Staff Trainings and Extracurricular Activities

For reals staff trainings and exercises:

I've found over the course of my employment in the special needs community that there are a few kinds of officially-official staff trainings.  There are, of course, the state mandated ones- CPR, DCFS, medication distribution training, ect.  Accompanied with these are the organizationally mandated ones- NVCI/CPI, Population Training, professionalism...  While it is a hassle to take the courses, especially at the rate at which we are told to retake, and keep these classes current, I don't know too many people who really disagree that most of these trainings are necessary.

Then there's the 'TV is my babysitter' training.  Organizations usually include these 'trainings' on days when the administrators are otherwise occupied doing negligibly more important meetings, but don't want us to get used to the idea of going home early while we're being paid.  I don't know how many movies the 80s produced on the topic of special needs awareness, but I DO know the percentage.  100%.  As in all of them.  It's always got that technicolored roughness, despite being recently remastered for DVD re-release.  The sound quality is a little off.  And the message is simple:  "You don't know anything about people with special needs?  Here's a story of a person going through the labors of dealing with special needs."
  They are movies that primarily appeal as documentaries to people who have never actually co-existed with this population and basically tell them what our job is, roughly (and in a candy-coated package), to do.  If it were to be able to train a staff on anything, it would be basic empathy- a skill that without, no paraprofessional would have any amount of success.  Basically it is an effective time-waster which literally qualifies as being involved with our line of work, and by the end of the movie you really just feel like your bosses don't trust you to use the teacher scissors.

My favorite trainings I ever had, though, were the ones which expanded my perception on what the current special needs community has to offer.  It was my first non-seasonal job placement where I worked with transitions-age students who have special needs, and really helped me appreciate the field at large.  We went to visit different adult day programs, and see where our students who graduated would potentially end up.
  We only really had a chance to visit the programs in our immediate area, but the programs that we got to visit really opened my eyes to things that I really only got to hear about from down the grapevine.  Places like Arts of Life (a program in which I am an unrepentant fanboy, by the by) which specialize in a specific interest area of participants, and really get it done right.  Places which existed in the area for decades, from back when it was considered kinder to the child with a developmental disability to remove them from their family, and place them into state care.  Places in cutting-edge buildings, newly built out of funds from cleverly worded grants.
  The only thing that would have made these trainings cooler, was if we also got to spend some time appreciating the places where our participants came from.  I mean, when you're in a single age group for a long time, people start talking about rumors of what the guys in high school, junior high, and grade school coulda/shoulda done.  The general consent becomes that they weren't really trying hard enough, and that the classroom we were working in was that much more stellar for being able to overcome those challenges.  Which, honestly, couldn't have been further from the truth, though it took until I became a substitute teacher in that same school system to fully appreciate the wealth of caring, hard-working individuals that I didn't know I had been working aside all along.

Those are the types of trainings that I've had, which I was paid to participate in.  At least, they WERE, until I landed in my current organization.

Extracurricular Activities:

You see, where I work now has this cultural anomaly.  On Wednesdays, after the students leave, but during our paid planning time, all the menfolk get together and guilt-trip one another who try and ditch out.  They file into the gym, and put on exercise clothes.  And what do we do?  We play basketball, of course.

Now, let me preface this a little bit.  I never really played basketball growing up, but it should not be any surprise that, like everything, I have a natural gift at playing ball.  Especially shooting.  I felt that I was so good at making mad dunks and shooting three-pointers that I decided that it was unfair to my coworkers to have to compete with me.  I gave myself a proper handicap, and now only shoot the ball by wildly flailing my arms in the air, and letting the ball go wherever.  As for defensive skill, I have been complimented so many times for how good I am at it, that I felt that it was necessary to let you all in on my secret.  At one point, someone told me that a good defensive person "sticks onto their opponent like white on rice".  If there's anything I know how to be, guys, it's white.

You may be wondering, "Hey Barry, what does any of this have to do with special needs, or staff training?"  First off, we play alongside people who are in the residential part, which really is quite amazing, actually.  These guys know how to play, and because of that, the staff members hold nothing back.
  Which actually brings me to the part which makes this activity particularly interesting to me.  The staff members play their all, and go running back and forth across the court.  Games are short, but intense.  Teams are evenly matched, and push each of us to give our all.  In a field where on a rough day, you could be called to be exceptionally fit, this is exactly the kind of thing that more programs should be doing.  The most active members hired face off against the rest of the group, and for the less active members to keep relevant in the game, they have to push themselves harder to keep up.  In the end, the it's sort of a reverse of the 'weakest link of the chain' parable.  You've got this one guy, who is in better shape than anyone there, and the guy facing off him, who is only slightly less in shape.  As people keep trying to play amongst them, those fit guys drag the rest of the team, kicking and screaming, into cardiovascular health.
  While I feel badly for the guys trying to keep up with me, it really makes the team stronger if they end up shooting for the stars.

My only regret about this tradition is that the girls don't join in.  I mean, sure, it's fun when one of the young ladies wanders into the gym to go do some small errand and covertly check out the game.  But in my vision of what these sorts of extracurricular activities could be to the special needs community, it limits the team to not have the ladies pushing themselves alongside us.  Plus, growing up with the whole 'women are equal' thing, it's sort of weird for me to see an actual gender divide presented to me.  Yet, no one seems to complain about how the game is set up- it seems only to serve as an amusement to the ladies that the guys get together to do these sorts of things, rather than some sort of "boys only club", but I only get to see from my perspective.

Regardless...

The interesting thing about this basketball game, is that before I knew that programs had this sort of thing, I had been trying by myself to make this sort of thing happen in other programs.  There's a lot to be gained from the community of people who have fun together, and keep in shape together.  Better working relationships, better team-working skills...
  And when you apply that mentality to other types of extracurricular activity, it really opens the door for other non-conventional staff trainings.  Lots of people pulling muscles, getting sick, getting stressed?  Try including a cheap-to-free yoga course before or after school one or more days of the week.  Want to help get your staff into a mentality which is quick thinking, and empathetic?  Screw the 80s movies, and pony up for a Improv Comedy class.  In each of these, you're building a better paraprofessional, a better community, reducing stress, and increasing morale.  Maybe they cost a little more than traditional trainings, but they don't have to.  When you're hiring, look for people who are able to do these sorts of extracurricular activities, hire them, and then offer them a stipend to do a couple things at your different buildings a few times a week.
  Or hell, just start looking around in your current hire pool.  How many paraprofessionals have a cool talent or trained skill that they don't even think of bringing into work on a daily basis?  How many other paraprofessionals might appreciate a class in auto-repair, computer repair, cooking, cleaning, accounting, paranormal forensics...?  And what if you have a whole team of people who know how to repair cars, play basketball, and teach trigonometry?  Well maybe you'll be able to supply the first program in Illinois that teaches participants math, while they do trick shots off of junked cars.  That'll look really spiffy in the next issue of Special Parent.