In most churches, it happens every summer. Families take off on long vacations at the same time many churches plan their VBS and other special programs for kids. Desperate to find people to fill volunteer slots, coordinators grab the nearest teens. After all, a lot of these kids babysit or have younger siblings, so they are equipped right?
What if I told you, taking a couple of hours to give these teens some special training would not only make your job easier, but improve your program in the process? What if the extra training also meant the students in your programs learned more while they were in them? How about if it meant you would have a more consistent and well trained volunteer stream in the future?
Teach One Reach One has set out to prove those very things this summer. We have been training middle school, high school, college and even a handful of upper elementary students to work with younger children in church and faith-based programs this summer. Our training consists of a combination of goal setting, personal spiritual growth, empathy development, creative and meaningful lesson and activity planning and classroom management.
The results are just beginning to come in, but so far the feedback is showing a tremendous amount of improvement even after only a couple of hours of special training. The teens feel more equipped and are more clear about what is expected of them. These clearer expectations are helping improve their performance. The programs are running more smoothly even when only half of the teens were trained!
It’s not too late to pull your teen helpers and interns aside for some special training. We would love to help you whether it is giving you ideas for your training sessions or sending our trainer to your location to train them for you. We are even making plans to have a massive training retreat in 2016 in one or more locations.
Whether you provide the training yourself, or have us help you, we encourage you to take a few extra hours and really train your teen helpers well. The difference may only be incremental at first or it could be program changing. Either way, your students will learn more from your programs.
For more information on how Teach One Reach One can help you train your volunteers – teen or adult – check under our workshops tab under teacher resources or use the contact feature to get in touch with us personally.