Saturday before Memorial Day

Forewarning, this post is not about biking or ASL...sorry!

Over the past 10 years I have spent my summers working for a recreation company. That's about 40% of my summers, some of those years I even worked for the company indoors during the winters. I used to have a love hate relationship with this company, but now I can say I love my job. My current position is training and teaching lifeguards the skills they need in an emergency. I also track the training sessions and audit the lifeguards to make sure they are doing their jobs. It's wonderful. I get to interact with teenagers in a mentoring capacity, learn from them as well as myself, and still be apart of the neighbor community aspects of working for a city recreation company.

But why am I telling you this? What makes this job motivate me to update my blog? Good question. One, tomorrow the pools open! It marks another summer starting, swimming into action (pun intended).  The Saturday before Memorial Day has been for me something to look forward to, something to worry about, and something to conquer all at the same time. This year is slightly different. I decided today I can use this summer to grow my social work skills. One of my favorite supervisors , who is now more of a friend and colleague, shared with me his reasons for loving his job. His were completely different than mine, allowing me to see that each aspect of my life can use some social work skills. I will never know it all, no day will ever be the same, and I can always learn from others. I also can always teach others. My friend  also irritated me slightly in that way. He gives off this vibe that he can never be wrong. Yes, he is correct majority of the time when discussing troubleshooting of a pump room. No, that does not mean my method is not going to work. But what does the irritation mean? What happens if I have a student who needs more support services in school, but the parent is a teacher and disagrees with me. How is that going to make me feel. So this year I want to apply some social work perspectives into my recreational lifeguard job. I want to recognize my own bias, add some development theory to analyze my coworkers, and learn more about what drives human behavior. Wish me luck on this endeavor.  Hopefully this assessment will make me both a better social worker and a better lifeguard instructor.