Setting Standards for Teacher Training. By Chuck Johnson, Adam Woolley and Zoe Brookes

Transcription

1 Setting Standards for Teacher Training By Chuck Johnson, Adam Woolley and Zoe Brookes In New Jersey last year, Craig Quat opened The Circus Place, a new school offering a range of circus classes including aerial training. The local Girl Scout troupe gathered to watch accomplished aerialists demonstrate the skills, fell in love, and began clamoring for lessons. Parents, delighted, but wary, begin to ask: Who s teaching them? How do we know this is safe? What happens if they fall? Who will know if they are strong enough? And so on. At his opening, Craig pointed to experience, and the AYCO network: our aerials teacher teaches advanced students at Circus Smirkus, this teacher trained with Philadelphia Circus School, we use the same mats that Stone Soup Circus uses, and so on. These are reassuring, but ultimately tenuous from both points of view. Right now, it s hard for someone who s doing everything right in opening a school to show that they are safe and it s hard for skeptical parents to obtain the reassurance they need. From September 2012, this will change. At this year s EdCon, AYCO will publish a set of guidelines for minimum training standards for aerial teachers. Next year, we ll extend the guidelines to cover ground-based teachers too. Guidelines means that this will be a set of standards that freelance teachers and schools can choose to adopt as a means of ensuring the safety of their students, and choose to point to as a way of reassuring their customers. A second benefit to individual teachers of following these training guidelines will be access to liability insurance - currently hard and expensive to obtain. Simply Circus Inc. is planning to sell insurance policies that will require a specific level of training. In an effort to keep things simple and helpful, AYCO is working with Simply Circus to make sure that our guidelines will match the Simply Circus requirements and vice versa. How Will This Help Me? Most importantly, our guidelines are intended to help teachers make sure that they know how to keep kids safe. In our sector it s hard to know what you don t know, and word of mouth advice often substitutes for good training. Now that there are several providers of really excellent teacher training around the country, we want to encourage would be teachers to make use of them. There s a marketing advantage too. Freelance teachers and schools will be able to point to a clear set of guidelines and claim in marketing literature that they meet those guidelines. For many, there s the incentive to access insurance. Freelance teachers may use these guidelines to obtain the certification needed to access insurance offered by Simply Circus. Note that, as of now, there is no requirement from Simply Circus that schools

2 meet these guidelines to access insurance, but we encourage schools to follow the guidelines as good practice. Why Standards Now? As growth in the sector, and particularly aerial arts continues, more formal structures are needed to help educators develop safe practices and to help students identify those whose practices are not safe. Our sector has faced a crisis in accessing insurance as provider after provider has left the market for want of good data about the level of risk they are covering. Self-regulation of this sort is the strongest step we can take collectively to ensure access to affordable insurance in the future. AYCO has achieved the level of membership needed to assert that it represents the sector more than 80% of the youth circus leaders identified in 2010 are now AYCO members. With this endorsement, AYCO believes it has the authority to lead the sector in this area. How Will This Work? In September 2012, AYCO will publish recommended minimum training requirements for aerial teachers, whether independent or associated with a school. These guidelines will closely match Simply Circus requirements for freelance teachers to obtain insurance. The AYCO Safety Committee has been working closely with Simply Circus as insurance experts to ensure that together we develop a practical set of guidelines that ensure safe practices and satisfy the needs of insurance companies. An early draft of these is set out in Figure A. We welcome input on this draft; any thoughts may be sent to zoe@americanyouthcircus.org. Figure A Draft minimum training requirements for aerial instructors 1. First aid and CPR certification (if teaching alone, or lead teacher) 2. Child and family abuse training (available from Boy Scouts, to be made available online) 3. Criminal background check 4. Annual continuing education units (number to be determined) 5. Initial Certification by an approved facility: i. 2 hours of mat fall training ii. 4 hours of spotting technique training iii. 20 hours of skill training (a teacher offering both bar based and rope based instruction would need a total of 40 hours

