Everything Education

Massage Therapy Institutions are frequently faced with the challenge of first finding and then often having to prepare new faculty to teach a variety of different course subjects, including specialty massage techniques and modalities. And that’s usually not too easy. Given the rapid rate of expansion of more than thirteen hundred schools and growing, finding qualified instructors to satisfy the needs of these specialty programs across the country is arguably one of the most important issues facing institutions running massage therapy programs, as well as the profession itself. Teachers that provide students with their entry level training shape this profession by the quality and outcome of the product they put out, their students.

Attracting and holding on to qualified faculty has become difficult for educational institutions especially because as we all know qualified practitioners can make a lot more in private professional practice than what they receive for instructing in massage therapy classes. Add in the required or necessary hours of preparation faculty must do for each course assigned (most school’s faculties are comprised primarily of part-timers who usually do not get paid for this) and it’s not difficult to see why massage therapy schools and programs are having a hard time building a qualified team of instructors.

As a result of this paucity of quality instructors and almost by default, many schools fill teaching positions with recent graduates who need and want work and want to maintain a good relationship with their Alma Mata. The problem is they usually are not qualified to teach. Sometimes schools may be truly lucky to find among their recent graduates the winning combination and when that’s the case it’s certainly worth the effort on the part of the administration to put in the time and money to cultivate and hold onto those individuals.

To make things even more complicated the growth in massage programs in career and community colleges have thrown a new difficulty into the mix. Faculty teaching in these programs must have an academic degree (not necessarily in massage therapy) and the requisite qualifications in massage. So then the search begins — finding massage therapists who are willing to and can teach and who also hold an academic degree to meet the requirements when teaching in a college degree program. Therefore a degree granting institution that actually does find a qualified instructor without the requisite traditional academic degree must pass.

Relying on academic degrees as a good indicator of teaching ability is about as equal to relying on a license in massage therapy as a good indicator of a massage practitioner’s ability to teach. So if academic degrees aren’t an indication of what qualifies someone to teach in a massage therapy program and being a licensed massage therapist isn’t either, then what is it that academic deans and directors who hire faculty should be looking for before they plop someone down in the front of a classroom?

In spite of the fact that there exists an enormous amount of literature and research on how to teach effectively, there is no complete list of “do’s and don’ts” that, if followed, result in quality teaching. Generally speaking effective teaching cannot be separated from the teacher him or herself. A faculty member’s personality, preferences, prejudices and overall self awareness will have an enormous influence on student success.

Hippocrates, the Father of Modern Medicine is credited with saying “The physician must be experienced in many things, but most assuredly in rubbing.” Well suffice it to say that an instructor of massage therapy most assuredly needs to be well versed in the knowledge, skills and abilities of rubbing – or massage. But being an expert in the subject does not automatically make someone a good teacher.

Discussion: Let’s hear from you, from your experiences either as a faculty member/instructor in a massage therapy school or as a graduate or student who has had the experience of learning from many different types of instructors — both good and bad. Indicate, comment, complain but also try to provide some good examples of your favorite teachers – (names not necessary) and what attributes they had that to this day make them stand out in your mind as high quality teachers.