Have you ever noticed that new things are happening all the time on The Family History Guide?  Do you sometimes have a difficult time keeping up with all the wonderfully innovative and inspired additions?  The Homepage is the gateway to everything that is available on The Family History Guide.  Click on everything! Look under the Misc dropdown on the Homepage of the Family History Guide,  Open Misc and choose the second option What’s New. There you can find the latest changes and developments, month by month. I find this very helpful when catching up, as life’s circumstances vary almost daily.  I really want to know what I missed during those times.  Other places to look for the changes and developments are in the Blog Archive, Topics, Social Media (on the Homepage), the Site Map and the Search bar found under the Logo on the Homepage  That is where I found the Study Center right when I needed it.

Recently I have been thinking a lot about training some brand new consultants with The Family History Guide.  In our first meeting, we discussed where each individual’s start point is for training.  It was apparent that their knowledge and experiences vary greatly.  We have five youth, three of whom have no experience but are very eager to learn.  There are adults that have relied on the work done by others in previous generations. Some that have dabbled in their family history but had come to a spot where they didn’t know how to proceed.  There are others that know a lot more but have never taught anyone else.  This kind of group diversity makes teaching an ominous task for a trainer without the aid of The Family History Guide.   When I took a look at the Study Center I felt it was one way for trainees to look to get an overview of what they need to do to accomplish their own personal goals. Especially if they have some experience and want a study plan as they proceed. “The Study Center combines a step-by-step approach with high-level Goals to point you in the right directions for learning.”  See this blog post by Bob Taylor.

This is why I have such respect for the Family History Guide.  As we learn and then consultants are taught the same learning system, they can grow together as a class and a team to help each other with the people they will serve.  If one consultant is not available, another consultant can step right in and take over with a trainee, exactly where they left off with their previous trainer. The Family History Guide helps consultants step-by-step while learning and then teaching. Using the various components of The Family History Guide like The Projects (on the Homepage) and the Online Tracker (on the Homepage) and the Study Center. The Study Center is great for anyone that wants to have an overall plan to keep them on track to their destination. With these tools, we can guide people, one step at a time, until they have a unified way to teach others. We are then better equipped to teach family history “how to” principles.

The ‘how to” principles keep the trainer on point as well.  Without some structure, there can be a tendency to “firehose” a person with too much, too soon.  This is very overwhelming to the beginner. Although trainers are sincere in their effort to share what they know, without the structure The Family History Guide offers, we can lose our focus.  Often the trainer will sometimes revert to sharing too much about their own family tree.  The important thing for the trainee is to experience something about their own family, that sparks a real interest in continuing on with this wonderful journey.  Our responsibility as trainers, teachers, and consultants is to show and tell each person how to gain their own unique enthusiasm.  They need to know they can do this, and then also share how to do this with others.  I hope you will take a good look at the Study Center and see how it can help your diverse group of consultants.

I know of no other program or website that works as well as The Family History Guide for helping us get this work done.  All can learn, all can share and it will grow exponentially and fill the earth with family history goodness.   Thank you to the developers of this amazing tool. Find your path to success with The Family History Guide!