Editor’s Opinion | By David Rhodes
I recently saw a social media post where a guy was ranting about another fire instructor out there teaching a specific subject that he also taught. This person was emphatic and almost threatening, with a seething warning that he and he alone was the de facto expert and anyone who would hire this Johnny-come-lately lowlife imposter to teach his subject would do so at his own risk! This wasn’t a technical firefighter training subject, so the real risk was that this guy now had some competition and he risked losing his perceived monopoly on the subject.
I started helping out as an instructor within a year of joining the fire service. The culture at the small suburban, one-station, 20-person department was one of dedication to training. All the officers were instructors for the state academy in almost every subject you could imagine. You wanted to take a class? APPROVED! You wanted time off to help teach? APPROVED! In fact, I don’t ever recall being told no to any training I was involved in as a student or an instructor.
As I gained more experience and moved into lead instructor roles years later, I began to develop some of my own training material. At first, it was transparencies for the overhead projector (you young folks can Google it), and then it was on to PowerPoint®, which was much easier to create and transport! I am thankful that I missed the slide tray part of being an instructor, although I attended many classes where they were used.
I worked to create my own search, incident management, decision making, company operations, and leadership classes. I obviously did not invent any of these subjects, and so the classes I created were accumulations of knowledge that I had obtained from other sources, with some of my own personal experiences thrown in for effect and relatability. Any instructor developing and teaching any number of classes most likely follows the same process.
Several years ago, I knew a young firefighter who was very proud of a firefighter rescue technique that he had “invented” using a charged hoseline to hoist up a firefighter from a collapsed floor or hole for a below-grade rescue. He was so proud that he quickly named the technique after himself and made a few social media posts about it back in the early days of Facebook. Another firefighter I had taught with for years called him and let him know that the technique wasn’t new and that our group had been teaching versions of it for nearly a decade. He even followed up with a few pictures from a disposable camera that we had developed years before. There was a little embarrassment and disappointment on the part of this young firefighter, but the lesson was a big one: It is rare that we actually invent something totally new! It is more common that we tweak something that we have seen in an attempt to improve on it or we are simply just putting our own personal spin on something we learned from someone else.
We invest a lot of time in developing our training classes, and we don’t always want someone just taking our material in its finished form and using it as their own. We feel they cheated. They didn’t put in the research and work; they “stole my class,” or did they? More times than not, other instructors are just doing what you did—taking what they learned from you and adding their own experiences and spin on it. We must always understand that we have no ownership or copyright on the subject itself, nor should we want it, because it would stop the development of new ideas.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “That person is teaching my search class!” and, my favorite of all time, “That person is teaching my leadership class!” I am not condoning anyone who would take someone’s work, slide for slide, and attempt to pass it off as their own. That is theft. However, it is doubtful that they would have much success with it unless they had your knowledge and experience. Most presentations are just an outline for the instructor to talk from and stay organized. No one wants to attend a “death by PowerPoint®” where some instructor just reads the bullet points and tells you to look at the pictures.
As instructors, we have to control our emotions, coach the next group of instructors, and even collaborate with them so more people are exposed to great learning opportunities. My hat is off to those of you who freely give away information and techniques, knowing that you make the class—not your slides—and you are just helping another person learn.
As for the guy with the social media post and rant, it made me think of the great scene in the movie “Stripes,” of which I offer here to anyone who takes himself that seriously. The scene is where the recruits are going around the room introducing themselves: “The name is Francis Sawyer, but everybody calls me ‘Psycho.’ Any of you guys call me Francis, and I’ll kill you!” to which the drill instructor, Sergeant Hulka, promptly replies, “Lighten up, Francis!”
