Trainer Training Announcement

This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.

As the Carpentry community continues to grow, our instructor training is increasingly in demand! In September, we welcomed 13 new Instructor Trainers who will help us to meet that need. We are now accepting applications for the next group of new Trainers. In this round, we welcome all applicants, but are particularly keen to recruit trainers who can work in Latin America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. We would also like to recruit new Trainers who are fluent in Spanish.

Carpentry Instructor Trainers run instructor training workshops, lead online teaching demonstrations, and engage with the community to discuss and guide the continuing development of the instructor training curriculum, the instructor checkout process, and downstream instructor support.

We meet regularly to discuss our teaching experiences and to stay up to date on policies, procedures, and curriculum updates.

The Trainers are an eclectic group. Some of us have formal training in pedagogy, some are experienced Carpentry instructors. Some run trainings as part of their jobs, and others pitch in during their own free time. We all share a commitment to propagating evidence-based practices in teaching and to helping new instructor trainees become familiar and comfortable with Carpentry practices and principles.

Our Trainer agreement explains what is involved. It describes our expectations for anyone who aspires to become a Carpentry Instructor Trainer.

The trainer training process consists of eight one-hour weekly virtual meetings (with a break for the December holidays). In these meetings we will discuss readings on pedagogy, largely drawn from our ‘textbook’, How Learning Works. We will also review the Carpentry Instructor Training curriculum, and discuss ways in which we can both teach and apply best practices to create a welcoming and effective class. After completing the meeting series, new Trainers will shadow part of an online instructor training event and a teaching demonstration session. Trainers-in-training also attend the regular monthly meetings of the Trainer community.

This group of Trainers will start meeting in November. They will be eligible to teach instructor trainings by February, 2018.

If you are interested in joining the Trainer community, please apply here! Applications will be open until October 17. If you have previously applied and are still interested, you may either re-apply (especially if anything relevant has changed) or just let us know that you are still interested.

If you have any questions about the training process or the expectations for being a Trainer, please get in touch with Karen Word.