Wayne Zeman's Page

Old Becomes New- A look at Training Programs

There is a song by the Real McKenzies by that name, and the last verse of the song goes like this;

"And if you hang around long enough,

You'll experience really cool stuff,

You'll see that old becomes new,

Then new becomes old,

Til old becomes new again"

Like Bobby Halton said at FDIC this year, "we are in a time of great change". It seems like the changes are coming at us fast and furious with…

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Some would say it is a fine line between being an aggressive firefighter and being a reckless one. While that may have some truth to it, I feel that the main difference between the two is knowledge. Knowledge gained through education, experience and judgment.

Education is the first one I will address because it has to come first. We don’t send untrained people out to fight fires, we educate them first. Of course this is done to varying degrees throughout the fire service, whether it…

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What is it that you consider Brotherhood? Is it confined to duty hours? Is it all the time, but mainly for your crew or shift? Just your department? Local firefighters that you know?

 

Or does it extend to every firefighter everywhere, career, volunteer, black, white, purple, or not? If not, why in the world not?

Do we not share the same passion, the same vocation? Does fire not burn with the same intensity in Marlboro Mass., Kingsbury IN, Melbourne AU, London, New York,…

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I sometimes bite off more than I can chew. We all do that from time to time, but I am wondering if I am a special kind of stupid at the moment!



Not only am I working on my presentation for FDIC 2014 ( I hope it gets approved!) but have taken on teaching an Instructor 1 class this fall.



On top of that, I hope to give my presentation to the IVFA district and the local Chiefs association this fall.



Now it looks like we may hold a recruit academy yet this year too!… Continue

I was reading an article today about the single biggest problem with America's workforce. Engagement. The author of that story feels that engagement with your job is the worst problem with our workforce. I tend to agree with him.





It is the same for the fire service. The bottom line is engagement. In short, are you innovative and willing to work toward bettering the fire service? are you simply going through the motions? Or are you actively seeking ways to undermine… Continue