Continuing-Education Best Practices

Get out of cruise control to maintain professional excellence

By Chris Thurber

“College is the best four years of your life” is a discouraging claim for two reasons: It implies the rest of your life will be disappointing, and it suggests an educational dead end in your early 20s. Fortunately, if you’re committed to being your best, neither of these dim predictions comes true. So, please express condolences to anyone who makes the Best Four Years Claim, then get back to becoming your best self by enjoying some continuing education.

Pexels / George Milton

Like everyone else who works at a camp, summer school, or parks-and-rec program, you landed your job because of the qualifications, experience, and letters of recommendation you possessed at the time you were hired. It’s a laudable, but not long-lasting combination. Jobs evolve, so you need new and refined skills to stay excellent and up-to-date. Careers also evolve. Whether you take a different position within the same organization or look elsewhere, you’ll need new and refined skills to stay marketable. From any professional point of view, continuing education is essential.

Staying Sharp

Even the best knives in the world need sharpening and honing to do their jobs well. An eight-inch Miyabi chef’s knife is an artful masterpiece, made of 133 layers of micro-carbide, powdered steel that is ice-hardened to an incredible 66 on the Rockwell Hardness Scale. New, a knife of this quality is sharp enough to cut a human hair in half, simply by dropping it onto the blade’s cutting edge. Although it will set you back $500 or more, its flowering Damascus pattern, perfectly balanced black ash handle, and ability to slice salmon or sirloin so thin you can almost see through it make it first-rate. Yet, even a Miyabi dulls over time. Like a first-rate professional, it needs maintenance to stay sharp.

Continuing education exists in many forms, each with strengths. Here are the most common and helpful options for camp owners, directors, and senior staff who want to level-up their game:

1. Read broadly. Books, articles, and even blog posts can inspire and inform, whether they are fiction or non-fiction. However, the proliferation of self-published material demands more than reading skill. To trust non-fiction content, you’ll need to vet its author’s credentials, methods, and sources.

Bonus tip: To maximize creativity and minimize bias, read content both within and outside the youth-development space; both within and outside any political, religious, cultural, and ethnic affiliations or identities that are important to you.

2. Listen carefully. Podcasts, radio broadcasts, lectures, educational apps, and casual conversations can all provide facts, opinions, updates, and stories that help gain perspective, make predictions, increase profits, and better contribute to the world. You might even consider learning a new language or finally learning to speak that language you studied in high school.

Bonus tip: Ask a few people you admire what they listen to and where they learn the most, then audition some of their top choices. You’re bound to discover some engaging and enlightening options you otherwise would have never unearthed.

3. Attend conferences. Professional conferences—whether sponsored by an organization related to your chosen profession or focused on an unrelated passion—give you a chance to learn from experts and professional colleagues alike. Sometimes, keynotes and workshops are entertaining but not educational; other times, their educational content is so below or beyond your skill level that you feel bored or beaten. You paid for the conference, so walk out of any presentation that’s a poor fit and catch the second half of something better.

Bonus tip: Pick a year to attend conferences in an allied field, rather than one sponsored by your professional organization. For example, camp professionals might attend conferences sponsored by psychology, business, athletic, artistic, or environmental associations.

4. Study formally. Most professionals discover the gaps in their skills within a few years of starting a new job. The bigger the gap, the better candidate you are for a formal course, certification, or graduate degree, be it in business, management, child development, construction, marketing, employment law, mental health, or something you never imagined would be part of your job.

Bonus tip: Consider some formal study in one or more areas relevant to the jobs of those you supervise. For example, you might never apply the skills you’ll learn in a one-week Wilderness First Responder course, but the course will improve how to manage the providers in your health and wellness center.

 5. Volunteer locally. Volunteer service feels great, supports your community, and teaches you about other systems outside your organization’s familiar circles. Professional people who volunteer also discover how locals view their camp, summer school, or parks-and-rec department; how their organization can contribute more meaningfully to the local economy and culture; and how internal improvements can enhance external connections.

Bonus tip: Invite local professionals in police, fire, and social-services departments to an autumn cookout or winter holiday gathering on your property. Get to know them, give them a tour of your facility, and enjoy breaking bread with them. Not only are such festivities fun, they may also improve the service these professionals provide, when the need arises.

