Tech and/or cross-agency training before going Pro?

[Colliam7]

Obi-Wan, You are right - how does one tactfully express something like this without starting an argument about what is best? To that extent, I edited my previous post to make it more 'best for you' friendly - lol.

To answer your two reasonable questions, I would have to write an article profiling my journey, and why I just wasn't satisfied with each step I took - including why I avoided certain paths altogether. I have actually already started writing this, but it is no-where near ready to publish yet - and when it is finished, I haven't decided how I am going to publish it.

The problem with writing such an article is how do you do it with a feeling of honestly comparing and contrasting - without a feeling of bashing others? Considering what I have experienced - that will be difficult - LOL!

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope!

LOL!! You made my day, even though your answer was, 'It is too long a story for a simple post.' But, I can imagine there is a lot to the journey.

I asked the two questions because, as an Instructor, I am always interested to learn what works best (and doesn't work well) for students, so that I can consider issues - that I simply may not have thought of before - in my own teaching. I know what works for me as a student, but I don't always know what works best for others. So, for me, that learning is a long journey as well.

 

[wetb4igetinthewater]

ok, this was a long post, but I felt it was too long.

OK, here's the deal.
If you want to be a successful instructor, and I mean a real one, you need to take at least two college courses. One in educational psychology, the other in science education. No agency actually teaches you how to teach and any that claim they do are lying. They teach you how to regurgitate their material and that's why the online learning stuff is being pushed so hard because they finally got a clue that probably better than 95% of their instructors don't know how to teach, only regurgitate. If you are regurgitating, you may as well let the computer do it.
Take those two courses and learn how to teach. They are infinitely more important than any dive courses you can take from any agency or any instructor.

Any technical level material that you know is beneficial, but if you don't know how to digest it into a level that the students will understand and learn how to explain the concepts, then they won't really know what you're telling them. Memorization is the lowest level of learning and that is really all that the agencies teach, including at the technical level. Reason for that is that the ITC's are nowhere near long enough to actually teach instructors how to teach, and the courses are nowhere near long enough for the students to digest all the material to understand the concepts. Anyone who begs to differ with that is more than welcome to prove me wrong. This is why agencies like GUE and others encourage mentorship because that's the only way you really get to fully understand what the courses taught you.

This is probably the most useful and actionable post I've ever read on SB as an instructor. Going to look into taking educational physiology and science education locally as soon as possible.