August 17, 2011

what anth learned in res life training

this week marked the start of our annual round of 5 weeks of training in Res Life.
2 with the Senior Staff (the full-time Hall Directors and graduate level Assistant Hall 
Directors, etc).
1 with the Resident Managers - the undergraduates who run the front desk operations and 
staff. 
2 with the Resident Advisors - the 300ish undergrads charged with leading floors of their peers.


this week is also basketball week at Camp Recky, anth's summer sports camp.
he pulled a muscle on Monday, making him unable to attend for a couple of days. 
yesterday he took a small road trip with his dad to visit his great grandpa.
today he came to work with me.
on the Senior Staff training schedule today were the topics of Dialogue (i.e., getting students to dig into the juicy/meaningful discussions that help them grow as people), supporting academic success in the residence halls, lunch, and an entire afternoon on the philosophy behind, and logistics of, student conduct/judicial work (i.e., how to intentionally and educationally respond to students who have violated policy).


i think anth did a pretty darn good job of sitting quietly in the back and entertaining himself.
mainly on his DS, but sprinkled with bouts of working on his 1st Grade Math Skills workbook that bern and i bought him to keep the neurons firing this summer.
because we are in the business of overseeing 18-22 year-olds living away from home, there were some interesting conversations and comments made in today's sessions. 
as such, i was curious how much of this anth had overheard. 
on the drive home, i asked anth what he had learned today during training. 
he replied that he didn't really understand what he was supposed to be learning, probably because we were adults talking about things that weren't for kids. 
this seemed reasonable to me, but i dug a little deeper and asked him to share anything specific he remembered. 
after 7 hours of training, what were the two gems that stood out in his 6-year-old brain?
1. the fact that someone used to play bingo in class based on things other students did in the room, and
2. the story of how someone responded to two women who panicked and threw their gerbil out of a fourth floor window, lest they get in trouble for being in violation of the no pet policy. 


um. 
awesome. 
apparently, residence life training is truly the thing of nightmares. 
thankfully, we already have a sitter lined up for most of the time that anth is free between summer camp ending this friday and 1st grade starting next Thursday. 
(which, by the way, makes me the parent of a first grader. um. gulp. what?)


back to anth on the car ride home. 
he shared his thoughts on gerbils and the fact that you get to play games in class in college. 
and then he munched on his snack mix for a minute, and offered up his final thought on the matter.
"so, mom, i guess i only understood about 30 percent of what i was supposed to learn in training. which is 3 out of 10. so at least i learned some math." 

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