Full Transcript for From Death by PowerPoint to Whiteboards: Lessons From Our First Years Teaching

'cause you were as a TA you mostly dealt with the gunners or the people who are really struggling, right? It was like the the either end of the the spectrum. But the thing I really benefited from was in residency, Jason Wagner, who became my program director, who was an associate program director, is really an emergency medicine educator. And in residency he created and I remember we all thought it was a terrible idea and I think it's one of the best things that ever happened to the residency. He created an education elective for third year residents that for a month we did an e an an elective that was completely about educational delivery and to develop us as educators because as a four-year program he thought we're developing academic emergency physicians and we need them to be able to educate the next generation. So you had to do learning on the science of learning, you had to develop curriculum, you had to do all of that. And it part of was how my journey into EMS was I wanted to one of the reasons I wanted to be an EMS medical director, I think it didn't b bear out very well for me when I was doing interviews for fellowship, was because I wanted to do EMS education because I saw it as this like ultimate challenge in adult education. Like you have people for a short period of time. And you've got to really get them to competency. so and then I did a a teaching, like the Ace of Teaching Fellowship when I was an attending. So by the time I got to EMS, I had some background in education, but it was because I went through a residency program that had leadership of that residency program that was invested in developing us. I if you think about that, that's a that's a paradigm shift from what happens in EMS where we and it made the transition so much easier, right? It made it so you cultivated people based on their passion for education and you gave them the tools rather than just saying like, you're around, you kind of like to teach, or you're leg is injured or you're the one person with a bachelor's and you're gonna teach it was saying like you know my program director had the foresight to say education is part of the role of all these people I'm graduating, whether or not they're gonna go work in a community hospital or be an academic physician and they should actually understand how they learn and they should understand how to teach others whether or not it's interprofessional education. And so, I have made my share of mistakes and there are definitely cringy moments and I look back and I'm like, my God, what was I doing? But I think it was so much I when I resorted to the way that I had been taught, I had been taught by people who did active learning, who knew the science of learning, because I resorted to the way that I was taught in residency, not the way I was taught in med school, remotely. and I was fortunate for that. 'Cause I did not I was not the subject of the educational violence of death by PowerPoint. I was the subject Hilary Gates: Hmm. Here's Maia Dorsett: of team based learning and simulation education and all of that. Hilary Gates: Great story. Rob, I don't know if it's appropriate, so say no if you don't want to, but how about your experience? Rob Lawrence: Well, I'm I'm glad you asked actually 'cause of 'cause I came up through the military and And so as as you progress through, of course, you do what they call methods of instruction classes and training. I was an officer instructor at at the Canadian military, military school, and so we had to go through the the training there. But most of it was the and everything was by an acronym, right? Everything was by mnemonic, and so EDIP was the way to do it. Explanation, demonstration, imitation, practice. Maia Dorsett: Ha ha Leaugeay Barnes: Mm-hmm. Rob Lawrence: So yes, and everything by numbers. But so I I've Hilary Gates: Well Rob Lawrence: I've I've come late to being an instructor. Hilary Gates: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. And and what's interesting is that the military didn't teach you how to say the word military because you you only use the three syllables, but it really has four. It's military, and you keep telling us about the military, and I'm not sure what what the the disconnect is. Rob Lawrence: So Loger, Hilary and I have a tomato tomato relationship, just so you and everybody else knows. Maia Dorsett: So going back to what Loger said, I love this concept of changing your frame to the way we've always done it or the way I was always taught to how I wish that I was taught. And I'm kind of interested to see what do you mean by like How did you figure out what was the way that you wish that I've been taught? Because if you don't know what good education looks like, I think we can say, we want to be less bored to death, right? I I want there to be fewer Leaugeay Barnes: a little bit. Maia Dorsett: pressure sores on my tuckist. You know, like I I I think we can say those things, but I'm kind of interested in your story. Not kind of interested, I'm definitely interested in your story of how did you get a sense of What was the way that you wish that you had been taught? Like what were you picturing