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.
