Dusting off the Tool Box: Tips for Trainers

Section 2: Handout 9

Instructor Survival Tips or What Do You Do When…?

1. Someone asks you a question and you don’t know the answer.

Strategies:

• Rephrase what the person said to be clear about the question.
• Turn the question back to the group. Ask if anyone can offer a suggestion or share a response. This strategy provides a forum for others to share their experiences and learning and provides you an opportunity for you to think more fully about the question and have time to add to the response .
• Offer to research the question further when you go back home and follow-up with some resources or answers to assist the person with the question.

2. You ask a question and no one responds.

Strategies:

• Rephrase the question to clarify or expand on the query.
• Keep your questions short, clear, and challenging.
• Plan your questions ahead of time. Have an answer in mind.
• Mentally count to 20 to allow for others to think about the question and respond. Look at the group.
• Encourage people to feel comfortable in responding by occasionally asking a question that requires a show of hands; for example, “How many of you…?”
• Actively listen to the answers. Rephrase the reply to make sure that you have it right. Smile, nod, and use people’s name to encourage and acknowledge their participation.
• Ask open-ended questions that do not have yes or no for an answer and that have relevance or application; for example, “How does this apply to your situation?”

3. There is one individual in your class who continues to dominate the conversation and will not stop sharing her stories and problems.

Strategies:

• Thank the person, but clearly state the timeframe for the class and the expectations regarding what should be covered.
• Review the ground rules.
• Use the parking lot and refer this person’s topic to the lot. (See Section 2, Handout 4)
• Establish a guidelines for group discussions such as: everyone has an opportunity to participate, anyone can opt to “pass,” and all participants have the chance to share before others get a second turn. Post these and refer back to them.
• Speak to the person privately before or after class.
• Reassess time allocated for conversation.

4. There isn’t enough time to build a community of learners and teach the content.

Strategies:

• Begin the session with an ice breaker that connects the content of what you will be covering with the activity. (See Section 2, Handout 6)
• Begin the session with an opportunity for participants to share something that happened to them today, or during the week. Guide the discussion to relate it to working with families and children (even their own!) or something that would be fun, safe, and interesting to share about themselves.
• Incorporate learning strategies that encourage members of the group to learn about and from each other.
• Use think-pair-share structures for people to discuss what they learned and share their ideas with others.
• Have refreshments and water available.
• Review the learning environment. How does it feel? Does the environment help build community? Consider how our senses affect how we feel and how we interact. Incorporate music and art into activities. Smell is another important sense. Consider that scents containing peppermint, basil, lemon, cinnamon, and rosemary enhance mental alertness and lavender, chamomile, orange, and rose relax. Think about how the room is structured and how the seating arrangement adds to or detracts from building a community of learners.

5. You look around and see that participants are not attending, losing interest or experiencing “lecture overload.”

Strategies:

• Take a break.
• Change activities or use a different approach to sharing information. Consider that the adult brain takes 18 seconds to decide whether to drop input or keep the information. This means that people initially attend for about as long as it takes to hear one sentence from beginning to end before staying with the speaker or drifting off (Wolf, 1994). To keep participants engaged and involved in learning, think about varying the rate of your presentation. Mix up the type of activities you offer. Action and movement oriented activities actually stimulate the brain and help to retain input longer. Use songs, action poems, large muscle movement activities to keep participants engaged.
• Check the room temperature, lighting and seating arrangement.