Take The Heat Off Complete

For the past three weeks I've been teaching de-escalation to firefighters. I talked a little bit about it in a previous post after we'd workshopped a presentation and done a run-through. 

Our head of training was approached by a firefighter that caught wind of the fact that we had a crisis intervention training, and wanted to know if we could develop a more targeted workshop for firefighters. I was asked to help with developing and facilitating the presentation, as I am one of the people that teaches the training that earned this request. Very important to point out here that what we came up with was an amalgamation of our general knowledge as it applies to firefighters. We did not use any material from our crisis intervention training.

We named it "Take The Heat Off" as a play on their role of putting out fires, and the goal of the training, which was to cool down fiery emotions.

I'm not going to go too in-depth about my experience for confidentiality reasons. There were sixteen sessions total, and I taught nine of them. The people tasked with developing and presenting the material were myself, another person that facilitates our crisis intervention training, and then the person who is head of training that received the request in the first place.

Our head of training did (almost) every session, while me and the other facilitator traded days. This was because I still have a day job and I can't just peace out for several weeks to train firefighters full time. To emphasize this point, the other facilitator is not only a crisis intervention trainer like myself, she also works at the same branch of our organization. That leaves my main gig stretched pretty thin for staff, so it was agreed that only one of us would be training at a time. Although I did sub in once when the main trainer couldn't be there, which is how I wound up teaching an extra session.

I'm sure we annoyed the other staff quite a bit with our absence, but the agency was pretty highly incentivized to make this happen.

It was cool to work with the head of training. She used to work at the branch that I work for now, and through absurd chance, I've never worked with her before. When I came on as a student, she went on maternity leave the day before I started. When I completed my placement, she came back the day after. When I came back as a paid employee, she left for this training position the day before I started! That last one isn't such a strange coincidence, I was hired because a position opened when she left.

I won't share the material we used, but in general, we explored biases and stigmas, we offered de-escalation techniques and resources, and we covered compassion fatigue. The demographics they work with most are the homeless population and people with addictions, which often overlap. This is pretty topical, as we've got those two tent cities that I've blogged about twice, and which I need to make another update on.

It was kinda peculiar that we were called in to do this, since our main demographic is disabilities, and while that can and does intersect with poverty and addictions, there are definitely agencies that address that more directly. Still, we used the knowledge and experience at our disposal to provide as much relevant information as possible.

The compassion fatigue piece was the most popular in general. We were initially barely going to touch it, as it's only tangentially related to de-escalation. But after doing the runthrough, it came up as something people wanted more of, and that proved to be consistently true.

The first four or so sessions, I came away with suggestions on how to tweak the presentation to be more relevant. I really wish I could redo my first day, because we ended a lot stronger than we began. A lot of it was just learning specific examples of what they go through, learning their lingo etc. Also, learning my co-facilitator, her stories and what she brings to the table. She said that whenever I'm co-facilitating, she tried to fill the void of the other facilitator, and when I wasn't there, she tried to use my style. She said she thought of me as the "science one" and the other facilitator as the "story one".

The reason I developed that reputation is because we talked a lot about brain science and fight-flight-freeze reactions. I got pretty comfortable about speaking on studies and stuff.

At the main office, people that I'm not that close to know me as a firefighter trainer. Our CEO is apparently really happy that this happened. 

Regardless of how we were received (and I think we did okay), I certainly learned a lot. And I can now say that I am not just a Community Facilitator and Crisis Intervention Trainer, I'm also a Workshop Developer. People pay for my thoughts, I don't just present the thoughts of others. Even if it's only happened once.