Why I Stopped Teaching Live Bench Test Courses

I used to work with candidates on their bench test skills through a live course. And I stopped, we don’t do it anymore. Instead, I work exclusively with candidates online.

I got candidates better results that way. I’m going to share that story with you. Please watch the video below:

When I was teaching live courses, I quickly realized that no matter how hard I tried,

There was not enough time!

Our courses were 5 days long. During the 5 days, we had to go through cavity preparations on lower molars, upper molars, upper premolars, lower premolars, and anteriors.

We also had to do full gold crowns, PFMs, and all-ceramic crowns on upper molars, lower molars, upper premolars, upper canines, lower canines, and upper central incisors.

We also had to do amalgam and composite restorations, both class Ii and class III

Think about it – 1.5 days for cavities, 1.5 days for crowns, 1 day for restorations, and 1 last day for working on what they wanted to was the schedule we used.

1.5 days for cavities for all those teeth though? And 1.5 days for all of those crowns? It was definitely a stretch.

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That’s a lot of stuff, and compromises had to be made. I did my best to teach each person as much as I could during that time, but at the end of the day, I wasn’t satisfied with what could be accomplished. And I had a small group of just 8 people.

Each student came at their own skill level, so the baseline starting point for the whole class was all over the place. And there were concepts that we had to walk through together. But nobody wants to sit and listen to lectures when they come to a bench test class, they want hands-on stuff. But to properly do the hands-on stuff, some lectures are necessary. But that takes away from precious time we didn’t have.

Do you know what we ended up doing? People watched our online course modules individually while working. The pre-recorded videos explained all of the concepts that needed to be addressed, nobody had to wait around for the rest of the group, nor were they rushed because of others. They were rushed because of time, yes, but at least not because of the rest of the group.

So they would watch the demo videos for whatever they were going to work on as they were working – something they could’ve totally done from their home.

Of course, I rotated through each person to answer any questions, evaluate their work, and give them pointers for improving. And they did improve during the time they were working with me. But at the end of the course, not everybody was at the level they needed to be to pass a bench test.

But my course was structured so that they continued working with me for several months online after the live course was over. And you know what I found?

Bigger improvements came later. After they had the time to really contemplate the mechanics of each preparation, internalize and assimilate what they have learned, and had the time to make it into their own.

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During a live course, there’s stress and tension. There’s a feeling that you want to learn as much as you can while you’re there. This is a good thing to an extent as it helps you focus to the max during the course, but it can also get in your way of doing deep thinking because it’s easy to focus on just receiving information from the teacher. Assimilating the knowledge you learned and turning it into your own skills takes time and patience. The time that the live course didn’t have.

After experiencing teaching both ways, for me, online teaching made much more sense.

If you wonder how long it takes to prepare for a bench test, you can find a video about that here.

There’s no limit to how much you can improve your skills, I still critique my own work after all these years, so making a short live course into an end-all-be-all is something I’d advise against. In Bench test Mastery, I work with candidates for a much longer time – memberships come with 6 months or 1-year of feedbacks, depending on the level you choose. This is intentionally longer than what most candidates need to give you ample time, I don’t want you to be short on time. I don’t want time to be a reason you couldn’t improve to the fullest.

So while every student improved during the course, there was so much more they could become that I couldn’t see through during the live course. For those that continued to work with me online after the live course transformed much further. And this is why I stopped teaching live bench test courses.

I hope I was able to give you some insight here, so you can choose what works best for you.

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