at the beginning and did what good looks like transform as you went on this journey as an educator? Leaugeay Barnes: Well I think first of all, as I told Hillary earlier, my instructor, my paramedic instructor, bless his soul, he read the entire book to us from front cover to back cover, stood in front of on a podium. I had a degree at the time and I was looking around the room like, am I the only person that's crazy in here? Because of course attendance is required in by the Department of Health for paramedics and I I can do this at home. And there was very little lab, very little interaction at that time. And I think that when I started, I was so overwhelmed, I just tried to lecture. I literally had almost no resources and fortunately I had a good friend who taught and he said, like, here's all my stuff. And I'm looking

at to your point, Death by PowerPoint, PowerPoints that were hundreds of slides long, and I'm like, my God, like, am I supposed to talk for eight hours? so yeah, it didn't go well. So after I got that first class through, and let me tell you, the relationship between myself and the students was was not the most amicable because they were pushing back. I was pushing back because I'm, to your point. Maya, you know, we have a limited amount of time to make clinicians that hopefully we would be proud to have running on our own family members. So I have a completely different concept than they do about what we're trying to achieve. They just want to pass the registry. After that first year and I spent the summer trying to put things together, I'm like, okay, well that didn't work. I did hundreds of PowerPoints and hundreds of slides and I didn't like it, they didn't like it, so what can we do? And I came to that interactive, you know, I don't want to sit here and talk. I started working on Socratic questioning, those kinds of things which came pretty easily for me. it doesn't come easily for everybody, so I was fortunate there. And then of course I started doing scenarios in lab in 2002, long before the EMS world embraced that mentality and frankly it was A out of sheer boredom because I didn't want to be bored And B to try to wrangle all these students into something that they would be more engaged by. How do I engage the entire class and not just the one person I'm questioning? You know, I'm really big now. I buy all my students out of my own pocket little whiteboards and they keep them now till this day because I want everybody to respond. I'm a slow responder. I'm not the person that when somebody asks the question in class, I've got the answer and I scream it out because I don't want to be wrong. And so other people will scream it out and the smart people will always get it right. and then the other people we feel, you know, not as much and we're intimidated and we're let we become more and more hesitant to respond. And so for me again, having some type of safe, you know, if everybody writes and I give them time and I walk around the room and I let everybody write I we don't go forward until everybody writes something. I don't care. I don't care. But that gives me as an educator a better basis for knowing what are the knowledge gaps. What what are we failing to communicate to students? They interact so they're not sleeping. And you know, they actually by the end, like two years later, students will come in and say, I still have my whiteboard. so they get engaged. At first they don't like it, right? They're like, I have to think. You know, we don't like the critical thinking part, we Hilary Gates: Mm-hmm. Leaugeay Barnes: don't like the hard parts, we like all most students tell me I would rather just have you talk at me for whatever amount of time. But that's not what they really want. They just want passive learning so they don't have to work, right? So that's what I started integrating. And I mean, I'm not proud of my initial scenarios. I would just make them up on the fly. I definitely didn't write them down or or have quote unquote objectives. I'm like, we're doing pediatrics. Let's just pull one out. I recall one student getting pretty upset with me over a scenario and And so I had a house fire and he had multiple patients and he brought them out and he called for backup and I said, Your radio doesn't work. You know, what are you gonna do? And he's got two patients in cardiac arrest, and he's like, This isn't fair. And I'm like, There are ways to manage this, right? In my brain, I'm like, we can manage this, but this is also entry level versus me thinking like a super experienced person. Later, it it was pretty interesting because I'm wow you could use because at the time we had paddles and we also had pads like put one on use the other switch back and forth we just then we started brainstorming over how we would manage this and he goes this is just not accurate it wouldn't happen if I called for backup I would get backup and blah blah blah five years later he calls me and he's like I had that call Thank you so much. Hilary Gates: my god! Leaugeay Barnes: Thank you for what you did to me because the I had no radio. It wouldn't reach out because I was in a super rural area. I had two patients and I went back to that. So even though we think it's crazy, it could happen