"Instructor could not have been any better. Best I have (seen). Thank you!"
Max Baker - Electrician - MSD Columbia

Approach to Teaching

Real World Training...for Real World Needs" is not just our slogan, but also our mission statement. At American Trainco, we approach our students as if they were our own employees. We instruct them and guide them in practical knowledge that allows them to immediately go back to their workplace and apply what they have learned. We make sure they can keep their plant or facility up and running; and we make sure they can do it safely.

We also make sure that our time in the classroom is used as efficiently as possible. So we ask our instructors to imagine that they are the Maintenance Manager of the students in their classroom, that the students are newly assigned employees, and that the instructor is getting ready to go on a three- month vacation of a lifetime - and only has two days to train these new people before he leaves!

What is he going to tell them?

From experience we know that the first thing a Maintenance Manager is not going to do is hand them a textbook and tell them to read, or sit them down in front of a video. Instead, he’s going to find out what they already know, ask them questions about what they are unsure or afraid of, and use that as his starting point. From there he’ll teach and remind the students of the fundamentals and priorities of the jobs they are doing. He’ll make sure they understand their own equipment, and what they should do if they get in too far over their heads. He’ll talk to them, ask them questions, show them with his own hands and by his own experience how to do things, make sure they understand where and how to find the information they need, and then he’ll probe them to make sure they understand the most critically important points and concepts. Just as importantly, he’ll remind them how to conduct their work in a safe manner to prevent catastrophic equipment failure or injury to an employee. Once he hears with his own ears that his students understand all these things, only then can he relax and go on his vacation.

This is the approach our instructors take with their students. They invest themselves into the work the people in their classroom are doing. There is no better way to train maintenance workers.

How We Hire Instructors

When we hire instructors to teach for American Trainco, we want to know three things:

1. Do they have a formal education?
2. Have they ever spent time in the field doing actual work?
3. Are they experts at teaching?

If they answer "yes" to all these questions, then we start getting picky.

So next we give them a scenario – “You show up to teach a class. A storm prevented your books and materials from arriving. You dropped your computer and have no PowerPoint presentation. Your plane was late so you walk into a classroom with 20 people and all you have is a marker and a white board. Can you still train the people in the classroom and make you want to come back to train them some more?”

If they answer “yes” to this then maybe we have someone qualified to teach for American Trainco.

The next step is to have them sit in and watch other experienced expert instructors, and then teach with one of the veterans watching them. From there they are allowed to go solo, but they haven’t proven their worth yet. Each instructor gets “three strikes” from the day he first starts training with our company. A “strike” counts as any negative comment from any student in the classroom relative to the way the instructor conducted the class. Although all people are human and can have a bad day, it is very rare for an American Trainco instructor to get a complaint. Instead, we receive literally thousands of testimonials and notes of thanks. Once the instructor starts getting those positive comments, we know he’ll be working with us and serving the students for a long-time.

So all American Trainco instructors must have real world experience and truly be leaders in their field. We don't hire field people without teaching experience, and we don't hire teachers without field experience. They must have both and be able to consistently teach high quality programs while keeping the classroom lively and entertaining.

American Trainco knows, and our students know, that anyone can teach theory out of a textbook. But there simply is no substitute for experience. That’s what separates our training from any other, and our students never let us forget. They frequently get more from our two days of training than an entire year’s worth of other types of training. How do we know? They tell us…over…and…over…and over…

As one attendee told us at the end of his two-day training course, "I think I can go back to work now and teach the veterans a thing or two."

Mission accomplished!

Many of our instructors have written books and industry articles, are accomplished conference speakers and sit on organizational boards. For information regarding the biographies and credentials of specific instructors, please call our customer service department at (303) 531-4560 or Toll-Free at 1-877-97-TRAIN or by e-mail at customerservice@americantrainco.com

Instructor Jobs

Click here for information on becoming an American Trainco instructor.