Page 26 - Top Cover Issue 4

TOP COVER +557'

team and even take a decision that will
affect many lives, all in a split second.
Only then did we fully realise the extent
of the responsibility and accountability of
the AFO instructors and the part we were
able to play in it.
Our second concern was “who will
these guys be?” but our stereotypes were
soon sent back to where they came
from. First off, they weren’t all guys and
the toughest nuts; best shots and best
drivers are not always the men. And
they certainly weren’t the ‘gorillas’ some
had jokingly warned us of. T ese ‘guys’
were perhaps the most perceptive and
quick thinking students we had ever had.
Learning points which were delivered
and learnt in the morning were applied
in the afternoon. Teaching session and
development feedback given on the
lesson was diligently implemented in the the start trainees are expected to critique,
next, something we don’t always see in analyse, contribute, discus – and this
other contexts. can be a challenge – especially if you’re
T ere were so many other memorable expecting (wrongly) to be lectured at.
moments such as the session on T e great thing for us though is that any
destruction of animals, which included ice is broken quickly, as groups form and
soft toys and blown up images of giraffes. effective teams develop.
T e dynamic entry procedures concerned Anyone in the force will recognise this
Sabrina greatly, particularly in finding though. If there’s one thing colleagues
out “who would be paying for the door know how to do, it’s bond quickly, build
then?” teams and work together but they also
Micro-teach sessions, designed as a know how to communicate, explain,
‘taster’ to teaching were also enlightening: demonstrate, check… all essential
the one focusing on how to give an teaching skills that not everyone can
injection, which nearly made Sabrina claim to do well. And so as we have
faint, and the car-wash technique, begun to get to know the AFO’s world, it
still very much applied to her own has started to affect us too.
car on a Sunday morning. One of In fact we have found ourselves using
Chris’s favourites was an introduction things we learnt with other trainees,
to submarine tactics using a real-life, starting with the jargon. Following a
homemade sub, ingeniously constructed collaborative teaching session we don’t
from a plastic bottle, an old bike inner ‘reflect’, we ‘debrief’. ‘Front-loading’
tube and a few nails as ballast. We all describes the way we give important
laughed when ‘HMS NFIC’ bubbled its information out up front so that trainees
way across a washing up bowl of water know what they doing; tracking critical
but we soon got the point: this was an incidents from ‘the smoking gun
object lesson in how to get technical backwards’ is a handy phrase to remind
points across without sinking the us all about the importance of training
audience. in the chain of events leading up to any
But where do trainees get all these sort of problem. We’ve not yet used
ideas from? T e fact is it takes a bit ‘methods of entry’, but when it becomes
of a leap of faith to really believe that necessary to break into a classroom,
what you have is worth sharing and can Chris is definitely better equipped
actually be the basis of good training. now than before. Amazingly, ‘shot-fall
One remarkable thing about NFIC is analysis’ has been a useful term to help an
the first few hours of day one. You can archery teacher develop self-assessment
sense the trepidation as 12 AFOs are techniques for his students: get your
forced in to what they expect to be a very learners to look at the target, and see the
uncomfortable place: academia. From links between the shot pattern and your