Where Are Tutor Trainers?

Tutor trainers come from a variety of sources, ideally from the expertise in your own community. Ask team members to share the work of looking for trainers; review the possibilities and make selections as a group. Both program partners and tutors can assume some aspects of training, perhaps involving a local expert; some areas of training, however, are better left to the experts. You can also draw on school partners for training, and may even want to build training into your memorandum of understanding. When scheduling trainers, keep in mind that variety can only enhance your program. Conduct a broad search, focusing on four main resource pools:

• Staff from partner schools and school districts (e.g., reading specialists, Title I staff, teachers, social workers, etc.)
• Your own and other national service program coordinators
• Staff from your sponsoring organization
• Professionals from community organizations (youth-serving, juvenile justice, health and human services, etc.)

Before your search, here are two key questions to ask yourself and your partners:

• What do we want our tutors or mentors to know and be able to do? (Think KSA: Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes)
• Who are the adult educators who have a reputation for expert and engaging work in these areas?

Developing your own training capacity
The LEARNS partnership provides project staff members with state and regional training in strategies and materials for many of the topics on the training calendar. In addition, LEARNS provides training resources, including many ready-to-use session activities, the LEARNS Literacy Assessment Profile (LLAP), and PDF versions of back issues of The Tutor on our Web site: www.nwrel.org/learns. You can contact the LEARNS partners by phone, at 800-361-7890 or 800-930-5664, or via e-mail at: learns@nwrel.org or learns@bnkst.edu. Additional resources are available free to national service programs through the National Service Resource Center at www.etr.org/nsrc.

Training resources outside your project
School district staff members are critical to training tutors to enter the school culture and to support curriculum and student achievement goals. If your project is located within a larger sponsoring organization (a college or university, a national volunteer or community-based organization), staff at these sites have important expertise to share. In addition, organizations and professionals who serve your learner populations can support your training efforts. The table below provides a partial list of training sources:

Learner relationships? School counselors Teachers, including special education teachers Staff from youth and social service agencies Juvenile justice staff Child and mental health specialists Mentoring project staff Higher education faculty	School or site culture? School administrators School clerical and support staff Classroom teachers School specialists (reading, psychologists, librarians, counselors) Parent organization members Parents of tutees
Project operation? Project directors and coordinators Board members Staff from other national service projects Volunteer association or organization staff Corporation for National and Community Service or State Commission staff Training and technical assistance providers	Learning support? School or district teachers and specialists Title I reading specialists Higher education faculty Retired teachers Graduate students in education School or city librarians State and local councils (e.g., literacy) Professional organizations (for specific subjects, i.e., math, computers, history)