Assistant Instructor Training Pack: The Selection Scorecard, the Four Stages, and the Gates

Mat Manual companion guide to "Great Assistants Are Grown, Not Found." Print it and put it in a binder. The article makes the case and sketches the pipeline. This pack is the pipeline: selection scoring, week-by-week stage curricula, gate rubrics, observed-class sheets, micro-skill drill cards, edge-case policy templates, and the honest-ledger paperwork.

School: ______________________________ Head instructor: ______________________________ Candidate: ______________________________ Start date: ______________

BEFORE ANYTHING: THE TERMS ☐ The candidate reads this pack's stage criteria before starting. Nothing in the pipeline is a surprise test. ☐ The school's safeguarding basics apply to assistants from day one: they follow the school's existing policies on supervision, physical contact in instruction, and communication with minors — in writing, signed, before stage 2. ☐ Feedback to the candidate is private, specific, and after class (the standard the candidate is learning to use). Public correction of an assistant by the head instructor is a pack violation by the head instructor. ☐ Either party can pause the pipeline at a stage boundary without drama. A paused pipeline is a scheduling fact, not a character verdict.

Part 1: The Selection Scorecard

Score each 0 (not yet), 1 (sometimes), 2 (consistently). The conversation about any 0 happens before the invitation, not after.

Thresholds. 11–14: invite. 8–10: invite with the low traits named as stage-1 development goals. Below 8: not yet — and the candidate is told what would change the answer, kindly and concretely. The school's long game needs its seniors even when the pipeline isn't right for them this year.