Train-the-Trainer Program

MAX Teaching Train-the-Trainer Program (TTT) prepares in-house professional developers to present and facilitate MAX Teaching within their schools. This five-day program consists of several days of modeling in a staff-development setting plus an emphasis on techniques for later sharing the process with other teachers. It also may involve practice in the local schools’ classrooms where trainees are actively participating with a MAX Teaching consultant in the modeling and implementation of the MAX Teaching classroom activities.  Thus, the focus is on developing expertise in both the methods of instruction and techniques for helping other teachers change their behavior.

The participants chosen for the program need to be academic and/or career-technical educators willing to make a commitment to:

• Use the methods in their own classrooms,
• Model for fellow teachers how to increase student engagement and learning in any academic or vocational classroom,
• Demonstrate how to create opportunities for all students to practice higher order thinking on a routine basis in every class, and
• Provide staff development for other content-area teachers in the various classroom activities.  
• We suggest limiting this program to approximately twenty participants who have been identified by their supervisors and peers as role models in education, committed to their own self-improvement and student success, and planning to stay in their schools for several more years.

We suggest that participants be offered the opportunity to earn 3 college credits – 2 credits for participating in the 30 hours of training, and 1 credit for documenting the performance of 15 hours of staff development within their schools or school systems. We also recommend that the school system provide funding for this credit as an incentive to participate as well as an incentive to share the knowledge afterward. By adding earned college credit to the training, participants will be able to grow professionally and they will be motivated to share their learning. (This credit can be arranged through most universities and colleges.) 

• Introduction staff development for TTT staff
• Classroom modeling by the MAX Teaching consultant, followed by debriefing discussions
• Real classroom modeling by a MAX Teaching consultant and by one or more participants 
• Introductory staff development by TTT staff to teachers
• Continuous in-house staff development, modeling, and support over time