In January 2007, I completed my second two-year term as chairperson of the National Technical Council (NTC). The job of chairing the NTC rotates among the NTC membership; previous chairpeople have been Jim Sterling and Joe Zawielski. Shin Aoki has been elected as the new chairperson from January 2007.
As background, the NTC is a group of Shintaido of America (SoA) members who have reached the rank of Senior Instructor or 3-dan in karate or bojutsu. Currently the group is responsible for the SoA exam curriculum. We work to clarify exam requirements, so that students and their teachers know what techniques are required at each exam level. We also discuss how the techniques should be performed, and communicate that information to the instructors.
NTC members are Shin Aoki, Connie Borden, David Franklin, Rob Gaston, H.F. Ito, Jennifer Peringer, Lee Seaman, Friedemann Shultz, Jim Sterling, Michael Thompson, and Joe Zawielski.
Much of our work in the last four years has involved a broadening of responsibilities and decision-making, from Ito-sensei and Michael-sensei to all members of the NTC. In the last few years we have selected representatives to the International Shintaido Federation (ISF) Technical Committee (Jennifer Peringer, Jim Sterling, and Joe Jawielski), and gave them our recommendations on examiner requirements for upper-level Shintaido exams, which they then gave to the international Technical Committee for submission to the Board of Directors the International Shintaido Federation.
On the home front, we clarified a number of technical points on techniques in the SoA Exam Curriculum.
We have also worked to clarify the job of the NTC itself, and to establish procedures so that we can work together more effectively. Recently we named “point people” within the NTC, so that instructors will know who to contact with specific technical questions.
The NTC hopes to improve the flow of information to instructors. Any instructor with a technical question about Shintaido is encouraged to contact the point person in that area (Shin Aoki for karate and kenjutsu, Rob Gaston for open hand Shintaido, Jennifer Peringer for bojutsu).
Thanks to Shin for taking on the leadership of this important group. And thanks to all of you for your support for instructors and for the teaching of Shintaido. We look forward to more good keiko together in the coming years!
Lee Seaman
