Building a Board That Works

NEPACT 2016

Beyond Bad Training: A Toolkit for Trainers, Teachers, and Facilitators Burlington VT, 3:00 – 4:30

TRAINER AGENDA

1. Benchmarking bad: How do you know you’re in a bad workshop, class or learning experience? (15 minutes)

o Pairs or trios; ask them to discuss all the indicators of a bad learning experience o After 3 minutes, collect responses on flip chart o Question: If we know bad training behavior when we see it, why do we do it? o Discuss adult learning theory: People remember 20% of what trainer says, but 90% of what they do (experiential learning) o Metaphor of flip chart – gathers group wisdom – rather than PowerPoint – positions facilitator as an expert who knows it all. Not only the most effective approach to training, but also the egalitarian approach. It’s bottom-up or lateral, not top-down.

2. Continuum/barometer exercise: One tool from the trainer’s toolbox (15 minutes)

o Questions:  What’s your comfort level with public speaking?  How much experience do you have managing groups (teacher, facilitator, etc.)?  Where are you on the “preparation spectrum?” o Variation: Barometer with agree/disagree on either ends of the spectrum o Debrief: Imagine you’re leading trainings or convenings for different audiences (board, staff, community leaders)…what kinds of questions might you ask during the exercise?

3. Training design: Four ways to cook pasta(15 minutes)

o Sort into breakout groups o Each group is assigned a different purpose for learning to cook pasta o Each group is given a set of task cards about learning to cook pasta o The exercise is to evaluate which tasks are relevant to the purpose, and to sequence them in the correct order o Debrief by showing how the exercise demonstrates the 5-step model a) The hook b) Set the stage; give instructions c) Do the exercise d) Find out what happened; ask questions e) Implementation: “How will you use this?”

4. Learning theory (10 minutes)

o Discuss Experiential learning and VARK (Visual, Auditory, Reading, Kinesthetic)

1 5. Trainer and facilitator toolkit (30 minutes)

Facilitator’s choice: Some combination of the following items. a) Organizing your training space o Ask the group for feedback on the space we’re in. How would you improve it? b) Designing effective meetings o Review sample meeting agenda and template c) Gradients of agreement: Building consensus o Draw simple gradient on flip chart; reference handout o Demonstrate with a few examples: pizza with anchovies, experiential learning, etc. o Ask for examples of how they might use this tool with their organizations or clients d) Encouraging people to talk and/or stop talking o Gather wisdom from the group o Review handout e) Managing bad group behavior o Ask for a list of “bad group behaviors” o Recruit participants to model a mix these behaviors o Using fishbowl/stop-action (another facilitation tool), facilitators take turns trying to address the behavior f) Other tools as suggested by the group

6. Evaluation (5 minutes) o Popcorn: Write +/- on the flip chart

ADJOURN 1:00