It is the main contact's responsibility to prepare facilitators for programming. All instructors that will be facilitating Cooking Matters programming should become familiar with these four key components of successfully leading Cooking Matters programming, including:
- how to share information,
- manage the classroom,
- create a learner centered environment, and
- how to connect with the audience.
While this may seem like a daunting list, there are already resources available that will help any instructor, regardless of their professional background, learn how to how to adopt this set of key teaching skills. To gain these teaching skills when instructors prepare to teach their first program they should, at a minimum, do the following:
- read through the entire instructor's guide or facilitator training resources for the curriculum they will be teaching
- complete the facilitator training available here: https://cookingmatters.org/community-resources/#facilitator-training
- review any additional training offered within your organization
Depending on your organization, time constraints, and process, you may also provide instructors with the opportunity to participate in a group training and/or have a new instructor shadow an experienced instructor, or watch programming in action. Though not a required component of training, feel free to look through and utilize the videos on the Cooking Matters Youtube page. Topics range from Teacher Tips and Recipe Demos to Volunteer-Created Videos.
The course instructors are critical to the success of your Cooking Matters programming, but there are many resources available to support them. Just remember to set clear expectations about the time commitment and the amount of training required, and be prepared to share all the resources that will help make your instructors successful.