This week I taught my first class at work. Every time I step back into the classroom, I'm reminded of how much I love what I do. Some people get 'called' to their professions and that's truly how I feel about corporate training (had to be careful not to say teaching, because high school English teacher I am not very good at! :)
The class was Building Working Relationships and included EQ, Assertiveness skills, Conflict Management and Influencing skills. I inherited the content and lesson plan, but the latter was so sketchy I ended up doing a lot of development around the actual class activities. I was supposed to have 11 participants, but ended up with 7, which was fine as they were a talkative group very happy to participate and share their ideas. It was a nice mix of departments, tenure and nationalities which made for some really interesting discussions. I continue to be grateful of how welcoming, helpful and nice everyone is.
As for the class itself, things worked pretty much as they do back in the states (except I don't have any smelly markers for the flip charts! :). I do have someone to clean up the room each evening so I don't have to worry about cleaning the whiteboards or taking down the flip charts, but most everything else works the same. The participant expectations have been slightly different (at least in my very limited experience so far).
I've been pleasantly surprised to find that participants really want to practice rather than just discuss theory. Back in the states, when I introduced a role play, I could expect about 50% of the class to roll their eyes and/or try to weasel their way out of it. Here, 3 people (of 7) asked for more on their evaluations!! WOW! Going to keep that in mind for the next class.
Today, I was helping out another instructor and class had gone over time by more than an hour and they didn't even blink! In fact, they were thrilled to keep going and get the opportunity to do more practice. I'm in heaven!
I know, I know, it could be a fluke and I'm sure there will be a post in the future about how awful a class was, but for now, I'm wallowing in my success and looking forward to the next one.
The class was Building Working Relationships and included EQ, Assertiveness skills, Conflict Management and Influencing skills. I inherited the content and lesson plan, but the latter was so sketchy I ended up doing a lot of development around the actual class activities. I was supposed to have 11 participants, but ended up with 7, which was fine as they were a talkative group very happy to participate and share their ideas. It was a nice mix of departments, tenure and nationalities which made for some really interesting discussions. I continue to be grateful of how welcoming, helpful and nice everyone is.
As for the class itself, things worked pretty much as they do back in the states (except I don't have any smelly markers for the flip charts! :). I do have someone to clean up the room each evening so I don't have to worry about cleaning the whiteboards or taking down the flip charts, but most everything else works the same. The participant expectations have been slightly different (at least in my very limited experience so far).
I've been pleasantly surprised to find that participants really want to practice rather than just discuss theory. Back in the states, when I introduced a role play, I could expect about 50% of the class to roll their eyes and/or try to weasel their way out of it. Here, 3 people (of 7) asked for more on their evaluations!! WOW! Going to keep that in mind for the next class.
Today, I was helping out another instructor and class had gone over time by more than an hour and they didn't even blink! In fact, they were thrilled to keep going and get the opportunity to do more practice. I'm in heaven!
I know, I know, it could be a fluke and I'm sure there will be a post in the future about how awful a class was, but for now, I'm wallowing in my success and looking forward to the next one.
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