Importance of training
We have found that effective training is very important to our goal of continueing to improve our instructors. The greatest challenge is trying to have the instructors make good habits from what they have learned.
In my experience there are instructors who believe they are above learning new things and that being trained by peers or people who have been at the institute longer than they have is not worthy of their time.
There are no good solutions to help people in this category. They must fall first to recognize their short comings and then they will come for help
I agree Rhonda, actually as I have been coaching our instructors recently I have been trying to get them in the habit of introspection of their teaching performance. Most of our instructors were technicians and their field of view was very self directed in their field. As an instructor/teacher/facilitator of learning peoples fields of view need to be very focused on the recipients of the education or learning. They need to ask why Billy didn't make it through class & what could they have done differently to have had a different effect & outcome. As our instructors begin to think that way they seem more prone to looking at different ways to accomplish their goals of student success.
I have had the same problem. My instructors attend the training but feel they already know what works and I dont see any follow up. What is an effective way to keep them growing. They have trained a particular way and then dont see a need to change.
Well you are on the right path if they are involved with CEE in my opinion; also I think a lot of it is in showing them the value of improving their skills. One of the values I emphasize is that as they increase their skills, the classroom becomes easier to manage and the students have more fun which in turn the instructor has more fun. Also, I believe, most people want to do a good job but they have their own balance of effort verses return. I try to show the big picture of how the process of introspection after each day improves the return on not only the student success but how the effort and success of their job/career changes to for the positive. This does not always work with the veteran instructor that knows it all and is resistant to change or moving away from their comfort zone. In my experience those instructors will take time, and to start the process of change I usually begin pushing them slightly out of their zone increasing the distance little by little. Some may never improve and someone will decided if their good traits outweigh the poor ones.
I am an in-house trainer / facilitator for our Instructors and our biggest problem was to follow up and make sure that the strategies discussed in training sessions were bieng implemented. One thing we have used and pretty successfully is impromptu class visits with immmediate, positive feedback, if any, and copied to all instructors. The negative feedback was sent and or given personally. In each quarter we visted an instructor at least 3 times. There has been a marked improvement as indicated through student mid-quarter evaluations. This is a new strategy and we hope to continue this for a while.
Training and continued application of training in there field is most important. Appling and learning is the key to a good instructor.
