Think back to your favorite teacher.
Maybe it was someone who could make a complicated idea suddenly seem simple. Maybe someone took the time to learn your name, noticed when you were struggling and found another way to explain the lesson. Maybe they told stories you can still remember years later.
Chances are what made that teacher memorable went well beyond how much they knew. It was how they taught.
Inside a classroom at NAR NXT in New Orleans this week, the National Association of REALTORS® is teaching many of those qualities and turning them into something instructors can learn, practice and carry into classrooms across the country.
Sixty-five instructors gathered Nov. 3 and 4 for the first open session of NAR Verified Instructor Training, with enough interest to fill two training cohorts at NAR NXT. The sessions mark the next step in a broader transformation of the association’s Center for REALTOR® Development building on a pilot launched in August and incorporating feedback from that first group.
At its heart is a deceptively simple idea: Great instructors should do more than deliver information. They should help people understand it, retain it and, most importantly, use it.
“We wanted to ensure that regardless of where a student takes the course, they are getting a consistent level of exposure to the material and are walking away with actionable items,” said Julie Swan, operations manager for education at NAR.
That distinction matters even more at a time when information itself is rarely difficult to find.
“Information is available. It’s at their fingertips,” Swan said. “What that AI tool or Google is unable to do is to give you real-world examples, how you can take that knowledge and apply it.”
The Verified Instructor program is part of NAR’s larger effort to enhance CRD, strengthen professionalism across the real estate industry and provide education and resources members can use to get to and execute their next transaction faster and with greater confidence.
From Presenter to Facilitator
In one of those classrooms, Zola Szerencses, a longtime real estate educator whose career includes sales, brokerage management, coaching and education, led instructors through two days of training.
He helped instructors explore adult-learning strategies aimed at improving understanding, retention and real-world applications. They practiced questioning techniques and storytelling and discussed classroom management, adapting instruction and handling the unexpected.
But one idea surfaced again and again: An instructor shouldn’t simply present information. An instructor should facilitate learning.
Szerencses told the class that means putting “the learner’s needs and wants before their own needs and wants.” The test isn’t simply whether somebody received the information, he said. It is whether they retained it and can act on it.
He modeled that approach in real time. At one point, Szerencses told participants he had altered his original teaching plan approximately 45 times the previous day. He had been scanning the room, reading body language, listening to feedback and noticing where engagement was slipping.
“Your body language was my loudest feedback,” he told the class.
Even the room itself became part of the lesson. Unable to rearrange tables because electrical cables were taped down, Szerencses talked participants through how he adapted his movement and instruction. Later, a planned group exercise was dropped because the conversation unfolding organically in the room was already accomplishing the same learning objective.
The lesson was happening even as instructors discussed the lesson: Read the room. Adjust. Keep the learner at the center.
Learning How People Learn
Much of the training focused on practical techniques instructors can take home.
Participants practiced using open-ended questions to invite participation, uncover misconceptions and push students to think more deeply. They talked about knowing when a personal story reinforces a lesson and when it becomes a detour. They explored how pace, voice and classroom presence affect attention.
The training itself has evolved through that same kind of listening.
Feedback from participants in the August pilot helped shape the November session. Among their recommendations were expanded post-course resources, more guidance on managing classroom dynamics and support for virtual and hybrid learning. Those elements are being incorporated into the program as it moves forward.
Feedback from the pilot also showed participants felt more confident facilitating adult learning after completing the course.
Perhaps appropriately for a room filled with instructors, the students regularly became teachers themselves during this NXT training. Discussions bounced from one side of the classroom to the other as educators shared techniques for virtual classes, continuing education, storytelling and keeping students engaged after lunch. Participants compared experiences from different states and different corners of real estate education.
Byron Underwood, a real estate educator for 26 years, said that exchange became one of the strengths of the training.
“It’s not just the presentation from the instructor in the front of the room,” he said. “It’s the quality of the participant in the room.”
Jordan Vaughn, who has practiced real estate for more than 25 years, saw something else in the approach: a willingness by the Center for REALTOR® Development to listen while it builds.
“They’re not just saying, ‘Here’s the process,’” he said. “They’re listening to say, ‘What’s the process? How does it need to look different for us?’”
Szerencses said that willingness to adapt is important as CRD works through a larger transformation of its education programs.
“I think it was very much needed,” he said. “Change is painful, and people don’t like change. However, change is [also] a fantastic thing because we are making it better.”
More Than an Instructor Program
Improving instructor quality is one of three connected pieces that are part of NAR’s effort to enhance CRD. The turnout in New Orleans offered an encouraging early sign. Interest in Verified Instructor Training was strong enough for CRD to offer two cohorts at NXT. While Szerencses led one classroom, longtime real estate educator Candace Cooke led the other after also helping teach the pilot program in August.
The association is also modernizing online and in-person course content to make it more practical, engaging and relevant to members’ business needs. Updated courses will rely less on reading pages of text and put greater emphasis on interactive scenarios, hands-on activities and practicing skills members can use in their businesses.
The first six modernized courses launch in December, covering pricing expertise, buyer representation, community insight, market readiness, business growth and the distinct real estate needs of clients 50 and older. They include familiar CRD programs such as the Pricing Strategy Advisor, PSA™; Accredited Buyer’s Representative, ABR®; At Home With Diversity, AHWD™; Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource, SFR®; and Seniors Real Estate Specialist®, SRES®.
Those courses were selected after extensive feedback from members, state and local associations, and instructors.
A third piece of the transformation is a new digital learning platform launching Dec. 1. It will serve as CRD’s home for the improved courses and give members one place to access their training. Member testing in September resulted in a 4.2 out of 5 rating in areas including ease of use, modern design and professionalism, while also identifying opportunities to improve access to materials, enrollment confirmations and next steps after course completion.
CRD is using that member feedback to make improvements before launch and plans to continue collecting feedback and using it to improve the program across all three initiatives in the future.
For Swan, though, the different pieces ultimately come together in the classroom. “The bottom line is more than just talking at the member, but talking with the member,” she said.
Over time, NAR plans to build a network of Verified Instructors that associations can turn to for quality education, helping create a more consistent experience for members regardless of where they learn. That could be particularly valuable for smaller associations that might not have the resources to independently recruit, evaluate and train instructors.
“Not everyone is able to travel,” Swan said. “We want to make sure that at that level, they’re able to access quality education.”
The Teachers Members Remember
For Szerencses, success ultimately comes down to what happens after someone leaves the classroom.
“My goal is I want you to walk out of here with more confidence, with at least three things which you can apply to your business starting from tonight,” he told the room. The real measure comes later, he said, when someone calls or texts to say: “I tried that. It worked.”
That’s what memorable teachers have always done; they don’t simply leave students with information. They leave them more confident in what they know and more capable of using it.
Soon, the 65 instructors gathered across the two cohorts in New Orleans will have the opportunity to do the same. After completing the training and assessment process, successful participants are expected to become NAR Verified Instructors within the next month. Then they’ll return to classrooms of their own.
Szerencses described education as his “true calling” because of the moment when he can “see that light bulb going on” in someone’s eyes. In New Orleans, he got to watch a room full of instructors experience a few of those moments themselves.
Soon, they’ll be the ones at the front of the room, looking for that light to come on in someone else.
