Certification Instructor

Verities

I've been toying with the idea of eventually becoming a certification instructor, to make some money on the side. Does anyone who is currently working or has worked as a cert instructor, have any advice for someone aspiring to do this type of work on the side? Is the extra pay worth it? Do you like or hate being an instructor and why?? I'm thinking of going to CompTIA route initially since they're clearly the largest cash cow, especially with the DoD 8570 wheeling and dealing...

Verities

Bump. Are there really no instructors around here?

wd40

I was an instructor 10 years ago, teaching MS Office and A+

I really liked it but the pay was not good so I moved.

2 Things about being a teacher in general:

1: either you know how to teach or you do not, and students can tell the difference.

2: as my old boss told me, to be able to teach
<" this ">
you need to know
<" .......... this .......... ">
Just knowing the course content is not enough, you need to know much more to be able to answer students questions that are somehow related to the core course content.

and one last thing, a good teacher likes students that ask questions more than quite students.

good luck.

jdancer

If you plan to teach in a degree granting institution (doesn't matter if it's public/private or non-profit/profit), it's all regulated by a higher education authority. In some states, they require you have a master's degree, in others just a bachelor's/associate's. I am currently a Cisco Network Academy instructor and my state requires it's instructors to have a master's degree. Of course, I teach other IT subjects.

It's really great to impart my experience to new IT entrants. I tell them the limit is themselves and take any IT opportunity they can, be it paid or volunteer. The important thing is to get your foot in the door.

stryder144

I work as an instructor. I enjoy it but I've been involved in occupational instructing, one way or another, for the last twenty plus years. Teaching gives me an opportunity to help others, which aligns with my life purpose. While I think that teaching can be learned, I do think that the ability to convey complex IT concepts in easy to understand ways can be a gift.

The biggest "issue" might be with the training material that you are given to use. Some materials are good, some less so. That is very dependent upon the company/institution you work for and how flexible they are with instructor modifications.

Verities

-I don't plan on being an instructor at a degree granting institution, more of 5 or 10 day boot camp types for CompTIA.

-I have about 4 years of IT experience and I work/have worked with all the technologies I'm certified in, so the conceptual knowledge and application knowledge is there.

Thanks everyone for your input, definitely some words of wisdom in here that I need to think on.