Somewhere along the line, businesses started to move to this model of "Training the trainer". Basically, instead of having to send one of their employees onsite to train everyone, they train one or a handful of people from your organization and they in turn train the rest of the organization.
This has become really popular in the K-12 space because it is a huge money saver. Instead of paying for a fancy trainer, you can just use someone that you are already paying anyway. In theory, it isn't that bad of an idea. In practice... people are jerks and not everyone has the skills they need to do the job well.
I'd fall into that later category. I am not a great public speaker, I will be the first to admit that. I've been told that I do a better job than I think I do, but the fact remains it isn't something I enjoy or am comfortable with. In fact I often work myself up so much that I am physically sick before I have to do something like this.
Part of me wishes I had taken one of those classes back in the day about how to make friends and influence people. Perhaps one of those Dale Carnegie things or "Toastmasters". I think my brother in law was/is a member of Toastmasters and he is a quite good public speaker. Some people are just born that way too.
Anyway, I recently purchased some software that is to be implemented district wide in our public school. It's a tool that teachers can use to help manage the student devices in their classroom more easily. While not something they specifically asked for, it is definitely something that will be beneficial to them if they give it a chance.
I have three groups of people who I need to get through the training and so far I have two of them done. It's interesting, because the training isn't particularly long (20 minutes tops), but the reception has been mixed at best. I still have my biggest group ahead of me and that has me a bit more nervous than I would normally be.
I learned a couple of things from the first two training sessions that I am planning on applying to my future one:
You know how people say "I could never be a teacher, kids are just horrible these days".
Let me assure you right now, adults are worse. If I had a dollar for every snarky comment, side conversation, and disrespectful behavior from teachers when I am training them, I would be doing something different with my life.
In fact, if the students acted in their classroom the same way these teachers do in training, they would be irate. Those students would be sent down to the principal so fast. It's like they can't see the parallels at all. It's sad and honestly one of the things I hate the most about doing trainings.
Secondly, it's amazing to me how one person can totally derail a perfectly good training. I had this happen just a short time ago and it made me think about how 
So I was going through my presentation and there was one staff member who was hung up on the fact that her class list was missing a student. That's right, one single student, not her whole class, not half her class. The result ended up being, she missed the remainder of my training (80%) of the whole presentation, because she was so focused on that one student.
Additionally, she sucked all of those around her into her issue and they likely missed the important stuff too.
Looking back, I wonder if I should have stopped the training and let the teacher know that we would figure out where the missing student was at a later time, just follow along now with the students you do have.
Have you been in a situation like that? How would you handle it?
Knowing we could run into this with my final group, I already have a plan to address the fact that all students may not show up. I am sure there will be something else that comes up to detract them.
Part of me feels like the answer is to just power through my presentation and if they miss stuff, that is their loss. When the come back later asking for help, I can take my sweet time taking care of them. That just hurts the students in the end though, not really the best answer.
I'm actually at the point where I would almost pay more money and have someone else not affiliated with the district come in and take the abuse. Is that really fair to them though? Unfortunately with unions and the all around culture, discipline of the staff for their behavior never seems to be an option.
Does any of this sound familiar or right true with you? I look forward to reading your comments!
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