The Office: The Voice

Day 3 of the 31 for 21Challenge

Your brain is wired to process information in the first several seconds of encountering someone or something. You react instinctively - safe or not? Attractive or not? Trustworthy or not? Friendly or not? Worth $25.99 or not? Boom, boom, boom… an impression is formed that quickly.

I’ve read that the brain processes 400 billion bits of information in a second. I’ve also read 20 million billion. I’m not sure that it matters – they might even be the same number, I don’t know – but it’s obvious that your brain is taking in a lot of information in a very short time. And then it stores it. 

This is why we teach our first year Personal Development students how to make a good first impression. It’s why we’re careful to dress professionally for visitors in the front office. It’s why we select the type of people we do who make up our staff. Every second, we’re sending unspoken messages about who we are to everyone we encounter.

First impressions are important. They linger.  And many times, there is not going to be an opportunity to make a second impression. 

Your first impression of Shepherds College may very well have been a phone call to our main office. The voice you heard fired off all your billions of brain neurons and you made a decision about us immediately.

Now, I have, on occasion, answered the main line and I may owe some of you an explanation. I’m not a professional operator. I write most of the day and I can crawl pretty deep inside my head. I’m also fairly sure that the depth of my concentration interferes with my neural activity because I’ve answered the phone by saying, “Hi Honey,” “Good morning, Dairy Queen,” and “How can you help me?”  If you were the person on the other end of the line, please call back and let the real operator make a better first impression.

The real operator is Joy Bresson and she’s a great auditory representative of Shepherds.

She’s been answering phones for fifteen years. She knows how to handle multiple lines, even if four of them are ringing at the same time. If you’re the fourth call and she has the three others on hold, you will never know it by her tone of voice. She remains calm and good-natured.

If you need to talk to someone in the college, but don’t exactly know the right person to help you, Joy will patiently find the correct staff member for you.

Joy is also incredibly easy to talk to. I know this from years of sharing the back of the office with her.  She’s a natural listener who actually hears the person she’s talking to. Pertinent and caring questions always follow the conversation and she’ll remember the discussion days, weeks and months later. Staff share private matters with her, visitors open up about personal concerns and callers feel comfortable enough to talk to her about prayer issues and emotional struggles.

Joy, simply by doing her job with excellence, sends the message that Shepherds College is professional, competent, patient and caring.

If that’s what you feel about Shepherds College after one phone call, your first impression is accurate.

Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.

Teacher Tuesday: A Meeting of the Minds

Day 2 of the 31 for 21 Challenge

Not only is it Teacher Tuesday on the blog, but it’s also Teacher Tuesday at Shepherds College.

Every Tuesday at noon, the faculty and staff meet in the conference room for discussion and training. Today, the Residential Life Staff and the Academic Advisors met for an hour, and I was invited to attend. On alternating weeks, the faculty will meet. This time serves several important purposes:

1.       The staff gets to fellowship!  For a short period, they get to break away from being teachers, counselors, managers and disciplinarians and just focus on being co-workers, peers and friends. They each bring their lunches, and the room smells wonderfully of things like homemade Caesar salads, Subway sandwiches, and watermelon. They chat about upcoming weddings, babies, the Packer game and Pinterest.

2.       They pray and invite God into their thoughts, their conversation and their day.

3.       Announcements are made. Today they talked about upcoming staff training, an atypical class schedule for October 26^th and a Horticulture Field Trip on October 19^th for Joe, Daniela, Sean and Donovan.

4.       We have a Preview Day coming up! On October 12^th, parents, prospective students, teachers and any other interested parties are invited to campus to learn more about our unique program. Today, the staff talked about the schedule of events and worked out which 1^st year students will host our visitors. These hosts will sit at the lunch table with the prospective students to make them feel comfortable and welcome, talk to them about their experiences at Shepherds, and take them to the Bolthouse Center after the meal to play games while their parents attend more meetings.

5.       Shepherds College is a ground-breaking program for young adults with intellectual disabilities. There are other programs out there that are similar, but none just like us. We are constantly trying to improve, so we set the bar high and then keep raising it. This means we are continuously learning, continuously growing, and continuously pushing our limits. This means training. 

Today, Mrs. Konopasek taught the staff an exercise called Circles of Control using R.E.A.L. teaching methods.

            Mrs. Konopasek had staff stepping in and out of hula hoops in response to verbal examples of things a student might or might not have control over. When “your breakfast” was stated, the staff stepped into the hula hoop to show that they were in control of what they ate; when “your height” was stated, the staff stepped out of the hula hoop to show that it was something out of their control. 

            She then passed around an “I’m in Charge” handout designating feelings and actions that we can or cannot control – green for go (yes, I can control it!) and red for stop (No, I can’t control it!). By learning this lesson on control, students will grow to understand that we can influence people by our words and actions, but ultimately we cannot control them.

            The staff then paired off to talk about ways the circle of control can be taught and reinforced in the Residential Life and Academic/Advising settings.

            In past meetings, Mrs. Konopasek taught a process written about by Michelle Garcia Winner called Social Behavior Mapping. She revisited this topic and showed the staff how to use the Circles of Control in conjunction with Social Behavior Mapping for an effective visual presentation of the consequences of trying to control others. 

Miss Houk ended the meeting by asking the staff to apply what they learned about Circles of Control toward specific issues that arise with the students in the classrooms and living areas.

It’s not every day that I can leave work wiser and empowered with knowledge. I now feel adequately prepared to go home and take on my teenage daughter. She may be outside my hula hoop, but I just picked up the skills needed to map her social behavior.

The students aren’t the only people learning at Shepherds College.

 
Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.

Being a Buddy

Since October is National Down Syndrome Awareness Month, I thought I would do two important things:

1.       Accept the 31 for 21 Blog Challenge, and

2.       Tell you about the Down Syndrome Buddy Walk

Six years ago, Tricia, from the blog Unringing the Bell, had an idea for raising awareness during National Down Syndrome Awareness Month.  She challenged bloggers to write every day for the 31 days of October to draw attention to Trisomy 21.

Since over 12% of Shepherds College students have Down syndrome, I thought I would accept the challenge and do what I can to make people aware that not all productive members of society have a mere 46 chromosomes per cell.

For a list of the other bloggers writing for the 31 for 21 Challenge, please visit Michelle’s blog, Big Blueberry Eyes. Link these blogs to your Facebook and Twitter pages and help us promote acceptance and inclusion of people with Down syndrome all over the country.

One way Shepherds College does this every year is by participating in the Down Syndrome Buddy Walk at the Milwaukee County Zoo. Students, staff and parents walk the trails through the zoo wearing Down Syndrome Awareness Month t-shirts to draw attention to the cause and promote inclusion between friends of every ability.  This Sunday, Shepherds College had a noticeable presence there with 45 people in attendance!

Our students enjoy taking part in the walk. They learn that they can make a difference, even change the way a society thinks, by the contribution of their time, energy and care. They also have the opportunity to witness a community banding together to support people with disabilities – just like them.

Love, support and acceptance are sweet, sweet things - so necessary to feel in our lives, and so essential to generously offer to others. 

Another important lesson learned at Shepherds College.

Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.