When it's ok to be a Goober!

I've learned that a little fun can make a monotonous task go a lot quicker in the fire service. I believe that one of the reasons why I've excelled so far is because I'm not afraid to make fun of the "Pink Elephant" in the room and still work at getting a task done. If you take everything seriously and do everything by the book you will get burnt out fast; and on the flip side, if you take everything to lightly someone will get hurt.
So how do you find the fine line, the happy medium so to speak?
I keep playing an old country song in my head every time I think about it... (which is really weird and delightfully interesting at the same time) "You've got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, and know when to run." The meaning behind this is simple... you just have to "know" where the line is, and try not to cross it.

Hold true to your values, and always be able to stand behind why you did something the way you did it. (Here is a picture from a Drill I taught at my firehouse one muggy summer evening last year, sorry if the pics are kind of blurry).




The drill was called "Who's your buddy" the object was to teach the members how to hook up to the buddy breathing port on our SCBA. I first went over the packs basic functions as a refresher, then I went through the hook up process and had everyone try it while it was on the table to get a feel for it and to refresh their memories. Then we all donned our turnout gear, put on our packs. To make things a little more "fun" I decided to hook all of us up to ONE bottle; then we walked around the neighborhood as a "unit" to see how long it took all 5 of us to go through one bottle. Once that bottle was finished, we came back into the firehouse and I taught each of them some breathing techniques which would allow them to conserve more air; we then switched to another bottle and did another "walk about" to give everyone a chance to work on their new breathing technique (as a group we lasted twice as long as we did on the first bottle). It was a great success and I've been asked to repeat the drill again this year.


So I challenge each and everyone of you out there to think outside the proverbial box and explore new teaching techniques and always remember that "my teaching techniques may be different and un-orthodox, but the information is still the same." If you have a drill, or an interesting way you teach a certain topic in the fire service I would love to hear about it, and I'm sure my other readers would too so please share!

I will leave you with a photo, this photo is just one of our crazy good times, but it really sums up the fun we have on a weekly basis. (This photo was taken during the flood of 2006, my Lieutenant and I were trying to pass the time while waiting for a basement to pump out and this shows exactly how much fun we had!)