Repetition Builds Muscle Memory

Sets & Reps:

Emergency training accelerates: The initial spark of curiosity powers a desire to delve more deeply to sacrifice one’s time and ego while pursuing the fundamental subject matter and habits required to hone character successfully.

Psychomotor Skills Proficiency: The Grind

In addition to passing multiple choice quizzes and exams, students must properly utilize their emergency skills and equipment. What good are the traction splints, cravat slings and swathes, sphygmomanometers, glucometers, Oxygen saturation monitors, scoop stretchers, KED Sleds, head beds, gurneys, stethoscopes or even a penlight without the savvy for appropriate utilization? Once studied, the knowledge, tools, and methods are immediately implemented, and the student’s aptitude for information articulation and retention is tested. All of this is to say that the ‘See one, do one, teach one’ course philosophy is immediately instituted. The cohort begins practicing immediately following any skills demonstration. We’re on hands and knees, sopping up stage blood, tourniquet-ting gunshot sides of beef, plugging holes, splinting one another. This is “Sets and Reps,” the way one would memorize, train a muscle, wrestle, or choreograph dance routines. “Sets and Reps”—or “Grinding—” is like a new workout regimen; initially, students are reluctant to sweat, but anger and frustration slowly build tolerance and persistence; students will compete with one another, or work before, after class, during break, or meet outside of school to continue skills training. By semester’s end, students have forged bonds and demonstrate initiative by integrating procedures, or improvising with different pieces of gear.

I want to see students taking it upon themselves to work harder, longer, and better together, and I want to see a willingness to continue this discipline in perpetuity. Students have learned the fundamental language, knowledge, modalities to learn, and persistent discipline it will take to push for years until they attain the career they set their compass to in my courses.

Reach Out to Them Before They Grind Out

The chain reaction isn’t always easy to get started. Some students are recalcitrant to work, only to exert minimal effort. Sometimes, it’s a simple nudge in the right direction. Other times, it’s poisonous to the cohort.

During sets and reps, students slink off to their phones. “I took the blood pressure. I know how to do it.” Good, do it again. 

In the middle of skill Sets and Reps, some students will lie down and nap on the gurneys or tables. I’m easygoing, but this is a bridge too far. I’m quick and direct, saying something to the effect of: “You can’t sleep on the gurney. You have to keep working on this until Sets and Reps have concluded.”

If this behavior persists, a direct but sympathetic will take place between the students and myself.

What’s going on lately? Are you tired or ill? Is everything alright? Do you need me or anyone else to help?

Your actions aren’t helping you succeed in class. I can’t allow you to continue this type of behavior during class. If you choose to remain today, you need to participate. If you go home, you should review the Self Alignment Assignment you completed the first week of the class. Are we clear?… Is there anything I can do to help you?

An Unorthodox Synthesis of College, Compassion, and Comradery

I'll follow up with a review email of our discussion and again help, along with a referral to a school counselor. If the issues remain or worsen, I follow the standard college protocols for discipline and management. This is a worst-case scenario, I’m fortunate not to have had to go to these lengths more than twice in nearly twenty years.

Unlike other college courses, I can’t rely on collegial protocols to manage EMT and Fire Science students. They sacrifice more time and heart to the course than I ever spent on Greek Mythology or Algebra. Rather, the similarity of Intro to Fire Science and EMT-1 to the actual fire department lifestyle requires me to go the extra mile to motivate and protect my students in the manner exemplary Fire Officers would for their crews. More than that, it’s how my father—retired SFFD Fire Captain Rich Allen, over 33 years of service in a major fire and emergency-heavy city—managed the lost and wild hooligans he was entrusted to protect. I want to make him proud.

My talented father’s wisdom to lead, my mother’s compassion, my grandfather’s self-effacing humor, and my brother’s perseverance to complete one more lap or study ten more minutes all inform me when I teach. At one time or another, one of these virtues is required to say or do the correct thing at the appropriate moment for each individual pupil. Like my students, I also use trial and error to help them. I’m successful because I learned from people smarter than me. If I miss the mark, that’s because I haven’t yet perfected myself, but I’m trying. Each time I misjudge the situation, I’m the first to apologize and admit I was wrong. Every time I do that, I don’t stop working with the student until I’ve fixed what was damaged and learned from my mistakes.

Hopefully, the lessons that benefited my character will someday inform and assist my own children in finding success, gratitude, and self-worth.

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Education is Lifelong: Never Stop