3 of skill training) iv. 2 hours of anatomy and physiology training v. 4 hours of rigging training (focused on point down inspection and care) training The requirements under point 5 in figure A refer to an approved facility. AYCO will publish a set of requirements for schools offering training for aerial teachers. These are under development, but Figure B contains a draft. Figure B Draft Requirements of Approved Training Facilities Facility The building must be safe, with restrooms, potable water, first aid supplies, heated and cooled properly, meets applicable fire and building codes, and laid out in a logical and safety conscious way. Rigging, Including Hanging Points All aerial apparatus must be in good and regularly inspected working order. Aerial points properly installed and regularly inspected, with inspection log. All hardware should be stamped with load rating or proper paperwork kept on file, and handled properly. Current written inspection of rigging must be on file with the approving body. Overall Safety Consciousness Facility should have proper matting for different aerial needs, and have those mats handy at all times. The overall environment needs to be inspected to make sure that there are no unsafe areas around the aerial area. Mats and any lines or bungees must have a safety log up to date. Overall Pedagogy The approved provider must have a written overall progression for all aerial apparatus. This progression needs to conform to widely used published progressions. The instructor trainer must be conversant with these progressions, and able to teach them using all the most widely accepted teaching styles e.g. verbal, visual, and physical. Instructor trainers must be

4 able to both spot properly and teach proper spotting techniques. Curriculum Review Lead Instructor Trainer Shall have at least five years experience as a coach. Shall have a clear set of progressions and pedagogy Shall be able talk/write/teach about basic education principles, including but not limited to o Different learning styles o Classroom management o Teaching different ages. Shall be able to showcase their own continuing education; this can include any related continuing education (physical therapy, sports training, pilates, gyro, gymnastics) Their own students should/can serve as a basis by which they can be evaluated do their students show exceptional technique and understanding of principles? Assistant Teacher Instructors Any additional staff involved in trainings should have experience and training commensurate with their contribution to the instruction. Spotting and Safety Demonstrations of proper spotting Hands on time spotting with supervision; both fake and real students Covers common mistakes and dangerous moments in tricks Covers when to spot and when not to spot Talks about how to recognize when a skill is ready to be done unspotted Every trainee should have the experience of needing to catch a student, or the teacher instructor should be 100% certain they could.

5 Skills/Skill progressions Explanations of proper technique for any trick; proper technique being defined as things that make a trick 1) easier 2) safer 3) more efficient. Presents progressions of conditioning/skills that build to any given trick Practice time verbalizing the steps to a trick Emphasis on explaining the correct bail out from a trick. Emphasis on safety and conditioning Documentation The approved site shall maintain all required documentation, including but not limited to Maintain and submit approved curriculum documentation for any teacher training program or CEU they run. Maintain as run notes for each teacher training and CEU program they run Maintain and submit rosters for all teacher training and CEU programs Maintain any supervision or testing records required in conjunction with teacher training or CEU programs they run Provide any other required documentation as needed From September 2012, AYCO will invite any institution offering aerial teacher training to apply for a review. This process will remain voluntary. AYCO will review the school s curriculum and practices and comment on any changes required to match AYCO guidelines. There may be a charge for these services. At the school s request, AYCO may pass the results of its review to Simply Circus in order to help students of that school obtain insurance for teaching. We recognize that it s essential to the effectiveness of the teacher training guidelines that experienced instructors can claim they meet the requirements without taking unnecessary training courses. We are working with Simply Circus on a sensible way of grandfathering in experienced instructors.

6 Similarly, we will need to work with training facilities to help back date their approval, so that instructors who have trained with them in the past can use their training to achieve certification. Who Is Writing The Guidelines? The guidelines are a collaboration between the AYCO Safety Committee and Steven Santos of Simply Circus. The AYCO Safety Committee consists of Chuck Johnson of SANCA, Adam Woolley of CircusEdge, Zoe Brookes of Stone Soup Circus, Nick Harden of SANCA and Jonathan Deull of Zip Zap Circus. The main contributors of content are Chuck Johnson, Program Director at SANCA and Chair of the Safety Committee and Adam Woolley. Adam is working in parallel to create a New York Aerial Teachers Association (NYATA) and has provided specific aerial expertise for the guidelines. The draft guidelines published here are a work in progress. We figured we could best explain our plan by pointing to specifics. We welcome comments and questions. You can send any thoughts to zoe@americanyouthcircus.org. What Do I Need To Do? No-one is required to do anything. The AYCO guidelines are voluntary. Simply Circus may require compliance with these guidelines for individual teachers seeking to buy insurance. Teachers can always shop around if they prefer not to follow the guidelines. If you re in charge of a school, starting to teach, or trying to hire teachers, you might want to use these draft guidelines to help decide what to training you or your staff need. If you need help figuring out how to get the training you need, you can send an to info@americanyouthcircus.org and we ll recommend something as close to you as possible. Also, look out for AYCO events, we re planning to help fill common gaps in teacher training at the 2012 Educators Conference, as well as regional and national festivals.