out there. Anything could happen out there, right? And so yes, I do think we need to be not going to the craziest call I can think up in my brain. You know, I'm building a foundation. I've gotten a lot better. Better at that. But it was interesting to have, and it's non-punitive, right? These scenarios were not like, hey, you're gonna fail. It was more about the ego, right? Like, I just failed in front of my back in the day, failure was really frowned upon, right? I tell my students now most of us older paramedics came from a toxic program. They were all toxic. I don't care where you were. And not only did we pass them, But we were the people who thrived in a toxic environment. So when I started learning that that was not a good way to teach people and people don't learn in a toxic environment, I'm sure in the military you were probably, you know, the brunt of that toxicity as well. Then I started trying to change that mindset, which has been harder, frankly, because a lot of the older educators, that's just what we again divert to. And we used to shame people for failure, you know. That's what happened with us. And now that we know that is not, you know, a good pathway to follow. But I did tell them, we are doing our best. Have grace with us. We'll try to have grace with you. And if I'm exhausted and I I revert to a toxic, you know, just try to say, hey, Loge, this this may not be the best way. And I'll try to. I heard one of your earlier podcasts talking about emotional regulation. I'm like, yes, that's what we need

to work on. Maia Dorsett: Ha ha ha. Hilary Gates: Yeah. Leaugeay Barnes: But again, if you look at the fatigue work that Daniel Patterson does and everything, we're all fatigued and what is the first thing to go? A effective domain, every single time. So we set people up to be in civil and then the we wonder why they're not civil. Maia Dorsett: So I I have a couple thoughts based on what you said. I think the first is I think it's really hard as an educator who comes from the field or has some different level of expertise to come into land and say like what is actually the zone of desirable difficulty. Right. Like and you say like, you know, the students want passive information, it feels comfortable, right? Cause when you're learning it is uncomfortable. I say it's like If I'm trying to get in shape and I'm taking a stroll and my heart rate stays at 90, I am not getting in shape. Right? it has to be a little bit uncomfortable. I gotta work at it to actually like build muscle and aerobic capacity, and your brain is no different than like, you know, the muscles and everything else. And and teaching students about that, but I also think Exactly you're in the scenario where you've created this crazy scenario that happened to happen. but when you're thinking like, I totally would know what to do in this case, when we translate people who have clinical expertise into the educational environment, it's hard to remember when you've passed this expertise threshold Leaugeay Barnes: Yes. Maia Dorsett: what it was to like not know anything. You know, like I realize that for some things I am not It takes a lot of work for me to be the person to do the primary education because I'm already like thinking up here. I already have this foundational knowledge and I don't I can't think through like what is that gap, right? So that they have the fundamentals and I'm in the zone of desirable difficulty, which is I think something that is difficult and educators need to be explicitly thought about, like taught about where you want learners to be so that they're growing but not overwhelmed. but the other thing is what I hear you say is like a lot of what you're saying is back then we did some crazy stuff that we now cringe at, or we taught with PowerPoint, Leaugeay Barnes: Mm. Maia Dorsett: or we like were selected by this toxic environment of the way that we did things. So what do you think allowed you to grow. this is true in clinical practice, right? Is that we do stuff and we're like, well that causes harm. So maybe we should stop stop doing it. But it's not it's not easy to change practice even when there's a system trying to change it. So right, you're someone who just I think of the reason I love Loger is sis just says shit like it is. You know? Like Hilary Gates: Mm-hmm. Maia Dorsett: And I appreciate it. I I've Leaugeay Barnes: I have no filter. Maia Dorsett: always known exactly where my I stand, where my ideas stand. And if you want somebody to be directly honest with you or to not back down from what they believe in or to challenge you on your ideas, there are few people that I trust more to challenge me on my ideas and my thought process than Loge. Like I love it about her. Like I it's one of the th Hilary Gates: Great. Maia Dorsett: her best qualities. but I'm wondering like How as an educator did you create a system where you're continually evolving, right? Because even things that we know now versus like five years ago or like how to do stuff, like how do you do that as an educator? What resources did you think allowed you to grow other than the fact that you're just like this, you know, kind of like resilient, like I will continue to move forward person? But there was a system that