Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Timothy J. Gaffney, Jr. on October 25, 2010 at 4:15pm

I'm with you, brother. As an officer, I find it difficult to motivate the younger generation these days and sometimes the old-timers themselves. Best way is to try and spice up the drills and training to make it seem like "we've - never - done - it - like - this - before" kind of way. X-box games seem to be taking over training and becoming an distraction.

Permalink Reply by Damo on October 28, 2010 at 10:27am

In my dept we need to have a minimum of 8 training per quarter, that
seems to keep people somewhat honest. But, I think that number should be at least doubled,
especially in these days of CBT and online training. Then more time can be giving to OJT while at the
Firehouse. I know setting a hydrant or pulling hoses may get boring, but that is our bread and butter,
While having 8 hours of hazmat training and probably never seeing a call like that is a little wasteful.

Permalink Reply by Tom Williams on October 29, 2010 at 10:22am

Definitely a good question Chris. I've been an officer on a rural/suburban volunteer FD for a little over 6 six years now and since December of last year being an Asst. Chief. One of my main duties over the past 3+ years has been training. I'm in agreement with Timothy that finding ways to make the basic bread & butter training more "fun" or out of the box has seemed to work well for me over the past couple of years.

We were fortunate that the big part of our 2009 FEMA grant was for training. I put together a committe to assist in deciding what all we were going to purchase. A big portion of our grant money went towards CBT and 2 laptops. I'm anticipating putting this into our pragram starting next year. Our members are required to get 20 hours of "in-house" training each year and our board of officers has decided to limit the CBT hours that will count towards their in house requirement. I think the big challenge with the younger generation is figuring out ways to make our bread and butter tasks more interesting for them. In the same moment trying to figure out ways to get the more senior members to interract better with the younger ones. I've been trying to stress to all of our members that even though the hands on training will reach a point where it's not as much fun to do we have to continue to practice so that we can stay on our "A" game. That way when the situation happens we'll be able to go through the motions in a hopefully flawless manner.

I'll so agree that I get so frustrated at times with members who only show up on runs and not trainings but then I try to take a breath and look for another road of travel to bring them back with. Definitely finding good ideas and thoughts on here as I continue on this road as an officer. Good Luck with things & stay safe.