Editorial

While this post is in reference to an incident that occurred at a conference presentation, the rules for educators apply to any kind of education including in-house, open-to-the-public, formal academic or informal pick-up drill. If you teach, read on...

 Honor Your History, but Teach for the Future Welcome to the new year. If we’ve learned anything over the past year then we’re smarter than a year ago and way ahead of where we were ten years ago. Let’s start teaching like it. First We Taught Book Knowledge. Then We Taught Street Knowledge. We’re Beyond That Now.

The chief emphasized that he didn't mean that all of his people were acting like children, although the look in his eye implied that maybe some were. I wasn't suggesting anything about the maturity of his people, but rather that parents don't stop being parents when their children grow up. In fact, this is exactly what I meant by helping agency leaders acting like parents rather than substitute teachers.

The biggest problem… With today’s social media use policies are the gigantic swaths of “gray area” that shroud some issues. Not only do statutes and regulations vary tremendously from state to state and workplace to workplace, but as social media case law develops it can be difficult to determine how key phrases such as “free speech”, “privacy protection”, and “on-the-job” ...

Everyone has their own way to write an article. Everyone has their own voice and individual style, and a way of adapting that style depending on what they want to write. In this article, I’m not going to speak to finding your voice or style , but I am going to share with you the method I use to craft ...

Effective communication is a challenge that we face in every facet of emergency response. One of the most difficult challenges encountered by new educators and leaders looking to move “from buddy to boss” is building credibility and personal authority. Many of us work hard at it every day of our career and get it right most of the time, but ...

You’re smart. Make sure your goals are too! Do you make effective goal setting a habit or a luxury? On an emergency call, in station, or in your personal life have you set goals for yourself or others that seemed so clear when you set out, but somehow fell apart when you actually started work? Setting and accomplishing goals is ...

So if you’re new educator, don’t try and steamroll over the senior people because they don’t already know all about student centered social mobile online whatchamacallit. And for senior educators and staff in police, fire, and EMS, please continue to bring your knowledge and experience into the classroom, even if you have to stretch a little to do it in new and unfamiliar ways.

While we speak of education at RescueDigest most times we’re talking about training and education in leadership or operational issues. Floating somewhere in on and around those issues though is the purely academic aspect of education.

Back at the station over a hot cup of coffee there will be plenty of time to bounce around ideas of woulda, shoulda, coulda. but on an emergency scene, while it’s okay to ask for help, make sure you do it the right way. Then make your decision, – one of my favorite captains would say “make it so!”