helped that along the way in some way. Leaugeay Barnes: Well, I think that I am extremely experienced in failure. And I think what I try to tell the students is to your point, Maya, failure is required for learning. So us rather than us making this a negative, then let's turn it into a positive. We know you're gonna fail somewhere in the program. So instead of you know being so, you know, tied to not being wrong, just make sure that you learn from it and what you know better, do better, right? And we're all gonna look back and if you talk about the moral injury, you know, some of the students are like, my gosh look what I did as an ENT and I say you can't you can't put that s on yourself. You have to just say once I knew know better I'm going to do better. And I think for me I tend to be pretty reflective because I always have jobs where I have to drive a long way and I get bored and Maia Dorsett: Ha ha ha. Leaugeay Barnes: anyone that you know usually I work I used to drive like two hours each way. Yes. Maia Dorsett: The system improvement is a commute. Leaugeay Barnes: But it can be bad too, because then I come up with all these ideas and I'm like, okay, we're gonna do this, and they're like, that's not gonna happen in one day. And I'm like, why not? Why Maia Dorsett: Ha ha ha. Leaugeay Barnes: can't we do that in one day? You know, so I think embracing the failure, being willing to be uncomfortable, as you said, is an important piece of that. And we have to help people become get get rid of the ego, right? Because if we want to do better patient care, which I've always wanted to do, then we have to get rid of the ego. And if we want to be better educators, the same thing. The people who have the biggest egos and are afraid to fail are usually the ones that are the most insecure. And that includes the students, right? They're the insecure ones and they don't have the confidence in themselves. So if we can, you know I think if we can be more open, like I try to start all these little collegial things and I'll be the first one to put a case out there and say, Light, I had this case and I had no idea what to do. What would you do? And then we have some really good conversations around that, but we have to be

vulnerable first. Leaders have to be vulnerable first to show everybody, you know, around us that it's okay. And if people sit there and say, Loget's stupid, like she didn't know what to do with this, I'm like, yeah, so what? I'm stupid. Whatever. I feel pretty confident with where I'm at. So I'm I'm not As opposed to looking stupid anymore. And I also try to challenge myself and make myself like I just got my doctorate a few years ago. You know, what am I thinking? I'm old, what am I going to use this for? People are like, why are you doing that? It's expensive Maia Dorsett: But Leaugeay Barnes: and it's exhausting. But I constantly want to put myself in that position of being a new student. And even our new educators, I try to hire some young educators, which can sometimes make my colleagues crazy because. they're like, my God, they only have two years of experience. I'm like, we have a combined over 100 years of clinical experience. That is not what we need here. We need a fresh look. We need a different point Maia Dorsett: Yeah. Leaugeay Barnes: of view. We need to know what they're thinking, especially so that we can engage more effectively with the younger generations. I noticed that about three years ago I had a very challenging most challenging class in my entire career. I tried to quit but nobody wanted to hire me. So once again I was stuck. And so I had to figure out how am I gonna change what part did I play in that dynamic? I can't change their their piece, but I can change my part in that dynamic. And then two years later, probably the easiest class that I've ever had in my career. So I think part of that is having all the faculty sit down and talk about, you know, what can we do better? Interesting to me, my young ones were like, you know what, let's make it harder to get in. I'm like, that is not the answer. We have a shortage in Hawaii, number one. And number Maia Dorsett: Okay. Leaugeay Barnes: two, if we have a pass rate that is in the high nineties to a hundred percent first-time pass rate, the answer is not to make it harder to get in, right? That's not our problem. So we have an affective problem that that which is much more challenging to manage, right? Rob Lawrence: I'm just gonna go back there on something you talked about about failure I was actually at the University of Las Vegas Nevada last week with a lecture from Annex Honald the free solo climber and he talked about failure and I I don't mean falling off but what what he meant was that he Maia Dorsett: Yeah. Rob Lawrence: gets to a point where he realizes he can't get any further forward and therefore he has to go back down to the start, reassess, assess And start again. And so that was his sort of reaction to failure was the fact that, you know, sometimes you realise that you're not going to get through this time, so you have to rewind and begin again. And it's n there's no shame in that. And I I just sort of that it resonated with what you said there at Loger, just

