Courses, Simulations, and Education: "How Do We Teach Our Profession?"

 Author: Christopher Ayer, Corona De Tucson Fire Department

Training, mentoring, practice, education, knowledge—are they different or synonymous with the same outcome? Recently, I've taken a hiatus from writing due to a new baby and enrolled in school to further my career. Just a tad busy this off-season. During class, there's been a lot of rote memorization and constant attention to definitions to pass written tests. There isn't a person reading this who hasn’t been PowerPointed to death, reading each word off a 150-slide presentation, one slide at a time. We work in a dynamic and changing environment where situations constantly arise requiring people to be educated for their safety and the safety of others. But how do we develop a robust system to achieve that? How do we train new leaders to provide that?

Training—Training is one of the most critical parts of what we do. Cutting lines, setting up a Mark 3 pump, performing an incident within an incident—training is the hands-on portion that we all find enjoyable. It's the reason why we're wildland firefighters; desk jobs are not for us. This is an entire day in our S-130 class. But how do we make it better and more involved without actually putting fire on the ground? We don’t always have the environment to conduct a live fire exercise. Developing training takes time and imagination to build realistic scenarios that meet the needs and levels of those we are training. How do you balance training for a new seasonal firefighter along with a seven-year driver-operator who has seen it all before?

Practice—It's the customary, habitual, or expected procedure or way of doing something. This is the piece that often gets glossed over from training and education. It's the actual application of knowledge, training, and education to real-world action. Fire response simulations—this is where we make mistakes and try new things that we think could work well. The greatest gains for a team or individual come through the practice of what we have learned. I equate it to sports—the IA flagging fire is like the simplest dive play in football or pick and roll in basketball. Mastery comes from doing it so often that you can add "wrinkles" or change the play on the fly because everyone knows it so well. Mastery of our job has to come through proficiency gained through practice.

Education—Education is the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university. Classes are designed for us to leave with conceptual knowledge. It's an important component of what we do. Formal education has centralized our communication and built the system that we have today. A tender is a tender, and a tanker is a tanker. The classes are a critical point to keep the process moving forward, but they should not be a stand-alone source of education. We can't send people to class and think that's all they need to move on or that they know what they need to know. It's one piece of the larger puzzle.

Mentor/Mentoring—New hires and newer personnel are treated one of two ways: either they ask a billion questions and never really get an answer, or they are told to just keep quiet and watch. If we take the time to use this point in their career to set their trajectory by instilling useful pieces of information and explanation, it builds a culture and environment of education. If we are constantly giving out information, it acts as a catalyst for the mentor also in retaining and reconnecting to information. It also creates an environment where re-learning or requiring information is paramount, which will only aid all of us when we need it most.

Knowledge—Knowledge covers the entire gambit of all aspects. It is the gold standard that we are trying to get our personnel to reach. But it is not gained overnight or in a season but by tying all of their experiences, classes, conversations and trainings into a working rolodex to draw from. It is also not gained just by working your way through our courses. Individuals need to be drawing on supporting information from other opportunities for learning. The more you engulf yourself in our profession, the more you begin to tie each experience to the associated information, creating a spiderweb of how everything works together.

Back to the original question: are they all synonymous? I believe that each piece is nuanced. These different concepts must be built together to create well-skilled and capable wildland firefighters. The harder part is implementing this idea. Easier said than done, right? But with a changing workforce, this might be an easy win to show new personnel the culture that the wildfire community has developed.

Christopher Ayer is a Firefighter/ Paramedic/ Engine Boss Trainee/ Wildland Coordinator for Corona De Tucson Fire Department in Tucson, Arizona. The expressions and views are those of the author.