How To Choose The Right Teacher Training Format

You may think that the make or break it factor in your teacher training is the excellence of your course content and the charisma of your lead faculty.

Wrong.

One of most important factors in the enrolment success of your program is your course schedule. While you will have some students who will make the leap for a particular faculty member, most students have to fit teacher training into their lives.

If they’re doing a retreat training (heading to Bali for example), chances are they have to fit it into the vacation days and around family obligations. If they’re doing a local training, they’re working around their work schedule and holidays.

By scheduling smart, you’ll put your training on the map and and make it more likely that students will enroll.

Here is a snapshot of three things to help you make a good choice:

1. Look Around

What are other successful studios in your area doing? Not to be a copy cat, but it’s a good idea to do some solid market research before you commit to your format. If another studio is doing well,  take note of how they’ve locked it down. By researching your competitors, you’ll see how you can either tow the standard line, or offer a different schedule that may be a unique selling feature.

2. Know Your Students

Who is your ideal student? Planning a training to appeal to 9-5er’s is going to look a lot different than a training designed to appeal to stay-at-home parents or vacationing college students. Who is in your community? What kind of schedule would they prefer? When in doubt, do a poll! Easy enough to get some feedback by either asking your students directly, or throwing up a Facebook poll. Don’t guess; get information.

3. Go Short

As much as it pains my nerdy, educational side to say so, shorter course programs are often more accessible and more appealing to students. People are busy and they want a good bang for their buck. Shorter programs cut down your program costs (and cut down your faculty hours, if you are hiring faculty). Balance the logistical appeal of running a shorter program with a keen eye towards your learning objectives to find your happy place.

Want more? For an in-depth look at choosing your ideal course format, check out the online course. 

The Biggest Mistake Teacher Trainers Make – and How You Can Avoid It

I call it the Great Mistake.

And I’ve made it. A lot.

Here it it:

As a teacher trainer and educator, it’s natural to want to give your students a lot of information. After all, we are content experts and we have a lot of great stuff to share. So when we’re creating trainings, we usually start by making a list of all the content we want to cover. What do we know, and how can we talk about it. As if the point of the training is to transfer what is in our heads into our students’.

This is the great mistake.

The great mistake is thinking that training is about what we teach.

It’s not.

Training is about what the student can do.

The great mistake is thinking that training is about what we teach.

It’s not.

Training is about what the student can do.

When you are creating your training, start with the end in mind. Rather than think about what you want to teach, sit back, have a latte, and really think about what you want the student to be able to do as a result of your time with them.

  • What new tasks can they perform, or perform better?
  • How will you know if they “get it?”

Even in a knowledge-centred training (where you want them to “know” or “understand” stuff), there is a way to evaluate your student’s performance by seeing something that they do.

When you switch your teaching focus from what you know to what your student can do, you may suddenly find that your in-class time needs to look radically different. You may not need to teach everything that’s in your head. In fact, you may teach a lot less content in some ways. And perhaps all of sudden you realize that, wow, you actually need to teach something entirely different than you originally thought to get the performance result from the student that you really want.

Ask: what do you want your student to be able to do as a result of the training?

By asking yourself this simple question, you are setting yourself miles ahead.

Put the student’s performance first, and create your training from there.