Re-Envisioning ResLife Staff Training: Don’t Forget to Train on Having Fun!

Summer training for student staff members is usually jam-packed with learning policies, absorbing information, and acting out real-life crisis scenarios. Although all of this is incredibly important for being a trained student staff member, we often forget that there are many ways student staff members can and should learn to incorporate fun into their roles. I believe that it is incredibly hard for students to go from having a summer break and jump right into long, full days of training about policies, crisis intervention, and what to do when there is an emergency. If we are intentional about training student staff members about the fun aspects of the RA role, the transition from summer break to training would be so much more enjoyable. As higher education professionals, we should value training student staff members about relationship-building, program implementation, and how to have fun boundaries with residents, just as much as we value training around duty, policies, and housing-related procedures. 

Oftentimes, RAs apply to the job, looking forward to the relationship-building aspects, and not implementing university policies. When I am speaking to new RAs, and I ask them about what they are most excited for in their new roles, they often share that the top three job responsibilities they are looking forward to are meeting residents, making bulletin boards, and hosting programs. Rarely, if ever, has a new RA told me that they are most excited to do duty rounds, incident report writing, and enforcing policies. However, at the universities I have experienced RA training at, it seems that training is largely focused on what RAs are least excited about. I simply cannot imagine interviewing for a job, telling the employers all the reasons I was looking forward to having the job, and then it taking two or more weeks for the employer to train me on the reasons I wanted the job in the first place. We train student staff members to support students, create community, and make a residence hall a fun place to live, but oftentimes forget that our student staff members deserve all of this too! By not implementing student staff members’ interests and passions into summer training, we quickly burn them out. 

Now, I am not saying that training student staff members on crisis intervention, policies, and even laws are not of the utmost importance. These topics absolutely need to be taught during training. RAs will always need to be educated on resources available to residents and be heavily trained on what to do if an emergency occurs or a policy is violated. However, I am saying it is important to recognize the “why” behind why most students apply for the job and teach incoming student staff members that their jobs can be very fun. The last thing we want to do during summer student staff training is to have RAs who immediately lose their passion for the work because we fail to get them excited about all the aspects of the job that don’t revolve around policies and crises.

Throughout the school year, I would hope that the bulk of a student-staff member’s work would be relationship-building, not rule enforcement. I would even argue that the sooner RAs make strong relationships with their residents, the less likely residents are to break policies. When student staff training does not highly value teaching RAs about these relationship-building skills, in turn, RAs then see these skills as being less important. In training, we need to focus on how to welcome students into new communities during move-in, how to be an engaging and fun program host, how to have quality in-person conversations in a digital age, and how to be a RA who has strong interpersonal communication skills. These competencies cannot be pushed back to being taught later in the year. During summer training, student staff members need to be trained in how to build a strong sense of community so that they start the school year strong and build resident connections starting the first day of move-in. 

While planning summer training for student staff members, I highly encourage housing professionals to think about the type of work new RAs are most interested in and the type of work throughout the school year we hope RAs will spend the bulk of their time doing. I even encourage asking new RAs what they are most excited for in their roles, and surveying returning RAs about what work they do the most in their roles. With that information, you can tailor training around these results. My recommendation is to spend half-days on training covering topics that include incident and care report writing, mental health and resident concerns, policy enforcement, and abiding by laws. The other half of the day should be spent on topics that student staff members are highly interested in and passionate about. I do not think it is reasonable to ask students to sit through more than half a day of policy-related information and expect them to retain it all and still feel excited about their roles. We also cannot expect student staff members to have amazing move-in programs and build excellent connections with residents right off the bat, without training them on relationship-building skill sets. 

Training student staff members on how to have fun in their roles and how to be excited for the school year needs to be valued as much as training on policies and procedures. Student Staff members should realize that community-building and forming resident relationships are also very important skills to have. By implementing RA’s job interests in training, they will be more excited about the role, move-in, and meeting residents. Student staff trainings can be re-envisioned by valuing why students chose to apply for the role and by not forgetting to train on the fun aspects of being a student staff member.