Coming soon from Shooting-Performance: The Art of Instruction – Your Complete Guide To Instructional Excellence
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Sample material taken from the manuscript-
What Is An Instructor?
Excellent instructors are actually the sum of all the pieces of instruction that they have received to date—and what they’ve done with it. What I mean by that is when I sat down and reflected on this book and laid everything I knew about instructing out on paper, I realized that instruction goes beyond teaching—instruction is leadership at the highest refined level.
Coming in Summer, 2014!
For example, in the Marine Corps, to be a drill instructor you have to through a very long, hard school. Drill Instructor School is one of the hardest in the Marine Corps, and the reason is that in order to be an instructor in an organization like the Marines, training students is an elite level responsibility that requires gaining elite level skills.
Being an instructor goes far beyond simply teaching information or techniques. An instructor is a leader and a mentor—someone students want to follow.
An instructor is also a salesperson in some ways. Any number of students within a class may not buy into or believe in the technique that’s being taught, and our job as instructors is to sell them on the technique. You can simply tell students to do a technique, and that may work in certain organizations. But the bottom line is if students don’t buy in, they’re not going to pay proper attention and they’re not going to train to the highest level of skill you’re seeking to bring them.
An instructor is also a professional speaker and entertainer. Our eye contact, body language, and the words we use are so important. Our use of physical contact and position, the clothes we wear and our routine are all being observed, and it isn’t that different than the presentation a professional entertainer must give. Someone who gets up on stage to deliver a speech, or an actor performing a role, will have put a great deal of thought and preparation into that performance and into becoming good at what they do to do it effectively. We must be no different, using every tool at our disposal to instruct our students!
This book will be published in the Summer of 2014. To get on the email notification list, please enter your information here: Shooting-Performance Newsletter
Until Then – Train Hard!
Mike S.
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