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All According to Plan
Lesson plans - recipe for success or script for uniformity?
To paraphrase Captain Barbarossa in Pirates of the Caribbean: "The lesson plan is more a guide than an actual plan..."
I remember talking to a man who had trained helpdesk operators for one of the large mobile phone companies. The trainers' managers would expect to walk into a training session at 23 minutes in and hear exactly the same thing being said as at 23 minutes into any other trainer's session. For me, a vision of hell, with no room for the trainer's individuality and approach to mediating the message to the receiver.
Occasionally, however, when managing trainers myself I have come across issues of consistency in message and quality, where the easiest symptom to identify is the level of disregard for the lesson plan all trainers should work from. Yes, I emphasise "from", as I have always expected trainers to adapt the material of the lesson plan to their own style over time.
The best trainer I know does me no end of good when he says he likes my lesson plans, that he always knows he will be able to work straight from them. I have a particular sensitivity to the task that hopefully means that my lesson plans make sense to work from; however, I still accept and expect individual trainers adapting them to their style.
That adaptation has to improve the learner's experience, however. It has to be about getting that part of the message to the learner in a way that the trainer can command more comfortably than the process described in the lesson plan. The measure for this is simple enough: if I ask why the trainer moved away from the lesson plan at that point I want an answer that shows consideration, intelligent judgement and a reasoned comparison of the relatve benefits of each approach. Responses that just won't wash include some old favourites:
- it's quicker
- I've always done it that way
- "your way" seems a lot of messing about
I also prefer to see some evidence of that consideration, I want them to "show their working out" with scribbled notes, sticky notes [no brand name intended] an extra page in the lesson plan or whatever
And what the surest sign that a lesson plan is a living document? That a trainer is working from it, adapting it intelligently and challenging both themselves and the learners? It is when they come and tell me how I can improve my lesson plan. Sometimes it galls and often I ignore it; but always I encourage them to share their ideas with their team, to exchange approaches to the work: and if they all adopt a new way then that will go into the lesson plan as an update.
Lesson plans created by uniformity - but let us call it consensus - rather than to impose uniformity, now that I can accept.
Communication is always welcomed, but I'm doing my bit
to rid the world of spam.
So, the domain is "trainerizer.com" and it's whatever you want
to put before the "at" symbol...
© Ivor Randle 2011