Massage Educator Newsletter 2025 Issue 3

Streamline Human Resource Responsibilities
Hiring, onboarding, and staff support are critical parts of leading an educational program, but they also come with recurring administrative tasks. GenAI can assist with job postings, onboarding materials, and even performance reviews.

For example, GenAI can revise existing job descriptions to be more student-centered or inclusive, write strengths-based review comments for staff, or suggest professional development goals aligned with a team member’s interests. It can also help format or draft onboarding checklists, welcome letters, or internal memos to keep things moving smoothly when new staff join your team.

Use GenAI to Support Academic Planning
Massage educators are expert practitioners, but not everyone has formal training in curriculum design. Whether you’re revising an old lesson plan or building a new course from scratch, GenAI can offer inspiration, structure, and formatting support.

Need a lesson plan that aligns with a specific competency? GenAI can generate a draft outline you can then refine and adapt. Working on a practical exam? These tools can offer scenarios and evaluation criteria to start your thinking. They’re especially helpful when time is tight, or when you’re facing a bit of curriculum writer’s block.

Even small tasks, like drafting email reminders or building rubrics, can take a surprising amount of time. GenAI won’t do the teaching for you, but it can reduce the time that academic planning and content development require.

Get Behind-the-Scenes Support 
Beyond teaching, school leaders are often responsible for a wide range of operational and administrative work. From faculty meetings to policy creation, the to-do list is long. This is another area where GenAI can assist. Whether it’s helping you brainstorm clinic rotations, draft respectful communication guidelines for student clinicians, or outline a faculty meeting agenda, these tools can provide a structured starting point for your work.

Of course, GenAI outputs should always be reviewed for accuracy, professionalism, and alignment with regulatory requirements. But the time savings comes from starting with a draft rather than a blank page and from shifting your role from content creator to thoughtful editor.

Final Thoughts: Using GenAI Wisely
Generative AI is not a magic fix or a one-size-fits-all solution, but it is a powerful support tool. Whether you’re hiring, planning lessons, managing the clinic, or communicating with students, GenAI can help reduce the mental load and give you back time and energy.

Used thoughtfully, GenAI can support the dreaming, drudgery, and designing that are part of program leadership and teaching.² It allows you to think bigger, move faster, and communicate more clearly—especially when you’re juggling competing priorities.

In the end, it’s not about doing less. It’s about making space to do more of what matters: connecting with students, leading your team, and shaping meaningful learning experiences.

Try some of these prompts to explore how GenAI might help you:
“Revise this job posting to highlight inclusive practices and student-centered teaching.”
“Create a lesson plan for a two-hour class on the ethical considerations of touch in massage therapy.”
“Draft a grading rubric for assessing student technique during a Swedish massage practical exam.”
“Outline a weekly clinic schedule for 12 students and two supervisors that maximizes client diversity.”
“Write a respectful communication guideline for students working with the public in the massage clinic.”

Notes
1. Stanford Teaching Commons, “Exploring Pedagogical Uses of AI Chatbots,” Stanford University (2023), https://teachingcommons.stanford.edu/teaching-guides/artificial-intelligence-teaching-guide/exploring-pedagogical-uses-ai-chatbots 
2. Stanford Teaching Commons, “Exploring Pedagogical Uses of AI Chatbots,” Stanford University.

Amanda Baskwill, PhD, was a presenter at the 2025 ABMP School Forum in Denver.
 

Encourage Self-Awareness and Professionalism
My introduction to teaching was daunting. Within my third month as a teaching assistant, the anatomy teacher quit. My campus director brought me out of one classroom and informed me I would be teaching in another. She handed me an anatomy textbook and said “good luck, kid” as she walked me into a room of 50 adults awaiting their lesson. Admittedly, this was not my finest teaching performance.  

The experience, however, did not curtail me from pursuing a teaching career. As the years progressed, I began honing my crafts, as both a massage therapist and teaching assistant. I recognized the areas of growth I would need to become an instructor. Awareness of myself was my first major lesson. I learned I needed to embody the attributes of a successful massage therapist. Being an example of success in the field would be an asset in the classroom.

As I continued to mature as a massage therapist, I learned how to embody hallmark traits of massage including exemplifying honesty, awareness, and compassion. I practiced interacting with students as a teaching assistant in the same manner as I would converse with my massage clientele. Employing active listening, using reflective language, and asking open-ended questions allowed me to interact with students in a respectful, positive manner. When training new instructors, especially those you pull from your recent graduate pool, it is wise to recognize there are attributes that can make a successful massage therapist also be a successful instructor.

Offer True Training
Ensure you’re providing new instructors with an actual training program. I have seen some new instructors simply be told to meet with an established veteran instructor “whenever you can to review course content.” This approach rarely succeeds and places undue pressure on the veteran instructor who already has a full load. This veteran most likely will not have the time or energy to devote the level of attention required for an impactful training process. I advise either having the director of education conduct the training or schedule a formal training session with appropriate trainers that is planned and set well ahead of the new hire’s start date.

Dial In Student Communication
A new hire’s training needs to entail aspects of communication with students of all types. An entry-level classroom is a microcosm of society in many ways, with people from all walks of life and backgrounds present. Role-playing scenarios can be a wonderful training tactic to prepare for expected and unexpected student encounters.  

When I began teaching, I was told that my job in the classroom was “50 percent managing course content, 50 percent managing people.” I understood it was my responsibility to ensure I comprehend course content, and I appreciated my education director providing me with a lighter schedule in my first quarter of teaching to ensure sufficient time preparing content.  

Managing people was the more difficult aspect for me. Some situations to prepare new teachers for include:

• The uninspired student who insists they do not want to complete homework because there is no value in the assignments.
• The exceptional student who is frustrated the class is moving at a slower pace than they desire.
• The challenging student acting out behaviorally, not following classroom policies, and blatantly disrespecting the teacher and fellow students.
• The dishonest student who lies about classroom actions.
• The cohort which consistently talks during lectures and will not stop talking no matter how much requesting or admonishing is done by the instructor.

These students can challenge a teacher to a breaking point, resulting in teachers losing their passion for teaching and “their cool” in the classroom.

Preparing new teachers with a well-planned training plan ahead of time (rather than baptism by fire) and helping them work through communication skills will yield more successful entry-level massage instructors in your classrooms.

Pro Tip: All ABMP Premier School members have access to Cornerstones: The ABMP Instructor Development Program. This 25-hour online teacher training program covers everything from handling difficult classroom behaviors to building lesson plans to getting the most learning out of your student clinic experience. Learn more at abmp.com/cornerstones.