TEACHING THE FIRE FORCE TWENTYSOMETHINGS, PART 2
TRAINING NOTEBOOK
In preparation for teaching the twentysomethings, you must assess their learning abilities and communicate your department’s vision, core values, and expectations to new employees. You will have to do more research on each candidate and provide more feedback than you ever did in the 1980s.
You already may require a medical physical and a physical agility test for your firefighter candidates. In addition, you should consider administering a reading comprehension test early in your program. In Fairfax County. Virginia, recruit firefighter students have tested as low as 2.4to 4.6-grade ability on a standardized reading assessment test. Your local high school or community college should have the assessment resources you need.
DAILY PHYSICAL FITNESS
Physical development will require daily physical fitness sessions to develop cardiovascular capacity and strength training. A three-step training process should be followed.
Every day will include warm-up stretching, aerobic conditioning (running), and some skill task development. Every other day. there will be strength training (using weights).
Skill task development is an incremental building of the candidate’s ability to perform hose and ladder evolutions. The fundamentals of the task are introduced in the physical fitness period. The candidate starts raising small ground ladders wearing safety shoes, gloves, and helmet. The size of the ladder and the level of protective clothing increase as the student’s strength is developed. The final goal is to be physically capable of raising a 35-foot extension ladder in full gear (including SCBA) as a member of a twofirefighter team. Then each firefighter should be able to carry a 14-foot roof ladder up the extension ladder and place it on a pitched roof or advance an attack line up the 35-foot extension ladder.
In my experience, the candidates eventually achieve this skill. The problem remains that the recruit school may not be long enough to allow this strength development. Some recruit schools will run the administrative and emergency medical training first, hoping that those six weeks will allow the recruit to develop the strength to perform the fire evolutions. Unfortunately, 20 to 30 percent of the students are still incapable of successfully performing the task at the end of six weeks.
Matching the entry physical agility test to the actual tasks is one way to get the candidate ready for training. Some physical agility tests use a ladder shorter than the one used for final certification. Another method would be to start a prerecruit physical preparation program.
DAILY KNOWLEDGE TESTS
Consider administering daily knowledge quizzes with cumulative weekly tests. With candidates showing lower than anticipated reading levels and study skills, the organization is compelled to provide structured assessment and feedback. This type of testing will consume up to one hour of every eight-hour training day but seems to improve the candidate’s chances of passing the firefighter certification test.
The daily quizzes should consist of 20 to 50 test items in the same format as the final certification exam. The best time to administer a test is the morning after the material was presented. Tests given immediately after the lecture only assess if the student stayed awake in class, without providing learning reinforcement. The weekly cumulative tests should be longer (50 to 100 test items) and should include test items from prior weeks.
This type of testing requires a lot of work. Some large organizations compile daily quizzes and weekly tests from a test bank— either a stack of tests already written or a databased test generator. This system of giving daily quizzes and weekly tests dramatically improved the state certification results with rural Virginia high school juniors and seniors who were taking an emergency medical technician class as part of their fire science vocational program.
Statewide, less than 50 percent of 16to 18-year-old EMT candidates achieve certification. More than 73 percent of the 16to 18-year-old students taking a daily quiz with cumulative weekly tests achieved certification. Most of the remaining students who failed the state certification test had a reading level below the sixth grade.
NOTE-TAKING GUIDES
If you have ever taken a National Fire Academy or Open University Fire Science class, you have encountered note-taking guides. These are papers with the “need-toknow” information printed on the sheet (terms, concepts, or relationships) with enough blank space to allow the students to take notes on the subject during the lecture. Publishers offer similar student guides for fire and EMS textbooks.
One problem with publisher-supplied study guides is that they cover each topic with the same level of intensity. While this is a great way to learn the textbook, it may not always help the study-skill-deficient student concentrate on your jurisdiction’s “need-to-know” information or local policies and procedures.
One advantage of locally written note-taking guides is that they improve the consistency of the learning. Combined with the lecture notes, the student study guides will keep the presentation focused on the needto-know information, even when a lastminute substitute is filling in for a sick recruit instructor.
PRACTICE PRACTICAL SKILLS
More than half of basic firefighter training is in learning manipulation skills. Due to the lower physical fitness level of the twentysomethings, you will need to have a formalized strength-development program during the recruit school and anticipate spending two to three times longer teaching manipulative skills. Students should know in advance what the practical exercise requires, in detail and with conditions.
