Businesses have been developing their own in house training solutions for years.  But does in-house training benefit school systems?

When people hear the term “in-house” training they tend to think it is only training that is held at the literal workplace.  But in house training actually means training that has been developed by the employees and managers of the business.

In this case, in house training is a very good solution for school systems.  Training that has been developed by the teachers themselves is the best kind of training.  No one knows better what is needed in a school system training class than the teachers themselves.

These in house training sessions are typically led by teachers.  These teachers put a lot of work into designing the materials, the course content, and the assessment and evaluation.  This training can be conducted anywhere that is convenient for the school district.

The great benefit of developing in-house training is that it can be tailored to fit the exact needs of a particular school system.  If a school district typically serves children below the poverty level, then they would develop classes based on how to best reach this population.  If a teaching institution is located within a children’s hospital, then clearly the in-house training would include entirely different classes.

Based on the needs of the teachers, In house training solutions would need to first decide what needs are most important.  Teachers will need to decide if they need a one-time session, or if the training needs to be ongoing.

Next, the teachers would need to actually write the curriculum.  They would decide what presentations are needed, or if they would prefer seminars.  Some in-house training classes are based on a round-table style of training where many different teachers can share their solutions to wide-spread problems.

Sometimes it’s good to do a trial run before presenting an in-house training program to the entire district.  In this way, teachers can find the weaknesses and strengths in their program.

Another consideration when structuring in house training is to figure out what kind of evaluation will be conducted after the training.  How will the school system know if the training is effective or not?  Some schools might want a formal exam and others might not.  This is an area where the teachers will have to give a great deal of thought.  Sometimes teachers are intimidated by the threat of having to pass an exam.  Finding other ways to evaluate the training might be better.

Finally, when setting up in-house training solutions be realistic.  Think about how much time teachers have to devote to designing the program.  Think about how much time teachers can invest in learning the program.  Many school districts don’t allot very much time for in-service training and it may be hard to fit in what needs to be done.

Also, school systems need to be mindful of how many teachers they can teach at a time, and be mindful of the limited resources of many school systems.