Are you new to working in an educational environment? Academia can be a rewarding career if you have these three types of training.
We often talk about our teachers and what they ought to study or know. What we often forget is that it isn’t just teachers who work in our schools. There are cleaners, cafeteria workers, janitors, handy-people, and even security guards. There are teaching assistants, interns, and work experience students visiting from other establishments. With so many people in and out of a school every day, it becomes increasingly important that we ensure those visitors are fully compliant with the laws and regulations surrounding schools and working with children.
As educators, we have a responsibility to ensure that every vulnerable person that comes into our care is cared for. We have a duty of care to those who we teach. This includes watching out for their health and wellbeing as much as it includes teaching them the multiplication tables.
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The Three Types of Training All School Workers Should Receive
With this in mind, we researched the three types of training that everyone in your school needs. Safeguarding children doesn’t begin and end with the teachers, it ought to include everyone who comes and goes from your building regularly.
1 – Safeguarding Training
Comprehensive safeguarding training for school workers means they can better protect the children they come into contact with. Whether it is the lunch lady or the lollipop man, each worker should be able to spot the signs of abuse and neglect in the children they see every day. Children can’t always speak up for themselves when they are in danger. Worse, they are often not old enough to know any differently from what their parents teach them at home. If the situation at home is grim, a child might not know that because they have no point of reference to compare it with. Teaching our school workers about safeguarding helps protect all the vulnerable people in our care, even when they are not in the classroom.
2 – Classroom Management
Classroom management is a good idea for teachers who struggle with controlling the students. IF you have a particularly unruly group of learners, handing them off to a teacher who has had this training is best for everyone. A student in an unruly classroom doesn’t get the same learning opportunities as a student in a studious group of learners does. This means their teaching time evaporates because the teacher is dealing with ruckus all the time. This type of training solves this by teaching your educators about alternative methods of teaching that they could implement for a quieter classroom.
3 – Counselling Skills
You don’t need to send your teachers on a psychology degree course but learning how to counsel students is a small step towards this goal which rewards the children exponentially. Those we teach often don’t have that safe space where they can sit still and speak their mind without judgement. In a world where mental health is a focus, the need for more teacher-counsellors has never been stronger. Employing this training type could be all you need to set your establishment apart from the rest.
