APT's School for Tutors.
A 4-day course from lunch on Monday to lunch on Friday, brought to your own organization if you have 6-8 people wishing to become tutors.
Executive Summary:
APT courses are recognized as being exemplary, and the School for Tutors is the course that teaches suitably talented people how to achieve the required standard. The course teaches how to present APT's courses, and uses one such for delegates to practice presenting. It does not teach how to write a course (courses are established APT courses, tutors don't need to write them).
Depending on your level of qualification and experience those who successfully graduate from the course become APT accredited as a Tutor (Level 1) or an Assistant Tutor,
For a full discussion of the benefits associated with becoming a tutor, click here.
Who should attend.
The course is suitable for:
- Senior professionals wishing to become accredited APT tutors.
- Less senior professionals who have not necessarily had much teaching experience but do have the talent and clinical experience that would be valuable to others, and are seeking to become assistant tutors.
What the course covers:
- Exactly what are you trying to achieve when you present a course to a group of delegates?
- Why it is NOT a good idea to give delegates material additional to what the course already covers; although it seems generous, it has major drawbacks. What? The slogan that sums this up.
- How to make a prepared course feel like your own when you present it, and why it is important to do so.
- The difference between a good story to tell on a course, and a bad one.
- What sports-psychology has to offer a course-tutor.
- It's good to make a course fun, and it's good to have a sense of humor, but what are the two major potholes you need to skirt around in being fun and demonstrating your sense of humor?
- PowerPoint is the most wonderful invention since the dawn of time, so how come so many people talk about 'death by PowerPoint'? How to use PowerPoint really well, and how not to use it. Above all, how to present slides. Why you need to read aloud slides that others can read perfectly well for themselves!
- A flipchart is not meant to be a comforter for the tutor – there is no need to turn your back to the audience and write down everything anybody says. And yet it does have a very important purpose, so it's good to know what that is.
- The point of a course is that people do things better after it. How can you get this to happen – and how can we check that this happens?
- How to keep the delegates not just awake, but energetic and enthused.
- As a tutor, should you stand up or sit down. The answer of course is both, but when do you do which?
- “Split into small groups” is a common refrain from a tutor, and it can be an excellent thing to do. And it can also be a very tedious and irrelevant thing to do. How to master running small group exercises so that they are useful and welcomed.
- If the course is due to start at 9.30, and it is now 9.30 but a quarter of the delegates have not yet arrived, what should you do?
- How long should breaks be … and when should they be?
- The 7 deadly sins for tutors and, conversely, the 7 key rules of Professionalism. Training is an elite activity (a) because the salaries of all the delegates makes it so expensive and (b) because it sets the standard for the subject in question. So it is essential that training is conducted with a very high degree of professionalism.
What this course will do for you:
Certain benefits of attending the course are unconditional. Specifically, you will learn how to be as good a tutor as you can be. For other benefits, you need to graduate - to pass the course. If you do – and we do our best to help you do so – then you become accredited as an APT Tutor (Level 1) or an Assistant Tutor.
Benefits of becoming an APT-Accredited tutor are:
You are able to tutor APT courses within your own organization, which means that your organization pays just half the standard fee for the course, yet delegates receive the full benefits: certification, accreditation, etc. Additionally, you may be invited to tutor outside of your organization, although this depends on a number of factors so shouldn't be your prime motivation for attending.
Benefits of becoming accredited as an Assistant Tutor are:
You are able to assist an APT-Accredited tutor to run APT courses as above. Additionally, you may in due course progress to become an accredited tutor, although this will depend on a number of factors so should not be your prime motivation for attending.
If I attend the School for Tutors, what are the chances of me not passing?
We have never yet failed anybody, although we reserve the right to do so. The reason for this success is (a) the course has very clear guidelines which, so long as you are prepared to follow them, are likely to lead to success and (b) we are careful to only select applicants who we think have a good chance of succeeding.
What if I or my organization send colleagues onto the School for Tutors and they don’t pass?
You receive a full refund of the fee. We want you to send people onto the course and to have tutors in your organization so you can have APT training at half price, so we want to make it risk free for you.
Having said that, we urge you only to propose people who are likely to succeed, because rather like failing your driving test, failing the school for tutors would be traumatic, with or without a refund.
Eligibility for the School for Tutors.
The standard eligibility criteria to become an accredited tutor:
1. A mental health professional with substantial clinical experience.
2. Have an aptitude for teaching and motivating people to learn.
3. Receive good references from two specified referees (current and past line managers) who are asked to rate 10 scales.
The standard eligibility criteria to become accredited as an assistant tutor:
There are no hard and fast criteria for eligibility to become an assistant tutor, but your organization will recognize you as a person whose experience and views would be valuable in a training situation. For this reason you will need good references from two specified referees (current and past line managers) who are asked to rate 10 scales.
A final observation:
APT operates a measured meritocracy, in that we constantly measure the performance of courses and tutors on two the key scales of presentation quality and relevance, and if a tutor delivers the required performance then they are by definition up to standard. Tutors' professional backgrounds may be in nursing, occupational therapy and social work, but what they all have in common is (a) significant clinical experience, (b) the aptitude for teaching and motivating people, (c) good references from specified referees, as above, and (d) a 'feeling for' Psychological Therapies, as befits anyone accredited by the Association for Psychological Therapies.
So, if your c.v. does not fit the standard criteria you can certainly still apply, but you should not take it amiss if you are not accepted.
Booking this training is easy.
Bring the course to your organization.
If you have a minimum of 6 people needing training, we can bring this course to you for a fee of $1,900 per person (plus tutor travel and accommodation expenses), and up to 8 people can attend. Note, each person must apply and be accepted onto the course before they may attend. The fee covers all costs: a workbook for every delegate, course evaluation (evaluation document returned to you), registration of all delegates on the APT database, individual certificates of attendance sent to each delegate after course attendance, certificate sent to you listing all who attended. You provide the teaching room, any refreshments you want to, and the delegates!
An APT-Accredited Course:
As a bona fide APT event, this course automatically has accreditation from The Association for Psychological Therapies. This means (i) that it contains the right amount of relevant information for its duration, and (ii) the information is presented in an engaging way, and in a way that will make it likely to be used after the course. APT verifies the accreditation by publishing the delegates' average ratings of relevance and presentation-quality for all its accredited courses. The accreditation is given value by over 150,000 professionals having attended APT courses.
Feedback Ratings.
We continuously monitor the quality of our training by obtaining feedback on the two key scales of relevance and presentation from every course delegate. Below are the average ratings for the last ten runnings of this course.
Average Presentation rating: 100%
Average Relevance rating: 99%
*These statistics were last updated in April 2017.
Reviews.
APT prides itself on the feedback we receive about our courses. Below are just some of the great comments the APT's School for Tutors course has received.
"It is amazing to me that I've never been taught about running courses in such a clear way before. I feel well prepared to run The RAID® Course (and other courses) and this is perhaps the best indication of how good a course this was."
"I have found this course demanding, challenging and completely worthwhile. I have learnt so much more about presenting skills and I am looking forward to developing these along my personal tutor's journey. Our facilitator was extremely professional and approachable. He definitely set the scene for conductive learning. Thank you so much."
