Video Transcription

My name is Dale Alexander, PhD, LMT, and my message to all who are watching right now, your success in this field is related specifically to your competence, and competence is usually developed overtime and through continuing education.

It is what I’ve devoted my life to do, is to assist people to understand how the body really works.

(Cherie Sohnen-Moe): I am the president of the Alliance for Massage Therapy Education. The Alliance is an organization dedicated to raising the standards of education.

Our main focus has been teacher standards, and as a massage therapist, I think it’s really important to might not necessarily be thinking about, “Well, I’m not a teacher. I don’t want to be a teacher,” but our organization is really working hard to help create kind of an environment as well as a structure to have better teachers.

And when teachers are better educated, you get a better education as a therapist which helps you be more successful in your work. It’s a great organization. I encourage you to go online, check us out, see what we’re doing.

We do a lot of advocacy. We’ve created the core standards.

The National Teacher Education Standards Project is our big project we’ve done. We are now working on our next phase of that project which is actually to create a teacher certification.

So, to acknowledge all those great teachers that are already out there and to also kind of set the bar and say, “Well, you’re thinking about being a massage therapy instructor. Here are some things you need to know in addition to your content knowledge.” So, I think it’s exciting.

I also encourage you to think about becoming an educator. Most of us who are in this field as teachers or therapists, we have a passion for the work, we have a passion for each other, and I think we need to carry that legacy forward.

Again, go to afmte.org. Check us out.

Hello, my name is Jane Irving, and I’m a continuing education provider.

Continuing education is extremely important to new graduates. When you graduate from massage school, you’ll leave school with a toolbox of skills. However, depending on the modalities you would like to practice, continuing education is a big part of filling that toolbox with additional skills.

Whether you want to offer hot stone, or prenatal, deep tissue, trigger point massage, or if you want to go into the spa industry, it’s important that you have the continuing education to support that skillset.

Hello, this is Ralph Stephens. I’m with the Alliance for Massage Therapy Education Congress in Tucson, Arizona 2017.

I just want to encourage everybody out there to realize that education is an ongoing lifetime project.

There’s always more to learn, and the more you learn, the better you get, and the more you can help people.the more you help people, the better you do yourself. So, I really encourage you to continue your education and learn better ways to help more people and to support the Alliance for Massage Therapy Education because they’re the people that bring you the best education in our profession. Thank you so much.