about the sort of the failure aspect. Certainly, you know, the guy that climbs two thousand foot walls with no rope agrees with you. Maia Dorsett: I gotta say I the nice thing about EMS education is that there's o there's always the next class. I I do it right a lot of quality improvement work and every year we sit down and we have sometimes we forget and now I think we're better at writing it down is every year we're just like, we forgot to do that, or you know what would be really Leaugeay Barnes: Yeah. Maia Dorsett: good. and I think there's so much that Once the class goes through, you're like, like if only we had done this. Hilary Gates: Mm-hmm. Maia Dorsett: But slowly, slowly, if you come up with those ideas, if you only like end up testing, you know, three or four of them, and if one of them works, pretty soon, after a lot of years in this profession, you look back and you say where we came from. I mean, somehow our first class is a phenomenal class of paramedics, but I think it's because of them, not necessarily because of us. Like I look back and I'm like, my God, they had to I think the influence they had on all subsequent education because of the way they advocated for their own learning and demanded that we build parts of the program that were really necessary. We were super lucky to have that class. but I I think it's it's this question of as an educator, I think as a clinician you learn to like that's where you see the value of learning from your failures a lot in EMS because and in emergency medicine, right? Cause they're plentiful. because we like live in this environment of that is just so prone to error. And you start thinking deeply about like what would make it easier to succeed? Like how could I have prevented this error? And I apply a lot to, you know, like if I have a student who fails the registry on the first try, To me that's like a medication error happening in the field. And I gotta look back at the system design, is it prod would it be predictable? When would I notice early on that the student is not in a trajectory of success? And can we put things in place that I would identify that earlier? Or when a student fails out of the program And I I think it's by thinking of those as errors, if I engage them in a different way, or I taught things in a different way, or I I instilled recalling quizzes and assessing people, or if I figured out who's struggling early on and made sure they got intensive tutoring. And there's just been a lot of changes in our program that have come through analysis of the system failures and realizing when students fail, that some of that's on us. You know, like I take that as a mean so this is call a toll aside, but the way I really got to know Loget is we were both on the registry board at the same time. and during a time where I think and I think one of the common things that happens is a lot of people get mad at the registry because they say the test is too hard. and I like try and reframe

it's like actually the test is not too hard, right? Like you get this insight of how much work it takes to make a a certified and a a validated exam that is actually assessing competency. But if you know that then it's like really like every single time somebody doesn't pass or somebody doesn't clear at their agency or something. It's really like analyzing that as a a failure on the system and say what can we do better as an educator or as a program. because usually I not always, but very often I can find something that we should try. Leaugeay Barnes: No, I agree with you, but I I think on the other side of that, sometimes people just need a little more time. So I try not to be, because a couple of things. Sometimes somebody fails that you never could predict. And I've talked to them and they didn't take it seriously, or they stayed up all night, or they drank, or whatever they did to make themselves unsuccessful, and you're like, How did that person fail? How did Maia Dorsett: Yeah. Leaugeay Barnes: you ru how did you ruin my hundred percent first time pass rate this Maia Dorsett: Yeah. Leaugeay Barnes: year? But Occasionally they're weak and you we've done I think EMS education. I certainly know that our program has built a really strong remediation program now which requires a lot of work and effort. We don't have any more resources, we just do it, right? Because it needs to be done and we want to make better clinicians and we want to help these people be successful. But one conversation I try to have pretty early with them is When someone's struggling, we Maia Dorsett: Yeah. Leaugeay Barnes: all know it. Not only do we know it, the students all know it. we're not hiding anything from anybody. So I try to have a conversation with them and say, look, you're making progress. We're still moving forward. This is the positive. When we when we have no progress for several weeks, then we're gonna have a conversation about about your progress not progressing and then maybe you need to step out. I mean, maybe they have different priorities right now. If they're a single parent and you're trying to juggle all of that. I get it. I was that person, a single parent living in poverty. And so, you know, maybe food is your priority right now and not some things we can help if we know about it, but people are can be very not want to talk about those things, so it's hard to dig that deep. I one of my students became homeless in the middle of the program, and her her progress just dropped like a rock. And I'm like, what is going on with you? I'm now homeless. my god, how can we help? So we were able We might think of our jobs as educators, but I think the other piece is not shame in failure. So if you don't pass the program the first time, come back next year. Go through the application process. You know all the questions on the test now. Should do great, right? And maybe Maia Dorsett: Yeah. Leaugeay Barnes: it takes somebody two times. I had a guy come through

