Good training is half education and half entertainment. You need to achieve your educational objectives while keeping your members attention and involved. A good instructor can keep this balance throughout each session. Knowing your audience, your subject and your own skills will help you to keep training entertaining.
The first step is to know your audience. If you are the training officer for your department chances are you have been around the department for a few years. Therefore, you should know the gang you are teaching. The problem is that you need to know what they expect to get out of the training and why they attend the training. The mandatory or basic training sessions are the worst because your members are there only because they have to be there.
The goal is to keep the training interesting enough that your members start looking forward to training rather then attending just because they have to be there. One way to do it is to light everything you can find on fire. If there are flames involved or vehicles to rip up then you are guaranteed that the members will find it interesting. Unfortunately this is impractical and would not cover the more mundane training that needs to happen.
If you are looking for mundane training, nothing beats blood borne pathogens or CPR. These are two critical topics that we repeat yearly or bi-yearly and our members would rather pull out their fingernails then attend them. Add that to the AHA’s new CPR video training and it is a load of fun! So how do you keep your members interest and attendance up at these types of classes?
The best answer you can get is to do a bit of thinking about what qualities make a good instructor, what were your best instructors and what qualities make them good? If we can identify the qualities that impressed us about other instructors then we can integrate these qualities into our bag of tricks. Each person learns differently and will appreciate different qualities in instructors, but here is my list: (In no particular order…)
Ability to adapt and be flexible. If you do not have the ability to adapt and be flexible then you should not even continue reading this column. Good instructors have a bit of MacGyver in them and are able to adapt when problems arise. Whenever you need that piece of equipment you can guarantee it will be broken. If you are flexible you will be able to work around the problem. Flexibility also is what allows you to change your teaching style over time and become a better instructor.
Knowledge. An instructor has to have more knowledge then the audience they are teaching. This does not mean that they have to know everything but they should have a higher knowledge level and not be intimidated by the students. There is nothing worse then an instructor trying to bluff their way through an answer to a question just to be proved wrong by a student. You are better off telling the student that you will get back to them with the answer then bluffing your way through it.
Planning. The seven P’s make a good instructor. Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance. An instructor who does not show up prepared with a plan wastes everyone’s time. When you respect your students’ time then they will respect you and listen to what you have to say. This does not have to be a formal lesson plan but needs to be at least an outline or plan of attack.
Consistency. This is a rather new trait that I have learned to appreciate. I was teaching with one of the instructors that I look up to and realized that he is almost 100% consistent with his training. This means each time he delivers a topic to a new class he delivers exactly the same points, in the same tried and true methods. While this may not work when repeating training to the same people, the consistency goes a long way and shows the amount of planning that goes into each class.
Understanding your audience. Successful instructors gauge their audience often to see what their level is, gain feedback, and understand what is working. You can easily teach above or below your audience. We have a special challenge in the fire service as we have a one room schoolhouse with all levels in our training. Understanding our audience’s needs and expectations will help us when we get to the next step.
Entertaining. Lastly, an instructor should be entertaining. A good instructor needs to keep a good balance in between being entertaining and getting their point across. When you have a strong foundation as an instructor and you can balance the entertainment part, then you can keep CPR interesting.
The ‘color’ in a training session is what keeps members coming. Understanding your audience will help you to determine what type of entertainment is appropriate. What might get a great laugh and drive home a point in one class might offend another class. Sometimes it is as easy as adding in a video clip to spice up the class. Other times you might think about bringing in a special guest.
Personally I like to combine jokes with humorous anecdotes… There is a fine line to walk, but if you can use topical real life examples, your class will appreciate it. The caution is to not go into extended war story diatribes. War stories are good for the club room but you can loose focus easily when too many stories are used. If your anecdote does not directly relate to the topic covered, and cannot be said in under 3-5 minutes, you are best off holding it for the club room.
Next time you sit through a class think about what makes the instructor good (or bad)… Take that information back and integrate it and you will end up with a better class.