I'm Not A Good Teacher

We have, on our camp, certain officer who have volunteered to receive extra training and have become Field Training Officers, or FTO's for short.

My mind is so disorganized that I know I would make a lousy teacher, so I never volunteered. Anything anyone has learned from me just fell out of my head by accident.

Last year while I was in my yearly recert training, the head training guy came up to me and said "People tell me that you are the go-to guy down in the Hive." I shrugged. It's true on our shift just because I have been down there so long I know how to do almost everything. He went on to say "We don't have any FTO's down there on your shift. We really need someone who can train the new people down there. Will you sign up for the class?" I shrugged again then said I'd do it.

I don't know why. Maybe I figured once in awhile I would actually teach somebody something useful by accident and it would keep them from getting hurt. Maybe I was just stroking my own ego.

So I waited for them to get me in the class.

And I waited.....

And I waited......

And I waited some more.

And they never sent me.

I'm pretty certain that now that I have actually made the decision to go somewhere else that I will get a notice saying they are sending me to FTO training. It's an almost dead certainty.

Tonight Chucky and I were stuck with a whole house full of utilities (except for Windows, doing his night in the bubble) and two OJT's. Sergeant Bees sent the OJT's with Chucky and me out to do rec, since they needed experience with the cuffs.

One thing you do alot of on rec is cuffing and uncuffing so we let them do most of it.

Dang, that sucked. They were so slow at it they put us way behind on getting rec out and we ended up only doing two rounds. It's not their fault. They haven't done it eight hours a day forever like we have. But it was still extremely hard to just stand there and watch them. Chucky and I were both dancing around, trying to remain calm and just give advice and not take them out of their hands and say "Here! Let me do it!" They needed the experience.

We both tried giving them advice and imparting our own pearls of wisdom about the best way to do the job and how to stay safe.

For the most part, they just stared at me like I was speaking Chinese.

I hope they did learn something.

Even if it was by accident.