NEW TUHONS!
TWO NEW TUHONS FOR PEKITI-TIRSIA INTERNATIONAL
This week I promoted Guros Scott Faulk and Jack Latorre to the rank of Tuhon Guro “Chief Instructor.”
Scott and Jack both received their Mataas na Guro rank from me over ten years ago and have been training in the Pekiti-Tirsia system with me for many years (Scott since 1991 and Jack since 1995).
They have both been regular co-instructors at our annual summer camp and have made consistent and continual contributions to Pekiti-Tirsia as a system and to PTI as an organization down through the years.
The PTI rank chart lists the requirements for Tuhon Guro as “20 years experience in the system” and the responsibilities of Tuhon Guro as “Chief Instructor.” Well, the organization has reached the point where one chief instructor is not enough. One of the reasons I made these promotions was to spread the responsibility of running PTI on two additional set of shoulders. It has been my practice at every summer camp to hold an instructors’ meeting to get input and advice on the teaching of the system and my administration of PTI. I always start these meeting with the same request, “OK guys, tell me what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong: and start first with what I did wrong.”
That request can be kind of intimidating when dealing with an instructor who out ranks you.
When I set up the organizational structure for PTI in 1995, I had the hope that one day we would have a council of senior instructors who could come together and help each other make wise decisions on the teaching and operation of both the system and the organization. If PTI is to survive over the long term, then it should not be dependent on the strengths and weaknesses of only one person. What PTI needed was a board of directors; so my promotion of Guros Scott and Jack to Tuhon Guro should be considered both a promotion in the Pekiti-Tirsia system and a promotion in Pekiti-Tirsia International.
They are both great instructors in their own right and will help make the organization stronger and our members better martial artists.
Tuhon Bill McGrath
President, Pekiti-Tirsia International