Brian Crandell of Montana Fire Services Training is a former public school teacher who has developed a “Training in Context” program that delivers a skill-competent and-confident basic firefighter in a much shorter period of time than traditional training. This teamand vision-based training satisfies many of the special needs of the fire force twentysomething generation. The “Training in Context” program has a much smaller teacher-to-student ratio (approaching one-to-one) but is as dramatically effective in teaching paid and volunteer firefighters in the 1990s as the military four-step method was in teaching farm boys to fly airplanes in World War I.
Even with traditional training programs, the use of videotapes to demonstrate the perfect evolution is very helpful in getting students to “see” what they are supposed to do. Like the test bank and note-taking guide, developing videotapes of perfect evolutions is very time-consuming.
OFF-DUTY TUTORING TIME
Regardless of the teaching method you use, the training officer must plan to provide individual tutoring in both knowledge and skill subjects. It is a major feature in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)-compliant training Some of the suggestions listed above may reduce the amount of individualized tutoring needed.
COACHES AND MENTORS
Twentysomethings hate being monitored. In general, the twentysomethings hate to be disrespected, watched, and scrutinized. This means their time in training will be stressful, since fire training is so evaluation-oriented. Twentysomethings do appreciate recognition and praise. One way to balance this seesaw is to provide regular feedback sessions for each student.
For the daywork recruit school, some academies provide a weekly feedback session for every student, providing concrete examples of good behavior/performance and areas that need improving. For many twentysomethings, this is their first real job, so feedback includes basic work-skill reinforcement and monitoring of the study process.
Two concepts that work well with twentysomethings may be alien to your training experience. The first concept replaces the military drill instructor (DI) with a coach. The DI model—in which recruits are torn down and rebuilt in the department’s image—works very poorly with the twentysomethings and other fire force 2000 students, resulting in unnecessary high dropout rates of qualified candidates. Leaving the DI role does not, however, imply a relaxation of standards or adherence to the foreground chain of command.
Candidates who arrive at the municipal department’s academy already have gone through an aptitude test, police background check, preemployment physical, physical agility test, lie-detector analysis, and drug screening. Some have even taken a stress test and have undergone psychological screening. For every successful firefighter candidate, the department has had to process 18 to 25 applicants. Good talent is hard to find!
To invest such time and effort recruiting candidates and then “break ’em down” in a military Di-style training environment is inappropriate and wasteful.1 Furthermore, in many cases, traditional Di-style exercises would be in violation of federal EEO and local personnel regulations. The inappropriate use of the Di-style of training is especially expensive in the cases of students recruited because of their existing certifications (e.g., paramedic) or because they satisfy hard-to-fill affirmative-action goals.
In a publicized case, a large East Coast fire department was faced with a critical shortage of certified paramedics. A special recruitment drive was initiated to obtain existing state or National Registry paramedics to work as firefighter/paramedics. These recruited paramedics were required to attend the fire recruit school. This was appropriate, since most of the recruited paramedics had not been firefighters with their previous employers. Recruiting existing paramedics was considered the fastest and cheapest way to increase the paramedic ranks.
The problem began the first day of recruit school, when these recruited paramedics received the DI treatment. One resigned the first week of recruit school. Two years later, more than half of the original recruits had resigned, and most of the remaining paramedics transferred into jobs where their ALS skills were not a critical job task.4,5
These recruited paramedics came to the fire department with an existing set of job skills and relevant work experiences. To be treated as know-nothing 18-year-olds by a training officer planted the seeds of discontent. These seeds were harvested in the forms of resignations, grievances, and a lot of bad publicity for the fire department. The return on investment of this paramedic recruitment drive was very poor. The cost of this abortive recruitment drive exceeded the cost of training twice as many existing firefighters to become paramedics.
There are even worse stories involving minority experiences in Di-style training programs. The court decisions and fines imposed on fire departments should alert everyone that the DI method is not the best way to train the fire force twentysomethings. The U.S. Marine Corps recently settled a racial harassment complaint by a JapaneseAmerican man who was flunked out of officer candidate school (OCS). A pattern of racial harassment during OCS—including a pattern of minority washouts since 1982— was demonstrated. The complainant received a retroactive promotion to captain in 1994.
