A few years ago, I was chatting with my supervisor about Residence Life Student Staff Training. I was in the planning stages of drafting everything for July and August and she was gushing about how it was her favorite time of the year. I remember looking at her deadpan in the face and saying, “Really, because I hate it. It’s probably my least favorite time of year.” She looked at me like I was out of my mind. I’m pretty sure she was questioning why she appointed me to lead student staff training that year. And I was questioning if I was in the right functional area.
Here’s the thing. I don’t actually hate student staff training now, but I did loathe it for years. Within most departments I’ve existed in, or from peers I’ve talked to about how frenetic August can be, I keep coming back to the same question:
Why do we cram every possible thing we can possibly think of into marathon days of training that will seemingly never end? Why do we perpetuate training schedules that leave us feeling drained and utterly exhausted by the time we get to move-in weekend?
If your experience as a hall director is or was anything like mine, it meant engaging in three weeks of professional staff training starting at the beginning of July, followed by another week with our senior-most student leadership, followed by two to three weeks of training with Resident Assistants. And, these weren’t the typical weeks of 9:00-5:00 pm days – they consisted of 10-13 hour days being in rooms with 100-215 people, getting talked at and presented with an overwhelming amount of information. They would also consist of eating every meal together, too. Even for someone who is incredibly social, it was enough to make me live, laugh, loathe August Res Life.
Given that I actually have a love for Residence Life, I had somewhat accepted that this is what August would always look like for me. I would forgo personal plans, weekend time, and evenings all in the name of door decs and Behind Closed Doors. Then, I ended up working at a school that must pay its live-in staff hourly, where the work week is capped at 37.5 hours and overtime is limited to duty-response. When I first started working in this structure, I panicked. My first question was, how do you train and prepare your staff?
Answer: You do it differently. You have 37.5 hours a week over the course of 3-4 weeks to train your entire staff (professionals, grads, and undergraduate students) using no weekend time, no evenings, and limiting how much time you spend on certain topics. It means you have to think about what your staff need to know to open the residence halls, instead of training them on what you think they should know. It means saying no to campus partners who “want to get in front of the RAs” during training. It means letting go of sessions that we do as a field that take up massive amounts of time and have elements of trauma bonding – I’m looking at you, Behind Closed Doors – and re-thinking how you deliver content, learn, and practice for the RA role. It means working with your professional staff to facilitate on-going training during the first term of the school year in weekly staff meetings. It means having a hard stop to training days at 5:00 pm and prioritizing commitments and balance outside of work – because our lives don’t stop just because it’s August.
Because every institution is different, paring down a training schedule is going to differ from department to department, but some content will remain the same regardless of where you work. At my current institution, in assessing needs, we found that keeping content related to reporting, care, wellness, conduct, documentations, and community-building was vital, as these are things student leaders have to know on day one as RAs. It meant spending more time doing hands-on practice like case-study discussions and role playing, and sessions like visits from various campus offices would need to be sprinkled throughout the year in department or student staff meetings, purely due to limited time. We also realized that the key to making sure our student staff weren’t burnt out by move-in was to prioritize time in the schedule to build community and have fun. Instead of running a session on how to plan a program, we worked as a professional staff team to plan a mini program afternoon where our student staff could get to know one another, and learn the different things needed to consider when planning a program. This served as a learning experience and had elements of self-care infused into it.
It can be an initial challenge to pare down a training schedule when our field often socializes us into feeling like we have to cover everything, all at once. But, if you can break down training so that days are approachable with no commitments before 9:00 am, after 5:00 pm, or on the weekends, you might find that you actually live, laugh, love August Res Life.
Ways to make the most of student staff training and pare down a schedule:
Perform a departmental analysis of sessions that you must keep in July/August training, what sessions/information can be covered in staff meetings, and what sessions/information can wait until the following term. When you formulate the schedule for summer, only include sessions that have to be done prior to your first student staff meeting. For any sessions that can wait, develop facilitation guides as a department and go over content in staff meetings throughout the year, depending on the content.
Consider ways to consolidate sessions or implement activities that serve more than one purpose, e.g: Have RAs role play responding to a conduct incident, and then have observing RAs write their incident report based off of that role play instead of running two separate sessions – incident report writing AND incident response practice.
Work with your professional staff and returning RAs to plan a mini-program night based on student leader interests and self-care. This can not only allow for student staff bonding, but can give RAs strategies for how to practice self-care in their roles throughout the year.
Implement more small-group sessions in individual staffs, instead of large group sessions, facilitated by professional staff in a carousel format – this reduces overstimulation and can save time when compared to all-staff, large sessions.
Consider asynchronous training opportunities: If you are able to have your student staff spend time learning about content through the use of online modules, consider which material can be learned through self-guided opportunities prior to in-person training over the summer, leaving your August schedule less packed with content.
Evaluate: Are sessions like Behind Closed Doors really the most effective and timely way to learn? What might happen if you transition to case studies, small group discussion and reflection, or put a more positive spin on this session – role playing positive situations (i.e. 1:1 interactions) in the same way you practice for crisis response?
Vary up learning strategies to make training more fun and approachable: implement case studies, role-playing, teach-back opportunities, skills labs/workshops, and reflection activities instead of conducting training sessions in a large lecture format.
Work with your professional and graduate staff to make it so that each pro/grad has an admin day or afternoon during training to be able to work on tasks not related to training, and take time away from training – almost like a break from August.
Consider what sessions and content can be covered by returning staff, and give them an opportunity to present, lead a discussion, panel, or skills-based workshop so that your full-time staff can allocate time to other tasks and sessions.