and it was a battle. I kept saying to him, like you're not there, you're not where you need to be, you're not progressing. I mean, it was horrible. It was a horrible, horrible conversation. I had one of my faculty members. members in here trying to mentor them and then you know the guy is crying I'm like I'm not good with this here's a box of tissue and then Maia Dorsett: Haha. Leaugeay Barnes: he comes back a year later a completely different person like he took no ownership no responsibility for his part came back had completely changed which is rare this is rare I have people who come back through but very rarely do they self-reflect And changed their entire approach. And he was very open with the class. I don't out them. They have to out themselves and say, so actually, this is everybody knows in Hawaii, but I'm not going to say anything. And he's like, actually, this is my second time through. And she's right, listen to her. And you know, they will get you through. He went from, I said, Do you want to be drowning like this? You know, you're like that person that's bubbles in the water, and some lifesaver is trying to drag you onto shore. Or do you want to be the person that's at the top of the class that is the life? And helping people be successful. Because we have a philosophy in our program that it's everybody's responsibility to help people be successful until they themselves basically are tapping out, you know, we'll tell them time to tap out. But not attaching that shame. And he said the best thing I ever did was come back through the program. I didn't want to, but I came through the entire program. And now is like everybody's like, who is that guy? Right? It's it's crazy. But I think again, trying to take the shame. Shame away from taking longer to get through the same process. I'm a slow learner, so I get it, but look, I'm a slow learner and I got to where I am right now. I have a doctorate, I have done all these things, and so if I can do it, I have a different mentality than than some educators who, I'm the smartest person in the room. I'm like, no, I'm the most average person in the room and I made Hilary Gates: Yeah. Leaugeay Barnes: it, so you can Maia Dorsett: huh. Leaugeay Barnes: make it as well, right? I might even be a little under average, but that's okay. We can still make it, right? but really what one thing that I wanted to talk about, Hillary, was mentorship of our young, which we haven't even talked about, but that's okay. Hilary Gates: Yeah. No, let's do that because I was gonna yeah, was gonna ask you about what helped and then also go ahead and talk about because you were telling me about a new educator you hired, what are you doing as the director now in your program to to help that first or second year educator and think back to when Loger was doing that too and maybe didn't have that help. So go ahead. Leaugeay Barnes: I don't think we're great about mentoring people. I know we aren't. We sink or swim, throw you

out, you've you succeed or you fail. And I think people just, you know, a lot of people are just like, I'm over it. I mean, my superpower is perseverance. I mean, to a fault. I will not quit, even no matter I'm I'm just not gonna quit. So I'm gonna keep being in that uncomfortable position where a lot of people are just like, like I'm over it. I'm I don't have any more energy to spend on this and I'm gonna do the best. best I can, you know, regardless. So when I became a program director, you know, first of all you're you're a clinician and you think that's hard. Then you become an educator and you're like, being a clinician is the easiest thing in the world because all I had to do is worry about what I knew. Now I have to worry about what all these students know and some of them don't want to know it, right? They just want to pass the class. Now I'm a program director and now I have I'm one more step removed and I have to take care of all these educators that may some when I First, I became a program director, they had all been teaching for more than 25 years. And they're like, What do you know? You you're like four years teaching, and I'm like, Uh-oh. And so I had to let them fail before they would sort of listen to me. But once that happened, I started hiring more people. I'm like, we need to mentor these people, we need to talk about how to educate, you know. I started with team teaching, and nurses use this a lot, but we don't. Why? Because we're used. The stepchild in the institutions that we work, you know, we don't require a degree, so we're not considered academic. even if we have