Often in our classes, instructors comment that it must be great to be a TMS faculty member. It certainly is, but not necessarily for the reasons they assume. Travel can be fun, but is often challenging, airports are miserable, weather is unpredictable. For me, the greatest part of being a faculty member of The Mandt System is YOU!!!
Over the past 8 years it has been my great pleasure to meet individuals who are seeking (voluntarily or having been “volun-told”☺ to become a Mandt System instructor. The work they are doing is already challenging, often serving individuals with very challenging behaviors. Their jobs require patience, diligence and often occurs in very poor working conditions with scarce resources. Instructors come in dissatisfied with how their systems address the needs of individuals receiving services and with the desire to learn how to better serve the individuals in their care and how to teach their colleagues how to do a better job as well.
What is truly amazing to me is that so often these caregivers are working multiple jobs as service providers and are often spending their personal time engaged in similar activities! So many instructors spend their SPARE time doing volunteer work for veterans, churches or schools, in domestic violence shelters or providing emergency services. Most recently I had the pleasure of training two outstanding young men, both of whom work in a facility serving sexual predators, a very challenging population!!! One of the young men is also a foster parent and his love for the youth in his care became quite obvious to all of us in the class. The other young man has endured considerable teasing and harassment, not only from the residents, but even peers, as he grows out his long curly locks to contribute to “Locks of Love”, an organization that provides hair pieces to children who have experienced long term medical hair loss. Neither of these men bragged on themselves, or even shared this information until the end of the week (when conversations with team members became more casual and informal.
I find the participants who come to my class to be truly empathetic, caring, and self-sacrificing. They are great caregivers, but not because of what they learn in The Mandt System. Instead they tend to end up in the classes because of who they are already and their heart to serve others.
In this day and age, when so much of the media attention is on man’s inhumanity to man, it is reassuring to have the privilege to interact with so many people, all across the US and Canada, who demonstrate that the world is full of kind, caring, generous, empathetic people. You make my world much more enjoyable!
The best thing about being a faculty member of The Mandt System, is YOU!!!!
Aaryce Hayes – SVP Operations
