Tom's Monthly Newsletter: November 2009

Hi Folks, 

As I say in the introduction lecture to a standard class, "I am always experimenting, always trying to push the edge of the envelope.  I constantly push to see if I can take every class beyond what the last class had learned so that every class becomes a challenge, a striving for excellence."  Most of the time my pushing and experimenting work well, in fact, better than what I had expected.

Yet in the process I would never sacrifice quality for quantity.  Every once in a while, however, I do fail in an experiment, or the experiment does not meet my expectations.  Such a failure to meet my expectations has just happened and I am speaking of the Commitment Classes.  Originally these classes were designed to give me something that I never had before; students gaining experience, "dirt time", between classes in a series of classes spread over a period of time.  For the students enrolled in these classes the process has worked well and the levels of teaching I've been able to reach, far surpassed my expectations.

For once I had what Grandfather had; students with considerable dirt time.  But then a problem erupted that I never thought about and that is the expense of travel for students.  Subsequently I am going to phase out many of the Commitment Classes and go back to the usual Tracker School week-long class schedule.  Certainly I loose the vast amount of dirt time students would get between class sessions but at least travel expenses would be reduced.  It is not my intention to phase out all of the Commitment Classes for many of the higher level teachings can only be reached in this way, but I will reduce the number of classes offered where only one or two commitment classes will be offered each year.  

A new experiment is about to take place in a weekend class format.  It was born from the tremendous success of the live broadcast Tom Brown Jr Live.  What I am going to experiment with is running a two day class that will be simultaneously broadcast over the Internet.  Students will then have two choices in that they can attend the actual class physically or they can choose to stay at home and take the live class live over the internet.  The only difference will be the location you choose.  These experimental live stream/physical classes will be held at the Tracker recording studios and questions will be taken at various times both from the studio students and those taking the class at home.  

This approach, if it meets or exceeds my expectations, could then be expanded to replace some of the Commitment Classes that I have cut from the schedule.  If the development of these classes works well it would give the student of a Commitment Class series the latitude to choose to take some of the classes at home and some of the series at the Tracker Recording Studios.  I’m excited about the possibilities because travel time and expense would be far less than having to come to the Tracker School every six weeks or so. Remember that there will only be 10 spaces available at the Tracker Studio for that is the number of students that the studio can comfortably hold.

Tom Brown Jr Live, the Commitment Class and World Trackers excursion to Belize, are basically run by myself.  Because of this I have encouraged my instructors to run several Tracker based workshops on their own.  These workshops are designed to both expand the skills learned in the main stream Tracker Classes and at the same time refining what the student has all ready learned.  Tommy, T3, is running a hunting series of classes, Matt is running a shelter series, Jorge' a cooking series, and one of our new instructors, Bill Marple, is running a very intense tracking program.  As many of you know, Bill is one of our newest Tracker Instructors and heads up the Tracker SFI organization.  His workshops, like all instructor workshops, are very hands-on in their approach, with an enormous amount of one on one personal attention.  It is through Bills' classes that many of our Tracker Search and Forensic Investigation members are chosen.  I highly recommend any these workshops for they uplift a student’s skill level to that of excellence.  

All Good Medicine,