I have worked for for fifteen years.
Since I became an officer six years ago my teaching and assessing role has changed on many occasions.
Most of my training time has been based on a fire station teaching and improving skills within the fire fighter’s role map, only in the last three months has my role of a teacher changed dramatically. I have taken up a new role which means I am responsible for organising and delivering specialist training for the whole of district. This district covers five whole time stations with one retained station and this equates to roughly one hundred and fifty personnel.
Teaching sessions can be delivered at the stations or the stations can come to where I’m based and I can deliver the sessions in the training rooms there. It is my responsibility to organise everything which includes planning the teaching/training sessions to the time that has been allocated and updating electronic diaries to make sure everybody attends on the correct day at the correct time.
During my teaching I come into contact with personnel who have many different barriers to learning which include differing academic levels, differing levels of experience within the role of fire fighter and differing levels of attitude(some very keen to learn and at the other end of the spectrum some just simply can’t be bothered!). All these barriers provide difficulties when planning and delivering teaching sessions. To overcome some of these barriers I will utilise colleagues who have subject knowledge on the areas I don’t.
It is important for the teacher to realise that there are some aspect of the learners’ expectations that are beyond the role of the teacher. You may also find that experience plays an important part here; you may not know all the answers because you are new to the role and / or organisation. The teacher should always consider the interests of the learners as paramount.
Wilson (2008, p23).