| Friend,
So what's the first thing you should train your teaching staff to do?
Well, after you take them through a thorough orientation (policy manual, signing paperwork, etc.) and after you've done a thorough background check (should include driving record, credit report, and criminal history) then it's time to start training them on their job.
Turn Me Loose, Set Me Free...
Typically, school owners want to hand a new assistant a lesson plan and turn them loose on a class, but that's just asking for trouble.
Why do I say this?
Because, of all the staff positions in a martial art school, the assistant instructor position has the most liability associated with it. And, it's the staff position that will put you most at risk of a lawsuit if you don't train your staff properly.
So, in order to limit your liability (and also to ensure that your staff are teaching high-quality classes) you need to train them properly before they are ever turned loose on your students.
Limiting Your Liability Through Solid Training
To this end, there are three primary areas that a newly hired teaching assistant needs to be trained on: - Kinesiology, Injury Prevention, and Safety
- Teaching Pedagogy and Motivational Psychology
- Lesson Plans and Curriculum
Normally I see most school owners start with topic #3, Lesson Plans and Curriculum, and then they just gloss over the other two topics. I think their intent is probably that their instructor trainees will just pick that stuff up on the job, but that rarely happens.
So, what ends up happening instead is that the instructor trainee fills in the gaps in their knowledge with information from a variety of sources, some of it coming from their own experiences, and the rest of it from magazines, movies, and the internet.
Document, Document, Document
None of these sources can be counted on for reliability. Moreover, if you are ever sued by a student for negligence, malfeasance, etc. due to an action that one of your assistants did or did not take, the first thing that any attorney worth their salt will do is to subpoena your instructor training materials and curriculum.
And when you tell the judge, "We don't have any instructor training materials or training curriculum, we just teach them on the job," your student's attorney is going to smile from ear to ear.
This is why I strongly encourage you to document every topic and subtopic that you train your teaching staff on and save that documentation in an instructor training manual. That way you will always have those materials on-hand should you need to train another instructor in the future, and you can prove later that you covered topics such as safety and injury prevention should you ever be sued.
Coming Next...
Tomorrow I'll start talking about how you train an instructor trainee on the first topic, Kinesiology. That will set the foundation for the following topic, Injury Prevention and Safety.
Now, if you haven't guessed already, it's going to be a while before you are going to turn your new hire loose to teach a class. Don't freak out about this. Your goal is not to have an insta-instructor teaching your classes; it's to train someone you can count on, someone who is an asset to your dojo.
So, be patient and take your time training your new hire. In the end you'll not only be happier with the result, you'll also have someone on your teaching staff that you know your students will be safe and happy with.
I'll be back with more tomorrow. Stay tuned.
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
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P.S. - Always start your instructor training program with safety and injury prevention. You'd be surprised how many people haven't a clue that it's even something they should be concerned with. So unless you make it a priority, chances are good your teaching staff won't either. Bottom line? Never assume an employee has common sense; always assume that you have to train it into them.
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