How do you make a smooth transition from training animals to teaching people? There's a LOT to consider when working with the human half of the team. Between them, Deb and Lee have 55 years of college teaching experience. In addition, Deb 25 years as a dog training class instructor and seminar presenter while Lee has served as the chair of many academic committees and presented at conferences around the world. They will help you prepare so that you can present yourself in a competent and professional manner while providing expert instruction to your students.
Here's a short video we made to introduce ourselves to you:
Registration
There are no scheduled sessions for this class at this time. We update our schedule frequently, so please
subscribe to our mailing list for notifications.
Available for the October session as a prerequisite puchase - lectures only.
For more details, refund policies, and answers to commonly asked questions see our FAQ page.
This class is intended to cover all of the preparatory work that you need to do before you step into the classroom. Good teachers do a lot of their work "behind-the-scenes" and before students ever enter their classroom doors. Good teaching is not an accident - but the strategies covered in this class will ensure that you are confident and competent in the classroom!
In this 6-week class, we will cover the following topics:
·
In Week 1 of the class, we will focus on understanding the need for preparation and planning before the actual teaching experience.
In Week 2, we'll help you develop a "Statement of Purpose", a list of prerequisites, and focus on meeting your students at their level of ability, for your demonstration behavior.
In Week 3, you will work on identifying target behaviors, splitting the behavior into small teachable parts, and determining the appropriate order of presentation to your students.
In Week 4, you will research and obtain credible and useful sources for your class material. We will also consider issues of intellectual property and fair use of public materials.
In Week 5, you will work on developing a comfortable, authentic, yet professional teaching persona.
Finally, in Week 6, you will identify and organize the materials necessary for teaching a one hour training class.
Those in Gold and Working Silver spots will need a demonstration dog to use over the course of the term. The demo dog should be fluent in several behaviors.
So, you want to be a dog training instructor! Or, maybe you are already teaching others and want to improve your instructing skills. In either case, you already know that training dogs can be an exciting and rewarding experience. It also makes sense, as the next step in your own development, to think about taking the competence you have developed in training your own dogs and using it to teach other potential dog trainers. Like dog training itself, teaching dog training to other humans can be rewarding and fun. It can also be frustrating- or at the very least pose challenges. Fortunately, those challenges can be overcome with a thoughtful approach and some planning.
This week, we are going to talk about the challenges that trainers often face at the beginning of their teaching preparation. You are already ahead of the curve because you recognize that effective teaching requires preparation beyond just knowing how you have trained your own pup.
Learning Objectives for Week 1:
1. Understand the problems that can arise with approaching lessons in an underprepared way.
2. Develop a plan for how you will teach a single behavior
Let's first talk about why it's not a good idea to wing it when it comes to offering a class to paying clients. Below is a summary of reasons why winging it can be disastrous - following that list is more explanation for each point.
Summary:
1.you will forget something important
2.you will likely be disorganized, which makes learning more difficult
3.you will then become flustered
4.it is perceived as unprofessional
Careful planning before teaching a class is like drawing the blueprints used in a construction project. You are constructing your class by thinking carefully about a) what topics you would like to cover, b) in what order you would like to cover them, and c) how you will approach those classes to be maximally meaningful to your students. Ideally, you would also give some thought as to why you have constructed the class as you did. Almost certainly there will be students in your classes who know quite a bit about training -- and you want to be clear with yourself before you occupy the "expert" seat why you have made the choices you did.
What happens when you fail to plan your class?
1. Forgetting something important
Almost certainly you will forget something important. And, when your students seem to be floundering, it may take you some time to analyze what is going wrong. If part of the reason is that you have forgotten an important step or critical detail, you can certainly go back and remedy the oversight. But, if you do this too many times, you will come across as disorganized and lose the credibility that a well-organized blueprint can help you establish.
2. Disorganization
If you are perceived as disorganized, not only does your credibility suffer, but so does your students' learning. In many types of classes, beginning with a foundation and then building logically to a conclusion makes it easier for students to understand what they are trying to accomplish and the best way to get there. Some students learn no matter what type of instructor they have, but the majority of students need clear and logical structure.
3. Becoming flustered
When you realize you that you have forgotten something, especially if it is something critical in building an understanding in your students, you will become flustered. Becoming flustered often means that we lose the ability to continue thinking clearly and logically, at least temporarily. You may start to stammer or repeat what you have just said - in part because you are trying to figure out how to recover from your oversight. Experienced teachers may have glitches in their material occasionally, but part of being experienced is having a means of recovery. When you are new to teaching other people, they are watching you carefully. Becoming flustered, stammering, and repeating are all tip-offs to your students that you are not ready for prime-time! They lose confidence in you, just as you are losing confidence in yourself.
4. Professionalism
Teaching is a profession - and like all professions, it depends on the teacher both knowing their "stuff," and also on being able to deliver that information to others. We all know the old adage, "Those who can - do, while those who cannot, teach." That adage is simply WRONG. Those who can - do. And those who can are the only ones who can teach. You are a successful trainer of dogs. Clearly, you can do. And, because you know what works and does not work, you are the best person to teach others who can learn from your wisdom. But, you will need to think through EVERYTHING that you want to happen in your class before you step foot in the classroom. And, you will also want to think carefully about what types of things might happen that could pose a problem for your carefully crafted class period. Only by being very well-prepared, both in terms of knowledge (you have this!) and in terms of preparation, can you come close to ensuring a quality experience for your students and an ongoing professional reputation for yourself.
The bottom line: Carefully planning your classes ahead of time is like an architect drawing the blueprints for construction. You now have a blueprint for what you hope to achieve, how you are going to achieve it, and what materials materials you will need. You have a clear path for implementing your plan.
Video Assignment 1:
Step 1: Choose an exercise that your demo dog can display with fluency from these options:
Hand touch or other targeting behavior
Recall
Loose-leash walking
Sit or down
We are going to ask you to demonstrate with a short video clip that you have mastery of this skill. If you are not sure you have “mastery,” then think about what you have been able to teach your own dog/s successfully. Choose a behavior you like and that your dog is happy to perform because you will be using this for future assignments as well!
For this class I will be using the chin rest as my demonstration behavior. Here is an example of
what we're looking for in your first video:
Step 2: Once you have submitted your videotape and gotten feedback, the next step is to think clearly about how you would teach what you know to someone else. This involves deciding the specific steps you need to cover and the order in which you need to present them.
Written Assignment:
Make an outline showing the key points in the order they should be covered.
1. The specific points that I will want to make to ensure that my students can walkaway able to practice this skill at home on their own will be:
a. ________________________________________________
b. ________________________________________________
c. ________________________________________________
d. ________________________________________________
2. I will approach these points in the following order (if it is different from the order noted in #1):
a. ________________________________________________
b. ________________________________________________
c. ________________________________________________
d. ________________________________________________
Here's my written assignment for the chin rest:
1. The specific points that I will want to make to ensure that my students can walk away able to practice this skill at home on their own will be:
a. _Proper hand placement_________________________
b. _How to elicit the behavior________________________
c. _When to mark the behavior_______________________
d. _Transitioning to an offered behavior________________
2. I will approach these points in the following order (if it is different from the order noted in #1):
a. __Same order as above____________________________
b. ________________________________________________
c. ________________________________________________
d. ________________________________________________
Video Assignment 2:
Submit a short video demonstrating how you intend to teach your skill using the information that you developed in the written assignment.
Here's my example with Star. Please note that this video is a bit longer than the two minute video limit that you have. This is due to me explaining the assignment as well as doing it. Part of your challenge here, and in most of your assignments in this course, is to be clear and concise.