Classroom and Practical Instruction - Complete!
Posted 01-07-2010 at 09:01 AM by Boneman
Well it's been a while since I updated my progress on this blog so I figured I’d better catch up!
The 10 minute presentation went very well and practicing in front of my wife (thank you sweetie!) definitely helped! I chose “How to Load and Unload a Pistol Magazine”.
Thanks to that initial presentation, I am now far more comfortable being called upon to get up and discuss or teach and exercise which the instructors have us now doing.
Aside from the classroom teaching, we are also doing practical lessons out at the local speedway. Each of us is asked to prepare to teach a particular lesson to the other 3 instructor candidates acting as our students. The first time was a little unnerving, but it gets easier as we go along and the more you do it. When we are not the one “instructing” the lesson, we act as ‘novice students’. We are told by the senior instructors to make mistakes and ride “poorly” so the instructor who’s teaching can then work on their fault detection and correcting methods.
So it’s been a cycle of 1 night a week in the classroom for 3+ hours, then one Saturday a week out on the tarmac doing the practical teaching for 4+ hours.
On our last practical teaching session, we had a completely different senior instructor who didn’t know us come and observe and ‘grade us’. We had to prepare to teach several different lessons, but then drew our lesson out of a hat and had to teach the one we picked. I felt nervous all over again (we all did). But I’m happy to say we all did quite well and passed!
As of December 5th, 2009, we've now completed all 11 instructor training sessions that involved both classroom and practical instruction, along with several written tests.
All we have left to do is sign our forms and hand them into ICBC and we will receive our Instructor Licenses from ICBC. But that’s not the end of it…..
Two things left to do:
1. Need to take First Aid course (again….for like the 5th time now as it expires every 2 years).
2. We each need to teach a full Practicum of the Novice Course with real students and under the supervision of a certified instructor while being observed and graded by a senior instructor!! This is the big one! Once we’ve completed and passed our teaching practicum, we will then be qualified Novice Instructors. However we can’t do our practicum’s until at least March 2010 when the courses start back up.
Me and some of the other instructor candidates feel that doing another observation of the Novice Course might be very beneficial in order to observe the actual course ‘flow’ and things like when and what courses to set up and even little things like how to move all 10 students though the course efficiently. We all know the course material; it’s all the little semantics and details that are not in the manual that can cause you troubles when teaching.
So I will try to do a better ob of updating my blog with my progress. Almost there!!
The 10 minute presentation went very well and practicing in front of my wife (thank you sweetie!) definitely helped! I chose “How to Load and Unload a Pistol Magazine”.
Thanks to that initial presentation, I am now far more comfortable being called upon to get up and discuss or teach and exercise which the instructors have us now doing.
Aside from the classroom teaching, we are also doing practical lessons out at the local speedway. Each of us is asked to prepare to teach a particular lesson to the other 3 instructor candidates acting as our students. The first time was a little unnerving, but it gets easier as we go along and the more you do it. When we are not the one “instructing” the lesson, we act as ‘novice students’. We are told by the senior instructors to make mistakes and ride “poorly” so the instructor who’s teaching can then work on their fault detection and correcting methods.
So it’s been a cycle of 1 night a week in the classroom for 3+ hours, then one Saturday a week out on the tarmac doing the practical teaching for 4+ hours.
On our last practical teaching session, we had a completely different senior instructor who didn’t know us come and observe and ‘grade us’. We had to prepare to teach several different lessons, but then drew our lesson out of a hat and had to teach the one we picked. I felt nervous all over again (we all did). But I’m happy to say we all did quite well and passed!
As of December 5th, 2009, we've now completed all 11 instructor training sessions that involved both classroom and practical instruction, along with several written tests.
All we have left to do is sign our forms and hand them into ICBC and we will receive our Instructor Licenses from ICBC. But that’s not the end of it…..
Two things left to do:
1. Need to take First Aid course (again….for like the 5th time now as it expires every 2 years).
2. We each need to teach a full Practicum of the Novice Course with real students and under the supervision of a certified instructor while being observed and graded by a senior instructor!! This is the big one! Once we’ve completed and passed our teaching practicum, we will then be qualified Novice Instructors. However we can’t do our practicum’s until at least March 2010 when the courses start back up.
Me and some of the other instructor candidates feel that doing another observation of the Novice Course might be very beneficial in order to observe the actual course ‘flow’ and things like when and what courses to set up and even little things like how to move all 10 students though the course efficiently. We all know the course material; it’s all the little semantics and details that are not in the manual that can cause you troubles when teaching.
So I will try to do a better ob of updating my blog with my progress. Almost there!!
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