By Richard Tew The Post Newspaper Contributing Writer
Recently, Harris County Precinct 8 Constable Phil Sandlin’s Office, which covers a large part of southeast Harris County, including the Clear Lake region, offered a basic instructor’s course for area law enforcement.
Within all police departments, training is frequent. Gerrish says the training lasts a week and teaches future instructors the basics of how to instruct others.
The course, presented by Harris County Precinct 8 Sergeant Wayne Gerrish and Chuck Cornelius with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office helped officers obtain the Basic Instructor Course certification offered by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE).
Officers interested in instruction take the Basic Instructor Course to be able to instruct others.
Gerrish says any time an officer wants to teach a class in law enforcement they must first have the instructor certification. He notes the exception to the rule would be for subject matter experts or others having expertise either through education or vocational experience.
Gerrish says course participants learn about public speaking and communication skills, along with learning how to prepare lesson plans, assessing what learning objectives and outcomes should be. Participants also learned how to evaluate the effectiveness of their lesson plan.
“Learning objectives is really the hardest part,” says Gerrish.
Students of the course are first taught how to speak in public to strangers, before ultimately discussing their teaching presentation which is later presented—and graded—at the end of the course.
“They have to have a lesson plan. They have to have valid learning objectives, which we grade,” said Gerrish.
Gerrish says each student uses a form of media: paperwork, presentation software or a website, to present their lesson plan. He says the program is all about learning and presenting what officers learn to others. He says the end of the week’s work culminates in a presentation by course attendees which can last between 30-45 minutes.
“I’ve been doing this job for about 18 years; there’s still stuff I don’t know,” said Gerrish. “You may have people in the room with 30 years of experience, you may have someone with zero experience. How do you address each of those people and make that information relevant, how do you make that information stick and how do you get the buy-in from the class?”
Photo cutline: Harris County Precinct 8 recently hosted a Basic Instructor Course for both their deputies and for officers of other local departments. Participants learned the basics of learning to be instructors within their respective departments. Photo courtesy of Harris County Precinct 8 Constable Phil Sandlin’s Office.
