ABMP School Issues Forum

Session Descriptions

Session 1: Keynote Presentation with Jan Schwartz

Since 1988, Jan Schwartz has distinguished herself in education and training for the massage therapy profession. She is co-founder and president of Education and Training Solutions, a web-based elearning company that designs and hosts state-of-the-art online courses. Jan served as the Director of Education at the Desert Institute of the Healing Arts in Tucson, Arizona, and as an Executive Vice President of Education at Cortiva Institute. For five years, Jan served as a Commissioner for the Commission on Massage Therapy Accreditation (COMTA) and served as Chair for three years. In fact, she was the COMTA Chair when it was approved by the United States Department of Education and when it developed the first accepted competencies for the field of massage therapy. Jan shares her unique perspectives on massage education in our opening session.

Session 2: Recent Changes in the Higher Education Act

Description: The Higher Education Act (HEA) was signed into law in 1965 to strengthen US educational resources by providing financial assistance for students. It increased federal money given to universities, created scholarships, made low-interest loans available to students, and established a National Teachers Corps. Before each HEA reauthorization every three years, Congress amends programs, alters the language and policies of existing programs, and makes other adjustments in policy focus. Regulation changes that went into effect on July 1, 2011 are having a significant impact on accredited massage therapy training programs (57 percent of the massage school universe). All educators can benefit by better understanding the emphasis being placed on gainful employment, academic rigor, consumer protection, and student achievement at the state and federal levels. This session provides an overview of important regulatory changes and policy shifts. A panel discussion follows and focuses on a positive response to current regulation challenges to help us improve massage training.

Session 3: The Client Perspective—What It Can Teach Us About Massage School

Description: In 2011, ABMP School Liaison Cindy Williams interviewed everyday people during her travels to visit massage schools. Her questions focused on individual perceptions of massage therapy and first massage experiences. The interviews, captured on video, bring the client perspective to life and remind us that we play a role in how the public views massage. This session asks us to take a hard look at curriculum, community outreach programs, and other methods we might use to enhance consumer views of massage therapy and improve the marketplace for future generations of therapists.

Session 4 (Administrator Track): The Culture of Feedback at Your School

Description: Giving and receiving constructive feedback is essential to building self-awareness, learning, and growing as an individual. It is also essential for improving the operations at your school. How can schools create a culture of giving and receiving feedback in a way that is useful and constructive? What types of feedback tools can we use to identify areas of campus weakness and make positive change? This session explores how to give, receive, and use feedback in the classroom, in the faculty room, and in administrative offices.

Session 4 (Teacher Track): Building a Class from the Ground Up with Anne Williams 

Description: Your goal: help students meet course-learning outcomes effectively. How you get there is defined by your lesson plan. There are many different styles of lesson planning, but most contain similar elements based on what is known about promoting learning in adult education. This session looks at lesson-plan models, activities, and best practices to ensure instructional clarity, student motivation, and enhanced learning outcomes.

Session 5 (Administrator Track): Technology-Driven Marketing—Is There Any Other Kind? with Eric Brown
 
Description: The days of promoting your school with direct mail postcards, glossy brochures, and ads in local magazines or the Yellow Pages are over. Today, successful, cost-effective marketing is web-based and evolving quickly. This session with Eric Brown, cofounder of the World Massage Conference, explores easy and practical ways to attract prospective students using new web-based tools. Even those who are technically challenged can jump on the electronic bandwagon with the tips shared in this workshop.

Session 5 (Teacher Track): Textbooks: Doorstops or Useful Classroom Tools?  with Jan Schwartz

Description: The good news: the copier in the teachers’ room can take a break from making massage handouts because massage textbooks have never been better. The bad news: choosing, adopting, and integrating textbooks with massage school curriculum can be time-consuming. Furthermore, your textbooks might not cover everything in your curriculum, or worse, your students might not know how to use them effectively as learning tools. This session covers practical methods to choose, integrate, and get the most from textbook and textbook ancillaries so that students (and teachers) stop using them as doorstops.

Session 6 (Administrator Track): In-House Loans—Should We or Shouldn’t We?

Description: Most students have difficulty paying massage school tuition. In the past, schools could elect to obtain accreditation and secure federal funding for student tuition. Today, new education requirements and reduced federal aid make it difficult to fund student education. Some schools are opting to create in-house loan programs to fund student tuition, but are the risks too high? This session takes a hard look at in-house loans and illuminates the pros, cons, risks, and rewards of helping students pay for tuition without looking to outside sources.

Session 6 (Teacher Track): Right-Brain Teaching for Creative Classrooms with Anne Williams

Description: How can art, music, dance, improvisation, skits, and storytelling play a primary role in teaching the creative, expressive, dynamic, and mind-body-spirit aspects of massage? Art-based learning is the new hot topic in America’s business world because it generates breakthrough ideas, helps employees vision the future, unlocks creativity, and improves teamwork. This session looks at art-based activities that massage teachers can use immediately to increase student participation and teach important concepts in new and interesting ways.

Session 7: Is Your Website Good Enough?

Description: Most of us have wish lists for improvements we’d like to see on our websites. A poorly constructed website can turn off visitors, make information difficult to locate, lower your ranking in search engines, and even decrease enrollment calls. Weak design, poorly structured navigation, slow load times, jumbled communication messages, or no calls to action can all affect your web success. This session looks at key concepts for ensuring your website is good enough.

Session 8: Massage Therapist Quality Control and Massage Curriculum: Inconsistent or Diverse? Strength or Weakness? 

Description: Most states have a wide range of massage training options. As a result, many massage industry professionals (including bloggers, CE providers, employers and state massage board members) have complained that the quality of massage graduates and the hands-on work they provide is dropping. For instance, School A’s curriculum is treatment-focused, costs $15,000, and lasts 1,000 hours. School B’s curriculum is relaxation-focused, costs $6,000, and lasts 500 hours. Graduates from both campuses enter the local marketplace. As a profession, do we view these differences as strengths or weaknesses? Do we embrace curriculum diversity or do we see the contrast in these programs as something that holds the profession back? How do we evaluate massage quality? What criterion defines a high-quality massage? If massage quality is dropping, what can we do at the school level to improve it? Facilitated by Jan Schwartz, a panel tackles these tough questions with plenty of time for input from attendees.