Teacher Assistant Training

How to Set Up Virtual Assistant Training

As you prepare to set up your VirtualAssistant Training, patience will be critical to your success. If you plan well, your virtual assistant training program should be able to meet your required needs.

Rather than face-to-face traditional training, the ability to communicate in the written word will determine how effective your virtual assistant training will be.

Remember YOU will be the key to having a successful training program. As the teacher in your program, your skills must be comprehensive and in depth. To be successful in your training you must have the ability to communicate concisely and effectively the skills you expect your virtual assistant to possess.

Next identify those skills the virtual assistant will need. All assistant training should include training in the areas of technology to be used. Once the skill sets are identified, the procedure for training the virtual assistant is the next step.

Remember, details and specifics will help you have a comprehensive training program tailored to your specific needs. When that is done you are ready to open up your virtual assistant training program to anyone.

Teacher assistants will provide instruction and other support for classroom teachers, which will allow a professional instructor to have more time to plan lessons and to teach. These educational professionals will help supervise students on field trips, the schoolyard, the cafeteria, and hallways, and they may record grades and prepare materials for a more experienced educational professional.

At the high school or middle school level, a teaching assistant will usually help a teacher prepare special projects or prepare equipment for a demonstration.

Besides helping to supervise and instruct a student, assistants will help grade papers, check homework, type, keep attendance records, and operate audiovisual equipment. The vast majority of teaching assistants will work in primary and secondary education, with some working in preschools and child care. The working conditions of these instructors will involve a fairly stressful environment with forty percent of these individuals working part time. Most teachers assistants will work 40 hours a week, and their work can be very rewarding, especially if one likes working with children.

In 2006, teaching aides had about 1.3 million jobs in America, with 75% working for public and private schools, and the remaining 25% being employed by childcare centers and religious groups. For the physicians assistant, or PA, this comes in the form of classroom, laboratory, and clinical requirements. PA requirements include graduation from an accredited educational program, passing a national licensing examination, and engaging in ongoing continuing education and recertification. Physician assistant training takes the form of classes and lab work at four-year colleges, medical schools, schools of allied health, or academic health centers. These facilities are usually affiliated with a medical school and some offer formal degree options in conjunction with their PA programs.

PA training classes cover the areas of medical ethics, physical diagnosis, clinical medicine, and clinical pharmacology. Students may have the same teacher for the laboratory or they may be placed into a lab course with students in other related programs.

There is also a supervised clinical component to physician assistant training, allowing students to learn by doing. The student may be placed with a doctor who is seeking a physicians assistant. Upon completion of the classroom and clinical components of PA training, the individual must take and pass a national certifying examination.

Physician assistant training does not end with passing the national certifying exam. Popular specialties include rural primary care, internal medicine, emergency medicine, pediatrics, and surgery.

Formal physician assistant training takes approximately two years but the learning spans the rest of the PA's lifetime.