Help a Firefighter Out
Recently, I attended an 80-hour instructor course for my instructor position at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center. I’ve been a fire service instructor since 1986 and have been fortunate to teach many topics in many locations across this great country, but I learned a great deal from this program, for which success is based on preparation and delivery of a 50-minute class presentation.
Though the Instructor Training Course is listed in the course catalog as an 80-hour class — there’s a week in between the first and second week to work on your presentation — students put in those 80 hours and another 40 plus during the off week. The presentation has to come from a narrative outline that provides the details for every word you want to speak, activity you want to conduct, and questions you want to pose to your students, in this case, the rest of the class. The goal is to produce a teaching outline that any qualified instructor could use to present the class and have the students receive a consistent “product.”
Facilitators Tim Melton and Melissa Pittman, who are members of the GPSTC Instructional Services Division, run a tight ship and earned the course its reputation as the premiere instructor training course in the state. The first day of class, Tim delivered a remark that had a huge affect on me and my cohorts and really let us know what he and Melissa expected.
He introduced us to the acronym HBO/HSO: Help a Brother Out/Help a Sister Out. Tim told us that those terms would take on meaning and significance as we went along and he was absolutely right. He meant supporting each other as we learned and that concept manifested itself in many ways:
- During our two-minute impromptu presentation from a range of topics that “arrived” to you when you caught the small soccer ball that was tossed to you while you were at the front of the class.
- During our practice deliveries of the five-minute introduction section of our individual presentations in front of our colleagues who then provided critical analysis of your work for improvements.
- During the dress rehearsals of the full 50-minute presentation where fellow students held up flash cards showing how much time you still had to finish on time! And when they asked impromptu questions to slow you down because you were going too fast with your delivery.
- During the actual presentation, the full delivery of your presentation that absolutely had to fall between 45 and 55 minutes.
Since my successful completion of that course — the hardest class I’ve ever been in, including the sixth grade with Sister Loretta — I’ve notice several things while delivering training programs. Many of my student populations at GPSTC include a broad cross-section of knowledge and experience — firefighters just starting their careers learning alongside experienced company officers and chief officers. Sometimes those more experienced folks speak up and actively participate in classroom discussion and sometimes they don’t.
When they do, everyone in the class has an opportunity to learn, including me; their silence is a missed opportunity for all of us. I have a term for that meaningful participate: they’re actively present. Actively present means that a student is not only there to listen and learn, but to actively engage in group activities, ask pertinent questions — which are probably in the minds of the less-experienced students, they just don’t know it — and add relevant personal experiences to supplement those of the instructor. Actively present students enrich the learning experience for everyone including the instructor: Help a Brother Out, Help a Sister Out.
Many training programs use post-course student evaluations to assess the student’s attitudes and opinions about the training that they just completed; such evaluations are required for all classes conducted at GPSTC. I provide the student evaluations to my students at the beginning of each class and encourage them to not only fill out the “check” boxes, but also to use the space provided for written comments to record their thoughts as we progress through the course. Many students — new and old alike — don’t take advantage of this as another opportunity to be actively present. These surveys are an excellent opportunity to provide feedback to instructors and training program managers so that they can keeping doing the good things and make improvements where needed: another example of HBO/HSO.
Next time you’re in a training class or educational program, think about how actively present you are during your time in the classroom or on the drill ground. Help a Brother Out, Help a Sister Out
March 20th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
This short several paragraphs is so on point to be one of the most poignant statement of the instructor/instructee relationship which I have ever read.
Too often technical training, while necessary, is boring, and, also too often, we only attend this training because of continuing education requirements. We, as learners, often blame the instruction or the instructor for this atmosphere.
The author here, and the excellent train-the-trainer program he discusses, makes it quite clear that the instructee(s) are an important part of the mix — and, most likely, the lack of interest or “active presence” of the student body as a group a greater share of the responsibility for the success of the training, or lack thereof.
Interesting that it takes a discussion of a “train-the-trainer” program to bring forth the responsibility of the trainees in the learning process. Maybe we should invest some in-service training time to teaching technical students to be active participants in their continuing education — “train-the-student”.
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:54 pm
The development of a training outline which is carefully thought through and complete in its content is invalauble. However, producing an outline that tells an instructor what they should say and do to deliver the subject matter under the guise of delivering a consistant product only sets classes up to be good but not great. Through the years my experience with fire instructors,undergraduate and graduate university programs has shown when the instructional is not of their own design, professors have little passion for the program. Programs are also not tailored or personalized for the audience they are trying to reach. That passion and personalization is what takes a program from good to great.
A consistent product is important but is better measured by outcomes such as field performance demonstrations or written testing not standardized presentations.
Having an outline such as you describe as a resource is invaluable from which to develop a program but should not be the absolute standard teaching presentation. It only represents the best ideas of its authors not necessarily the best of ideas!
I worry as education continues to march forward with standardized presentations developed by small groups of people that we are suppressing creative thought which leads to innovation.
Isn’t it be better to train our instructors to think critically while developing “their” training programs with this much care and effort, providing them with resource materials such as what you describe resulting in new thoughts and innovation rather than having instructors take someone else’s work and simply present it?
March 30th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Barry hit the nail on the head. Ther are so mant canned programs available, not a bad thing, unless you buy and present only what you are sold. To not personalize it for you Department, Group or students is a crime and terrible diservice to the presenter (yourself), and more importantly the receiver (students). I like the HBO/HSO idea, if we apply this to our instruction and adapt the product to benefit or personnel we will achieve greatness not only as instructors but as Public Servant. Little things can make a differance, what are you willing to do to make it right!!!
Train Hard, Play Harder, above all else Stay Safe!
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