. Not only do we open up a whole new market to them (3-6 years), but we teach in a simple and practical way that inspire both the children and parents. On our course instructors learn to teach step by step through role-play, everything from themes and games. They also learn, the often overlooked and rarely taught, skills on how to grow their schools. We achieve this not only through sales and marketing, but also on how to meet and greet Parents and kids of all different levels of confidence, making them feel at ease and thus ready to enrol their kids in the instructors school.
All too often we as excellent TKD Instructors have lacked the skills required selling our abilities. While other, less able Instructors in all arts, have managed to flourish through superior sales abilities. Our Tigers instructors often feel that they immediately redress the balance in the ITFs favour!
It’s one thing to release a great program like Tigers, but without the focus on the back-office support for your instructors and customers, it’s a program that is destined for extreme difficulties or even worse, failure. We do everything we can at Tigers to ensure our instructors business remains a success; our focus is on one thing, with a dedicated team ensuring our goals are achieved.
- What do the instructors have to do to start TKD Tigers schools?
Speak to us! We want to hear from anybody who is interested in becoming a part of this great team and in running a program in their schools. Without a doubt this program will show instructors a whole new way of teaching and growing their businesses in the most rewarding environment we can think of – the art of teaching and inspiring the children of today, to help build a better society tomorrow.
For further information e-mail sales@tkdtigers.com to let us know of your interest, and we’ll get back to you immediately with the next steps. Click here and check our ‘TKD Tigers Instructor Brochure’ for more information (PDF, 1,5 MB).
- What are the upcoming courses in European countries?
- 28 & 29 May 2011 - Poland - level 1 (took place just a week ago)
- 11 & 12 June 2011 - Italy - level 1 and re-sit
- 27 & 28 August 2011 – Sweden- level 1 and re-sit
- May 2012 - the Netherlands - level 1
- next - Slovakia and Russia
TKD Tigers Instructors Course in Poland, May 2011
- How TKD Tigers influence Taekwon-do society?
First and foremost Tigers is a program designed by I.T.F Senior Instructors, an I.T.F Master and parents and children who are actively a part of our wonderful global organization. When we designed the program it was with the sole intention of giving children a pre-Taekwon-Do training path, that would ensure they are equipped with the necessary skills to excel in their Taekwon-Do training once promoted from Tigers. By having created this wonderful and industry proven course, we’re ensuring that children as young as 3yrs begin their Taekwon-Do journey, at an age that was never before thought possible, in a way that is simple, fun and highly motivating for the child, parent and instructor.
The upside of this approach is that we ensure children are mentally and physically prepared in their journey to Black-Belt, starting at an acceptable age in Taekwon-Do colour belt system in our I.T.F, with a grounding in all the basic skills required to become better students of Taekwon-Do and better warriors in this world, understanding, Courtesy, Integrity, Self-Control, Perseverance and Indomitable spirit.
Without a doubt Tigers has created a whole new generation of Taekwon-Do Instructors who would never previously have had the confidence to start teaching, but whom through Tigers, gained the skills they needed to take on full time teaching, for juniors and adults. We’re adding new instructors to I.T.F all the time, offering new Black-Belts a path to full time professional instruction, in the most rewarding environment possible – the education of children, parents and the building of family values amongst school members. What we’re seeing now through Tigers is a fantastically close club environment, where parents become more actively involved, students see training as a part of their lives and everyone learns to truly respect the teaching of the “do”, through being a part of the I.T.F and following in the footsteps of our wonderful Masters and Grand-Masters.
Tigers fully supports the I.T.F. kids program and was created to ensure that we worked perfectly with one another to provide a natural progression between both. Through Tigers, we’ll see great success in the I.T.F Kids program and for global student and instructor numbers, in a way never seen previously in I.T.F history.
Please, click here and read more about graduating from TKD Tigers to the new ITF children's program. Here there is a very important message from Master Mark Hutton on behalf of the board of TKD Tigers.
If you are interested on the TKD Tigers program, do not hesitate to contact the TKD Tigers Team! Do not miss this great opportunity to increase your Taekwon-do school, develop your own skills in teaching and help your Assistant Instructors to build their confidence in teaching too. Also, you will make many good friends, have fun at the same time and incredible satisfaction.
To watch more photos from the last course in Poland and other pictures of TKD Tigers, please follow this link: https://picasaweb.google.com/Angoo.Kasia.Photo/TKDTigers02#.