Start with a blank page

You’ve delivered this course a hundred times. But the truth? Every single time, you start from scratch. From a blank page.

That lesson followed me when I left the classroom and started working with professional developers. Each year, I got to know my classes and understood the things they knew already, the things they were interested, the ways to help this new knowledge build on what they already knew.

But with a 2-5 day training course, this work can’t start during the delivery it has to start well before.

Most training courses start with an email - from a client or a training partner:

• can you deliver an intro to python course?
• can you teach our team testing practices in TypeScript?
• Can you help our developers understand threading in Java?

While this request may have come from an outline course on my website or a training partners website, I still think we need to start from a blank page.

• Who’s in the room?
• What do they already know? Why is this training happening now?
• What’s the format—remote or in person?

Even with this little bit of context, you can take your blank page and, if it exists, the “off the shelf” course, and begin to write a bespoke outline. One that is tailored to the people are going to be in the room, meeting the spoken needs that they have.

Handing over that outline, normally 1-2 pages, can then be the basis of a planning call with the stakeholders. Ideally, the decision maker and at least one person who is going to be on the training.

That call is key - going deeper on who is going to be in the room and what the purpose of the training is. That call is gold. It tells you who’s really in the room, why they’re there, and what success looks like. Without it, you’re guessing—and you’ll waste half a day calibrating

As teachers and trainers, we’re not downloading concepts into brains Neo style - we’re providing ways into a network of knowledge, looking for the exposed nodes that already exist to connect to. We’re expanding our students existing knowledge, adding to concepts they have and expanding them.

And if like me, you’re working almost entirely with professional developers, you’re not the sole source of wisdom in the room. In learning about who is going to be there, you can find sources of knowledge, peer experts who can help to ground your knowledge in the context that this team is more likely to understand.

None of this is possible if you don’t start from a blank page. So the next time you’re asked to run a course, resist the urge to pull out your slides and notes. Start with a blank page. Because that’s where real teaching begins.