Bill Strickland Video

I finally had a chance to view the Bill Strickland video on Ted.com. 

I my opinion Bill Strickland is an inspiration to us working in Adult Education   He provides me with a real life example of what is possible when you believe in a cause, have passion, and are willing to involve a city in making a great facility for adult learning.

I took away three main themes from the video.

1)  Change the way people see themselves before you change their behavior.
2)  The importance of forming partnerships.
3)  Act on your dreams in case they do come true.

The facility that Bill Strickland founded in Pennsylvania is leading edge and I hope that corporate and government leaders see this as well.  Often times in our community when working with people with disadvantaged backgrounds the facilities that we work with are also often disadvantaged.  

Needs Assessment

I just read the section on individual needs
assessments. 

In the organization I work for it is my opinion that we do a
poor job of assessing learner needs prior to developing a training
program. 

The need for training programs is typically identified
through an organizational need.  Dollars
are assigned for training when an organizational need is identified.  The training program is developed and then
individual needs are assessed and training materials are adjusted accordingly.

I think that we are doing a poor job by not spending more time
assessing individual  learner needs prior
to spending dollars on developing training programs.