Learning the Ropes

Saturday was my debut lecture where I was teaching the Firefighter 1 and 2 class all by my lonesome.

And it was the incredibly painful (yet very very important) lecture entitled, "Ropes and Knots." In other words, Boyscouts 101.

You can do all sorts of fun (fire service related thank you very much) things with ropes and knots. I enjoyed it so much I somehow became a nationally certified NFPA 1006 Rope Rescue Technician. And by somehow I mean I'm afraid of heights. Heights like I hate standing on chairs.


I wanted to emphasize that ropes and knots are the corner stone of Technical Rescue work and can be damned fun.

Unfortunately, this is hard to do when you have 75 or so powerpoint slides with almost no pictures, and exciting information like the terms, "standing end, working end and running end" for parts of the rope you're using.

Shit, I'm falling asleep just recalling the lecture. I really did feel bad for the students.

So, knowing the material was dry, I decided to use a video clip I used for a Technical Rescue Awareness Class that an esteemed colleague (who has yet to earn a nickname) did for our Fire Instructor II project.

The video went something like this:




So the lecture only took around 1.5 hours of actual lecturing. Apparently this came as a shock to a lot of students. Apparently the Triumvirate don't hold to the mandated 1 min / slide guideline.

Then we learned to tie knots.

The Baldest Triumviate arrived midway through knot tying. He informed me that my bowline really wasn't a bowline (uh huh) and that bowlines should be used for rescue (perhaps 30 years ago, but that's not what is taught in Technical Rescue around the US and overseas).

I prepared for this ahead of time (well not the comment about MY bowline knot, but the rescue part) by trying to emphasize to the students during the lecture what knots are used for what, and what they USED to be used for. Don't how if they got it or I explained it well. Oh well. We'll find out later.

I later found out (after the lecture) that I was also organizing the practicals. I wasn't expecting this. It was also weird having people who taught me fire 1 and 2 here deferring to me. *boggle*

We managed, did the basic This Is How You Tie a Ladder, This Is How You Tie Fire Service Tools, and of course the obligatory Let's Make Sure You Actually Can Tie The Knot Itself practicals.

The fun part (or so I thought) was at the end when we did relay tool tying. It was pretty neat to see who really had the knots and how people did with teamwork, as well as how they responded to a little friendly pressure and competition.

All in all, it was a good day.

And no one messed with My Chair.

(I learned to lock my car)