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Critiquing and Coaching Interpretive Staff

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A supervisors guide to
Critiquing and Coaching Your Interpretive Staff

Eleven Units, 1.6 CEU Credits



Interpretive Coaching and critiquing is often a process where the presenter, if they know they are going to be critiqued, are a nervous mess. No one really gets in line for the joy of having their program or guided tours critiqued. Not even me. When I was a seasonal interpretive naturalist with Ohio State Parks, knowing I was going to be critiqued by the Regional Interpretive Specialist made for a long day - waiting for the white State Van to pull up. Yikes. But the evaluator turned out to be a coach - and that made all the difference in the world.

This course is designed for supervisors, museum education curators, lead interpretive naturalists and any staff member charged with the job of critiquing staff presenting live interpretive programs, tours, or related live experiences. Here are proven processes, activities and guidelines for being a great evaluator/critiquer and interpretive coach.

Here is a course overview - meet me at YouTube: https://youtu.be/umNk_M4SlsU

Course Content:

Unit One - What are the standards you're critiquing against? Do you have a check list of items or
procedures you are looking for? Here is an example check list that a critique might
include "how well you did - did you cover all these points"? At this level we may be
critiquing, but not yet coaching. The coaching comes next.

Unit Two
- Does you staff know the standards they are being critiqued against (staff training)
- For the program or presentation (theme, objectives, teaching aides, etc.)
- For the interpreter (uniform, tour management, how they respond to questions, etc.).

Unit Three - Setting up the staff critiquing experience - how, when, where and what will you be critiquing?

Unit Four - Creating the critiquing checklist and observation recording form you can use.

Unit Five - Critiquing the program - and critiquing the presenter - you're on!

Unit Six - Critiquing techniques you can use to evaluate the program and presenter (secret visitor, program observations, video of the program or presentation and other techniques.

Unit Seven - The program/tour or activity is over, you have made and recorded your observations and ideas about both the program content itself, and how the interpreter presented and conducted the program or experience. Preparing for the good news and the suggestions for improvements.

Unit Eight - Let the Coaching begin - how to prepare for the coaching interaction and interacting with your staff member.

Unit Nine - Nineteen steps for successful coaching experiences and interactions.

Unit Ten - The coaching follow-up. You did your critique, you coached your staff member, now you need to follow-up to see if the coaching you did "took hold" and now you see improvements in both the program and the staff members interpretation skills. How will you do that?

Unit Eleven - Final review of YOUR coaching skills - what do you think you need to do better as a interpretive coach?

About the Instructor: Prof. John Veverka

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Interpretive planning - Nine Mile Canyon, Utah.

- B.S and M.S in Heritage Interpretation - The Ohio State University (Taught a course on
Interpretive Master Planning - wrote the first Interpretive Planning Text book).
- Ph.D. program in Interpretation at Michigan State University. (Taught introduction and
advanced interpretive courses including interpretive planning units.)
- Adjunct Professor Heritage Interpretation (summer heritage tourism institutes) North
Carolina State University, New York State University.
- NAI Certified Interpretive Planner and Trainer
- NAI Fellow
- Certified Professional Heritage Interpreter (Canada).
- Author of several interpretive planning/training college text books.
- Publisher of InterpNEWS - the International Heritage Interpretation e-Magazine.
- 40 years of interpretive planning, training and writing experience.

Estimated time to complete this course is 16 hours but you can take your time if you are working on a planning project using the course as your guide.

When will the course start? You can start this course at any time and work at your own pace. The cost of the 16 hours of training is $175.00 USD, which can be paid for by credit card or PayPal below
(Buy Now Button).

John Veverka
jvainterp@aol.com
SKYPE: jvainterp
Phone: 517/803-6605














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