We talked briefly about the trainers in Section 1.2 and now will expand on the importance of their qualifications here.

• Primarily, trainers should be certified instructors in CERT or whichever response curriculum you are using. In order to process certificates of completion for the students and adults taking the training, your trainers must be certified instructors. If you need help locating certified instructors, contact the Texas School Safety Center and we can put you in contact with some in your area.

• Second, they need to be well versed in the subject matter! This might seem like a given, but students are known for asking off-hand questions that might throw the entire training off course and the trainer needs to be able to get things back on track.

• Next, they should be high energy and enthusiastic. While most of the classroom training portions of the agenda take place in the morning and early afternoon, a few longer sections can drag if your trainer does not have the ability to draw in the audience and keep them engaged.

• Lastly, you need trainers who are flexible with the schedule. While we have an agenda to guide you, anyone who has worked in event planning or with young people knows that adjustments will always be needed – whether you need to bump a session back by 10 minutes because you can see that the students need a break or the exercise doesn’t take as long as you expected and you are ready to start 30 minutes early, find trainers who are flexible with times.

We recommend you develop a team of at least two trainers, preferably three. The agenda is structured to allow the sessions to flow into one another or straight into an activity, so having a team that can trade off seamlessly will make the camp run much more smoothly. This approach also allows the students to hear from more than one person and gives the trainers a little bit of a break throughout the day.