The best role for the academy instructor to use is the coach role. Like the collegelevel football coach, the academy instructor has a game plan, a playbook, and skill drills. Firefighting, much more so than law enforcement or the military, continues to be a team-based job task. One of the coach’s goals is to develop the teamwork and cooperative work environment within the recruit school. A coach can be just as demanding for personal excellence, teamwork, and respect for the fireground chain of command as a drill instructor, but without humiliation.
MENTORS
The second concept, using the college football analogy, is the use of mentors or upper-class members to help the new players develop their abilities. At the academy, the mentor may be a senior firefighter assisting with the training program, a member of the recruit’s EEO group who provides support, or the fire station that “adopts” the recruit during the training period.
The role of the mentor is to support the student’s effort at excelling in the training program through tutoring, providing feedback, and sharing information. This may be formal or informal, but it is essential to the success of the nontraditional firefighter candidate.
PROFILE OF A TWENTYSOMETHING RECRUIT SCHOOL DAY
Implementing these recommendations puts a big dent in your training day. Up to two hours of daily physical training with strength development plus an hour each day for the daily quiz and individual feedback adds up to 38 percent of an eight-hour training day. Good use of the lecture note guides and assigning readings the evening before may reduce some of this impact. Some departments are looking to use their standard evolutions as a component of the strengthtraining program.
A more radical concept can be taken from the Fire Service College at Moreton-inMarsh, England. In most training programs, the students assist the instructors with the grunt work of setting up practical evolutions or setting up the bum building. At the Fire Service College, one group of instructors works with the students while another group of trainers sets up the burn building or training ground.
The result is that the Fire Service College student encounters up to four times as many evolutions per day as the traditional American student. If our goal is to maximize the student’s learning day, a combination of Montana’s Training in Context program and the logistics used by the Fire Service College may be a very time-effective means of delivering training. It also might require an instructor-to-student ratio that few, if any, fire departments could afford.
Either way, the new firefighter student requires more preparation time with more feedback and coaching. Regardless of which methods you use, the method of teaching twentysomethings requires a bottom-up review of the tasks and responsibilities of firefighters.
Academies that have initiated a bottomup review have discovered that the firelighter’s typical and most frequent tasks are not covered in Firefighter 1. You may need to consider adding “station life” classes that include vehicle washing, station cleaning, equipment maintenance, and citizen assistance.
FLIPPING BURGERS—OR FIREFIGHTING
The McDonalds restaurant chain is the biggest employer of the twentysomething generation. We can leam some lessons in the training and retention of valued employees. McDonalds expects to have a high turnover in its minimum-wage jobs. Each job station is explained in simple language with extensive use of pictures and graphics. Performance expectations are explained in detail, and a manager closely monitors an employee until mastery of a job’s tasks has been achieved.
McDonalds has successfully obtained quality service delivery in a highly automated and high-speed system. We should be just as successful teaching a recruit to don protective clothing, ride in a Fire apparatus, arrive on a scene, and advance a hoseline as a part of a fire attack team.
If you do not believe that a recruit firefighter’s job tasks are related to those of the minimum-wage McDonalds’ employee, let’s look at what the respective management trainees arc expected to do. In McDonalds’ regional training center, the management candidate must be able to operate ever)’ version of equipment used at the restaurant and perform every job assignment. This ensures that the manager can Fill in at any position (during a lunch rush or when the cook walks out) and has a detailed understanding of the dynamics of a highly automated and monitored fast-food restaurant. Firefighters can be as versatile as a McDonalds’ management trainee.
Fire service training of the twentysomething generation will need to change to meet the combined challenges of a demographically changing workforce and expanding fire service delivery roles.
Endnotes
- R. Moline and M. Ward. “High School Fire School,” 1993 Fire Department’s Instructors Conference. (Cincinnati, Ohio).
- National Fire Academy. Cultural Diversity for Fire anti Emergency Service Instructors. (U.S. Fire Administration. Emmitsburg, Md.. 1993).
- G.D. Halt. “Why is the military’ in the fire service?” Fire Chief. Mar. 1994:24-28.
- H. J. Caulfield. Winning the Fire Service Leadership Game. (Saddle Brook. N.J.: Fire Engineering Books, 1985).
- J. D. Orsbum. L. Moran. E. Musselwhite. and J. H. Zenger, Self-Directed Work Teams: The New American Challenge. (Homewood. III.: Business One Irwin, 1990).
