What is that "ITI" after your name?

ITI stands for Instructor Training Institute.

In June of 2006 the Richmond County Real Estate Institute of the Staten Island Board of Realtors sent Joseph Runfola (Broker/Owner of Clove Lake Realty) and I to the NYSAR sponsored Instructor Training Institute.

The Instructor Training Institute is a 3 day class given in Rochester, NY. Our instructor was the internationally know speaker / trainer/ consultant, Jim Pugliese.

If you every get a chance to attend one of JimPugliese's seminars you will not bedisappointed, He is really great at what he does.

The first day ran from 8:00am to 5:30pm and covered topics including:
Create, develop and write specificand general learning objectives.
Describe, identify and utilize four basic learning styles.

Design, develop and implement specific participatory activities that support each learning style.

I have been teaching for some time but I still learned a lot just from the first day.

Well at the end of day one we were told that we had to "Prepare, practice and present two activity-based, objective-driven programs" of 10 minutes each and be evaluated on them. One of them to be videotaped on day 2 the other on day 3.
No problem, right?
Then Jim dropped the bomb, the 2 taped instructional presentations had to be on NON Real Estate Related Subjects! The also must include visual aids along with every thing we already learned.

What to do?
I'm in Rochester, NY with no supplies.....
So I did what every grown man does when he can't figure out what to do .....
I called my mom.
See my mother has been a teacher for most of her life (probably on of the reasons I enjoy teaching so much) so I figured she could give me some good ideas/advice.

I decided to do my presentation on Paper Airplanes. I figured it would be easy to get supplies and visual aids. Easy to plan. Plus how difficult could it be to teach some one to make paper airplane?

Well I was up till about 3am preparing.

So Starts Day 2:
The first half of day 2 was more topics:
Demonstrate the ability to perform a competent self-evaluation.
Prepare and provide effective, written instructor evaluations giving specific suggestions for improvement.

Design, develop and deliver a one-on-one coaching/counseling interview to a fellow instructor.

Then we braked for lunch. I grabbed a sandwich and went to my room to practice some more. After lunch the taping would start.

We all broke into groups of about 6-7 people and went to different lecture rooms. I was chosen to go third. The topic people taught ranged from "How to teach a 3 year old to tie his/her shoes" to "How to take great vacation photos" to "Paper Airplanes"

Well 10 minutes is no where near as long as you think it is.
The topic that I thought would be so simple... not so. I realized that you really should only teach things that you really know well or have time to prepare for.

Once taping was done I got my evaluations from the other students. Some said it was good, some just ok.

After everyone was done they took the tapes from us and we were finished for the
day.

I went to the bar to have a beer, get something to eat, and think what I was going to do for tomorrows taping. I was watching the news reports on the flooding in NY State. Most of the highways that I used to get to Rochester were closed because of it. I had a late check out so I thought I would figure out that part tomorrow.

Then it came to me....What do I know well? Boating.. Hard to teach in a class room, Rock Climbing....again hard to teach in a class room.. What do the 2 have in common?
Ropes and knots.

An idea was born. I found a Wal-Mart and bought a bunch of climbing type rope. I went back to my room to prepare and read over my evaluations from the day before to find out what I needed to improve on. I was done in about 40 minutes.

Day 3.
A little more class room learning then strait to the videos.
I went second.. 10 minutes was a perfect amount of time. Everyone was much better presenting on day 3. You can tell everyone read and listened to there evaluations. One of the most difficult thing is life is to be criticized by others, even in a good way. This group of 6-7 Instructors took the comments from the day before with no problem, they were not stuck in that pattern of "my way is the right way and I'm not going to change" that a lot of people are.

I got my evaluations and all but one was GREAT. The not so great one said I use the word "simple" to much. She said "what's simple to the instructor is not always simple to the students". She was right.

We got our video tapes and wrapped up the class. We all said our goodbyes and thanked each other.

Then the drive home.... The highways finally reopened.. but it was PA was a mess. But that's a story for a different time.

I got home and reviewed my videos. All the comments were dead on... I do use the word "simple" a lot.
I burned the VHS to DVD and put it away behind a bunch of other stuff.
I have never showed it to anyone one, I don't know why. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have no problem putting my self out there.

I came across the DVD the other day and that what inspired me to write this and put the videos out to the world to comment on.

Let me know what you think.

ITI Video Day2 Paper Airplane:

ITI Video Day3 Knots And Rock Climbing:

Jeff