May 6, 2015

Developing your teaching team

In order to ensure that you are delivering high quality courses, training and tuition you’ll need to have a great teaching team of dedicated individuals. 

Now to start off you’ll most likely look for people who have a lot of knowledge and years of experience in the subject being taught along with the enthusiasm needed to teach and train. Of course these factors are vital but they are not enough on their own to sustain your team and make your outfit stand out as excellent.

You’ll also need to put effort into updating personal and professional skills/knowledge if your team is to stay effective and reach its potential.

Here are some ideas for you to put into practice:

• upgrading of teaching skills – to make sure your people are using the best and most current teaching techniques.  Get them qualified to teach and make sure you keep your team up to speed with additional training, the latest qualifications as well as team briefings. Consider sitting in on lessons to observe good practice which you can encourage team members to share.
• enhancement of tutor skills to assist the learners on their educational path – whether your team are doing on-the-job training or formal teaching towards recognised qualifications. Perhaps you’re simply ensuring that your company complies with a contract or regulation, get your teachers the ability to help, guide and support learners.
  Success rates go up when teachers know that they are part of a team with the ability to get their learners additional help and guidance above and beyond what they can provide themselves. Get your team fired up to go with the certainty that they can call on you and each other to help with learners who need an extra boost, tuition, information or signposting to achievement. Encourage tutors to flag up learners who need assistance and do some troubleshooting sessions as a group.
• updates on current legislation – whatever type of training your team is doing there’ll be legislation that they need to comply with, so make sure everybody is up to date.  After all with the abundance of smartphones and tablets which people have on them these days, no teacher wants to be caught out by somebody they are teaching contradicting them on something they have looked up on the internet while the course is going on.
  Subscribe people to the trade press, encourage teachers to take time to keep in touch with their industry or subject by dipping back into a hands on role occasionally.
• updates of subject practice and knowledge – teaching can isolate people from the sharp end of their subject, and it’s easy to become out of date.  People can end up spending time teaching something rather than doing it.  So make sure that your folks get regularly appraised of any changes in their industry.
  Team talks, outside speakers and the opportunity to attend trade events are great ways to economically and effectively keep the team prepped. They say that variety is the spice of life and no more so in the training and education fields, a stint away from the candidates and a fresh perspective works wonders for both individuals and your team.

Strong team development will also help you retain the best people by enhancing morale and ensuring that tutors have the confidence to carry their work with pride.

Tags: adult training,teaching skills,train the trainers,