When did you first become an automotive or diesel instructor?

If you’re like many other instructors in the field, you probably spent time as a technician before turning to education and, like any good instructor, did your best to improve your teaching skills. Between a variety of instructor guides to professional development workshops, it can seem like there’s a lot to figure out. But instead of trying to learn all kinds of new processes and terms when it comes to teaching, it can often be just as effective to work with what you already know. 

Todd Kessler, an automotive instructor at York County School of Technology in Pennsylvania, uses multiple CDX resources to give his students a personal classroom experience with a variety of materials. 

From videos to virtual reality, technology has brought about quite a few changes to the traditional classroom. One of those changes, the flipped classroom, is becoming more popular than ever. 

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” Henry Ford knows something about the importance of continuing to learn. 

Service advisors have a unique role as both the face of an automotive shop and the link between customers and technicians. Therefore, it makes sense that classroom training for service advisors should have a good balance between customer focused skills and automotive knowledge.

Instructors play an important role in providing this kind of targeted training. But aside from starting with a good foundation of knowledge, how can you instill the kinds of skills that help service advisors thrive in the classroom and on the job?