Training specialist at Center for Arts and Technology, 2003 to 2007

Three and a half years in fredericton

From September 2003 to January 2007 I held a Training Specialist role at the Center for Arts and Technology in Fredericton, New Brunswick, a creative-tech career college on the East Coast. Contract full-time, five courses on rotation, one institution, every cohort a fresh group of students working toward the next stage of their professional lives.

The courses spanned three different teaching disciplines:

• Creative tech: Photoshop and Video Production, both software-heavy, both about producing work the student could show.
• Business and career: Marketing and Career Management, different muscles, more conversation-driven, focused on what comes after the program ends.
• Web Technology: the foundations course on how the web actually works.

Three and a half years of teaching the same curriculum on a roughly six-month cycle teaches the teacher as much as the students. You watch what lands, what falls flat, what gets remembered eighteen months later when a former student emails to say a thing finally clicked. The current training practice grew out of those terms in Fredericton more than any other single source.