Pexels / Pavel Danilyuk

Earning Credit

Some of the opportunities above offer certificates, certifications, licenses, and continuing-education units. It’s important to know the difference, both for legal and resume-building purposes.

• Certificates are simply a way of documenting your participation in an activity. Sometimes, these are called Certificates of Completion or Continuing Education Credits. They are easy to obtain and they last forever, but because they do not reflect your understanding, competence, or attention during the event, they cannot be applied to any professional licensure or degree program. However, certificates make it easy to tally your attendance and document your participation for others in the same profession.

• Certifications are voluntary, bestowed by non-governmental organizations, and serve to inform the public about your competence in a particular area. They vary greatly in clout, depending on the reputation of the organization that offers the certification. Other professionals, future employers, and the general public may recognize certifications from those organizations that require in-depth study, plus a passing score on a valid and reliable competency assessment. Because skills get rusty over time, most certifications expire after a number of years, although many can be renewed through updated study and a fresh assessment.

• Licenses, like certifications, also require circumscribed study and documented competence. They vary in complexity, prerequisites, and status—from drivers’ licenses to medical licenses. Unlike certifications, licenses are bestowed by governmental agencies (state, provincial, or federal) that grant official permission to individuals who may want to engage in a particular profession, occupation, or activity. Licenses are required to use the professional title associated with that field. To maintain one’s licensure in a professional field, continuing education is required.

• Continuing-Education Units or CEUs, are credits that professionals earn to maintain their license to practice. Many educational organizations offer continuing-education courses, but only those courses approved by licensing bodies and professional associations give CEUs after successful completion. Typically, professional practitioners must meet a range of annual or biannual requirements, including a certain number of CEUs, in order to renew their license.

Documented educational achievement can be both a source of pride and resume-enhancement. Above all, it should be a source of personal gratification, so allocate your professional-development time wisely. And because folks in your organization undoubtedly pursue different continuing-education paths, I recommend each person always share some of what they’ve learned, for everyone’s benefit.

Here’s how to make intra-organizational sharing a habit: At the conclusion of any educational experience—from reading an article in a professional journal to completing a semester-long course—immediately share three, practical takeaways with co-workers. A shared online document is the simplest way to do this, as long as each entry is limited to 150 words. Even more engaging is to take three minutes at the start of the next group meeting to share aloud your three, practical take-aways. One school at which I consulted required faculty to share in one of these two ways before they could submit for expense reimbursement. “I don’t mind paying for individual faculty to have different continuing-ed experiences,” the headmistress told me, “but I want to be damn sure we all benefit.”

Lifelong Learning

Perhaps no form of continuing education is more valuable than on-the-job learning. And although you don’t receive a certificate, a certification, or a CEU from on-the-job learning, it contributes immeasurably to keeping your skills sharp. At times, on-the-job learning may seem casual or automatic, but it’s not. In fact, it has a stringent requirement: strong character.

Meaningful on-the-job learning requires humility, creativity, and perseverance. As you go about your job each day, you must have the humility to own your mistakes and be open to learning from them. You must have the creativity to solve problems and consider alternate methods to achieving a goal. And you must have the determination to follow through, despite the obstacles you encounter. If all these official and unofficial forms of continuing education feel daunting, take heart. You were born with the humility, creativity, and perseverance you need to benefit from on-the-job learning, as well as to earn certificates, certifications, and CEUs.

Don’t believe me? Just imagine toddlers playing with a shape sorter. (You know, those hollow containers with geometric holes and corresponding blocks?) Without any instruction, toddlers’ curiosity compels them to try putting various blocks in the assorted holes. If they fumble with the star-shaped block near the star-shaped hole, they may eventually be rewarded with a comforting clunk as the block falls in. If they try stuffing the round block in the square hole, it won’t fit, but they won’t quit. They’ll keep going, using instinctive trial-and-error and curious resolve, until they find a working match. Seldom do pride, inflexibility, or exasperation impair their learning.

When we are toddler-like in our approach to learning, nearly every experience in life becomes one of continuing education.

Dr. Christopher Thurber is a clinical psychologist, father, and professional educator who has presented keynotes and workshops on five continents. He is the author of two books for parents—The Summer Camp Handbook and The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure—and two video series for young people: Prep4Camp and Prep4School, both of which are hosted on ReachBoarding.com. Learn more on Chris’s website, DrChrisThurber.com.