a degree available, we don't require it because the profession doesn't require it. You know, the colleges kind of look down upon us a little bit, and so I just kind of took it upon myself to be there and you know, not get paid to sit there. Because when I first started teaching, I was like, I have no idea how to. do this, how do I interact with students? How do I do Socratic questioning? How do I engage them? I just get up, you know, and you see them. So we would team teach different pieces and they brought a lot that I hadn't thought of as well to your point of, you know, I haven't been in paramedic school for a while. So they're bringing a fresher perspective on that side. Over the years that has evolved into a more, you know, now I try to split the workload if I can. And so both people are being paid. The colleges never like team teaching, but you know what? I don't care. I'm gonna do it anyway. And you know, if we can get to a place where we're all willing to give a little bit, even if we don't have that mentality of I have to get paid to breathe. Like if I have one of those people that I have to get paid to breathe, I already know it's gonna be a problem. And I get it, we should all get paid for our time, but sometimes to make to to make the outcomes better, we just give a little bit, right? Little bit of altruism or a little bit of charity, and we're gonna help support our other instructors so that they can feel comfortable and start learning through a less painful pathway than we did, you know. And of course, now we write down all our scenarios. That's always been, you know, kind of difficult for people because they want to use the craziest one they just had. And what I found interesting is like I said, I have a great instructor now that I just hired, very takes a lot of Initiative gets it. But I had one that didn't work out so well not that long ago, and I'm like, what did I do wrong? What did I do wrong in that relationship? That what could I have done to help maybe make that transition better for all of us? because I do have high expectations. they are high, most people will rise to them, but again, that emotional regulation when they don't, again, I gotta work on that. But I think that newer instructor, I see very clearly when sh her expectation is, they already know this. I'm like, they don't know this. This is foundational knowledge. You have to go even backwards deeper, you know, into like think like you're doing EMT school and then if they're getting things right then you know that that foundation is there and you can move forward quickly. But yeah, so it's I think team teaching is one good way to help mentor. Maia Dorsett: I I think that's a great takeaway. because I think we don't put people in the field without them doing a internship where and if you think about the gradation of a a credentialing process, right? So first they have some way that they learn the basics like the equivalent of an educator course, right? Then they go into the field and they're a third writer, and they're there and first they're observing, then they're doing, and they're having graded responsibilities until they can do those things independently and then those things become more automated. and they learn the process and then they get to kind of do stuff independently. And I think in kind of the low bandwidth world of EMS education, it's hard to find the time and space for succession planning and really mentoring Leaugeay Barnes: Exactly. Maia Dorsett: people into those roles. but I think even if you think about the smallest thing, right? You can't be mad at somebody for not debriefing your scenarios in a way that you want them to if you weren't there the first several times, taught both right, like teaching them how it's done, like or get soliciting their ideas. letting them do that and then giving them valuable feedback on what they could do better from all the different perspectives. this is normal in other education, right? Hillary was a high school teacher, Leaugeay Barnes: Yeah. Maia Dorsett: you're a student teacher, somebody watches you educate, they give you feedback, they don't like put a student teacher in the room and they're like, You're the program director now, see figure it out. there is that process. And so I, you know, in addition to Constantly doing professional development. I think

this idea of just because I was thrown into the deep end of the pool without a life, you know, a raft, I don't need to do that to others. And then I think this is like one concrete thing that somebody, if you're an educational leadership, if you're a current educator, if you can't identify who the person who's gonna take your job is and you haven't told that taught them how to take your job, there's a problem, right? There's a problem for the program. Hilary Gates: So Maya, thanks for that takeaway because it's a really fantastic thing for our audience to be able to hear the things that have worked for us and hopefully you know stop listening to this podcast and go implement it in their classroom. I know another thing that w came to me and then I'll ask Rob and Leger to weigh in as well. So one of the things I heard you all discussing is this idea that we screw up an educational scenario where we teach