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Alliance Launches Career Center and Online Training Portals

The Alliance for Massage Therapy Education announces the launch of two new programs that will provide important benefits and services to the education community:

The Alliance Career Center is an online recruitment resource for massage therapy schools that are seeking to hire new administrative staff or faculty members. In contrast to broad-spectrum employment websites, the Career Center will feature listings targeted specifically to the massage education sector. All those who are seeking teaching and administrative positions at a massage therapy school can post their resumés to the Alliance Career Center FREE of CHARGE. All massage therapy schools are invited to place their recruitment ads on the site.

This valuable service has been developed in partnership with Boxwood Technology, a leading provider of recruitment solutions for associations. The Career Center is based on the Alliance website and may be accessed at http://www.afmte.org/career-center.

The cost for a posting a 30-day job listing is significantly less than the major national boards. And Alliance Gold Level school members get a $100 discount off the regular price of each job listing. Until July 1, massage schools that become Gold Level members will get special introductory pricing on their first job listing on the Career Center.

The Alliance Online Training Center is a comprehensive resource to meet the ongoing professional development needs of the massage education community. The Training Center features more than 90 different courses in 10 subject areas – designed to enhance the knowledge and skills of massage school teachers, administrators and program directors, and continuing education providers. These highly effective learning experiences are facilitated by experts in each subject, and include the ability to interact with faculty who are available to coach the learning process and answer questions. The online delivery of these courses makes the process both affordable and convenient for busy professionals.

This service is now on the Alliance website at http://www.afmte.org/online-training-center, and has been developed in partnership with MaxKnowledge, a leading provider of professional development for the career education sector. Access to courses is via Enrollment Key, and is available to the entire massage education community. Alliance Gold Level Members receive a $20 discount on every course, and their first full course is FREE. Both Alliance members and non-members alike may register on the Training Center to get FREE access to more than 20 tutorials and invitations to ongoing webinars.

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About the Alliance:

The Alliance for Massage Therapy Education is the voice, advocate and resource for the community of massage therapy schools and educators. It serves the entire education sector – from entry-level training programs through post-graduate studies. The National Headquarters of the Alliance is located at 1760 Old Meadow Road, Suite 500, McLean, Virginia 22102. The phone number is 703-506-2888, the general office email address is admin@afmte.org, and the website is http://www.afmte.org.

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Permalink Reply by Pete Whitridge on May 19, 2011 at 7:57pm

Thanks for posing this here Rick, I've signed up for a CE class that will show education in school administration and recruitment. P>

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Permalink Reply by Vlad on June 6, 2011 at 9:50am

Hi Rick,

Thanks for letting us know about these. I'm not a teacher, but transparency on what is going on in the main organizations in our profession is a good thing since it effects all of us.

I know the plans for the AFMTE are stretching years into the future, but I had a few questions about the plans (that may not be answerable yet).

- Since the education standards and the standards of teachers are widely varied and it doesn't look like the forcing of teachers to get better credentials will be *forced*, will there be some way for the consumers of classes to be able to identify those teachers that have gone through the program? I don't put great stock in letters after people's names, but if there is some indicator that at least a teacher has taken the initiative to be a better teacher, it says something about them. Also, if this is the case, will there be different levels of this? e.g. base teacher program, advanced methods in teaching program etc.

- Will you have some way to get feedback from students on issues with education? Since it's been formed by educators for educators (and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that - it's a great initiative), sometimes there can be a blind spot or two. I'm not talking about "My teacher was crap" type of feedback, but I'm referring to more of a general feedback. For example, a significant number of educators could improve their own critical thinking skills and maybe the amfte could have a course *just* on critical thinking "what it is, examples of flaws in interpretation etc"? I know it's risky to open floodgates like that, but I'll throw the question out anyway.

- Just as the NCB has a requirement for ethics for their members, ethics in teaching is another ball game. Would there be a course just on that alone that is specific for the massage world?

Anyway, just throwing these out there. I'm surprised that there hasn't been more activity on this thread, but maybe there has been a lot of discussion about the launch of the training center elsewhere online.

Cheers.

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Permalink Reply by Rick Rosen on June 6, 2011 at 12:05pm

Vlad,

Thanks for these questions. As you noted, the Alliance for Massage Therapy Education is early into a process to create and implement teacher education standards. This effort will take a number of years; we're just at Phase 1, which is the development of the Core Competencies for Massage Teachers. As a field, we must acknowledge our status quo: that the overwhelming majority of instructors in massage schools and continuing education providers have NOT received formal training in the theory and methodology of teaching.

How we will get from here -- to a future scenario where all massage school instructors and CE providers have received teacher training and are competent in the fundamentals of teaching -- is the big question that the Alliance is addressing. The Alliance is not now, and will not become an enforcement authority. Any requirements that are established for teacher training that apply to massage schools would have to come from national accrediting commissions and state education licensing agencies.

Teacher training standards that could influence the post-graduate level would have to be incorporated into the approval processes that exist for CE providers. The current system consists of a national provider approval program administered by NCBTMB, plus 8-10 individual processes run by various state boards. The Alliance is partnering with FSMTB in an effort to create a new single-source approval program, but work on that has not yet commenced.

How and where teacher training will be made available is part of the Alliance's National Teacher Education Standards Project. Our launch of the Online Training Center on the Alliance website provides convenient access to professional development resources for teachers and administrators. There will need to be a broad range of solutions and options to fit the diverse training needs of educators in our field.

I encourage you and others to come to our upcoming 2011 Annual Conference in Charleston, South Carolina on August 18-20. The theme for this meeting is "Bringing Teaching to the Next Level", and the educators who attend will have ample opportunity to offer input that the Alliance will utilize as we move forward with these important efforts.