something and forget forget it next year and try it again and say, I remember doing this wrong last time and I forgot. Maia Dorsett: Yeah. Hilary Gates: And back in the day before technology was as ubiquitous as it is now, I just had a notebook that I kept next to my my desk, my teacher desk when I was teaching in a high school setting, that was like, don't do this next time, or notes for next time. And in high school, especially this very similar to EMS, right? You're teaching the same material, especially if you're teaching in the same grade level. I got to teach Homer's Odyssey, you know, 18 times in Maia Dorsett: Okay. Hilary Gates: in 10th grade classes. So you you remember the things that went well and the things that didn't well didn't go well and what you want to tweak for the next year instead of just opening up your very easy PowerPoint or your vault or your your folder that says Odyssey or that says airway or whatever and grabbing the same lesson plan you did the same and and then doing it in the same way. So I really benefited from that and I was thanking my past self and saying, good job, Hillary, you wrote something down and you fixed it and made it better the next time. Rob, what's something you remember in your early journey or maybe now, a tip that you would give educators? Rob Lawrence: Well, I think I'm gonna gonna major on the mentorship thing, of course, in the various roles I have now in operational leadership, being part of mentorship programs, whether it's you know NAMT's Lighthouse program and we just graduated to the next cohort, which I'm exceptionally excited about. other programs are running out there. if you're not mentoring somebody and you're in a position of leadership, whether it's educational leadership or operational leadership, you must do. Go out and find someone and and take them to the next level. because it's how we pay this forward and how we actually maintain standards. And going back to you know the discussion we had right at the start, it's how we don't end up, with that negativity, that sour nature, that you know, that hostile environment. We've got to bring people on because let's face it, we're not gonna be here forever and we need to prep the next generation. So mentorship all the way. Hilary Gates: And Rob, thank you for being my mentor. Rob Lawrence: You're welcome. I'm still waiting for the check to arrive though. Maia Dorsett: Yeah. Hilary Gates: peace. I thought we were past that. let's give Rob Lawrence: Ha ha. Hilary Gates: the last word to Loge, in terms of you know, a tip or a trick or something you've been thinking about lately that you're proud of that's helped your new educators succeed. Leaugeay Barnes: Well, first I would say you brought up Homer's Odyssey, I didn't, but I believe that's where the word mentor came from. Hilary Gates: my gosh, yes. Well done. Mentor, that's right. That's who mentor was staying at home waiting for Odysseus Leaugeay Barnes: Yeah. Hilary Gates: to come home and he was trying to help Telemachus, Odysseus' Wow, thank you. Maia Dorsett: Zane. Hilary Gates: Well done. Leaugeay Barnes: So but I would just say, you know, stay curious, stay open, be willing to fail. And if we all do that, you know, we create that culture and frankly that mentorship culture should I try to create it all the way down through my program. The paramedics to the EMT students, even out on the truck, you know, when I'm with an EMT and they're all worried because it's might be a bad they have had bad experiences. I'm like, look, we're a team, we're a crew. If you see something, say something. something we're you know we'll deal with it and I think we have to create if we create that at the top it's gonna work its way down into that culture and then er hopefully all of patient care gets better, right? Because of what we're doing and that's our goal, right? Is improving patient care. Rob Lawrence: Wow, well, what an amazing discussion once again this month. And you've given us some really cool takeaways, Loger, all the way from the islands, all the way to our friends on the east coast there and around the world. And I know this is gonna be listened to and absorbed. So thank you very much for your inputs. also thank you to Hillary and to Maya for another amazing discussion. Before we go though, last month EMS Education lost a legend, and that of course was our friend Dr. Ray Fowler. And Dr. Ray was of course one of the original guests on the EMS Educator podcast, and we're forever grateful and thankful that we got a chance to record him and his thoughts. And that will be available, of course, in the show notes too. We've republished it once already. But he will be missed and lamented by many. And if you've been watching your own social medias over the last month, you will have seen many, many eulogies and fond fond remembrances of Dr. Ray Fowler, the original eagle. So on that note, thank you to everybody for being a part of this month's EMS Educator podcast. As always, please make sure that you like and subscribe. Remember that we are wherever you get your podcast from and we're also on YouTube so you can watch, listen Listen and watch. That's it. That's been another edition of this month. See you next month from us all. Bye for now.