I retired recently and for that I’m happy
I’ve had time to contemplate jobs, careers, and life experiences
It’s got me re-thinking the following careers: cops, teachers, social workers.
Why these careers?
Because they generally parallel my jobs/careers since I’ve been employed as the following: mall cop, auxiliary cop, student teacher, after-school program coordinator, community organizer, bureaucrat, grant writer and advocate for affordable housing, economic development and mental health (just to name a few).
I’ve had the opportunity to work with amazing people pursuing noble endeavors. However, in retrospect, I’m experiencing the following emotions:
Tiredness and frustration
A gnawing sense of untapped potential and wasted time
A lack of “return-on-investment” ROI and productivity. The phrase “the hurrier I go, the behinder I get” keeps coming to mind.
So I’m re-thinking careers in the fields of criminal justice, education and social work/community development. I present the following considerations:
Infuse each of these jobs (cop, teacher, social worker/organizer/advocate) with a focus upon being a mentor & life coach who has the tools and flexibility to actually make a difference in the mission of their job descrptions. In sum, I advocate more person-centric rather than program-centric in these professions.
Consider some practical applications of this shift in focus:
Cops:
Less cruising around with a vague sense of preventing crime. Work more directly one-on-one with members of the community who have a documented history of anti-social behavior and present the greatest risk to society. Ask any chief of police and he/she will tell you that it’s a comparatively small percentage of the community (even in large urban areas) that have the greatest liklihood of continued criminal activity. From my own experience as a mall cop, I was always on the lookout for criminal activity but it was always reactive. Many a disorderly youth was escorted from the mall and many of them were repeat offenders who got into fights every weekend. Wouldn’t time and resources be better spent getting to the root causes of why they fight and shoplift?
Teachers:
Less lecturing and classroom management and more one-on-one tutoring of students sharing the teachers affinity for the subject. Follow the mantra “when the student is ready to learn, the teacher can teach”. Less teaching for the test and more nurturing of lifetime learners who can think critically and analytically. Figure out what is blocking the students learning and coach them to fulfill their highest potential in the subject. Using myself as an example, I could have mastered mathematics if only I had a math sherpa helping me climb up that math mountain. Instead, I was always that kid stuck in chapter 1 while the other kids were in chapter 3. Likewise, history and social studies always came easy to me and I would love the opportunity to unlock the joy of history/social studies for the student who was overwhelmed. But that’s impossible in a large class setting where maintenance of order takes prescedence over mastery of subject. Lastly, mentoring/coaching format is more conducive to experiential, hands on learning that the lecture, reading feedback loop.
Social workers/community organizers & advocates:
Addictions persist, overdoses happen, clients fall-thru-the-cracks, poverty cycles remain unbroken, crime continues, neighborhoods & cities continue to wallow in blight, decline and distress despite valient but ineffective uplifting endeavors and well meaning polcies.
So what’s missing?
The one-on-one, person-to-person, get-to-the-root-of-the-problem channelling of time, energy and resources. As described concerning the afore mentioned careers, focus on the person rather than formulating policy. Incentives for improvements and changing of circumstances are important but what is more important is taking that fundamental first step to determine if there is a willingness to change. This applies to persons, families, neighborhoods, cities, states and the nation. Programs, incentives and marketing campaigns without a genuine desire to change are doomed to fail. I recall the times I led neighborhood clean ups only to wake up to litter filled streets the next day. I managed after school programs in public housing sites that benefitted the participants but the long term impact was overwhelmed by rising crime rates and apathy. I coordinated commercial improvement marketing campaigns overshadowed by much larger forces of economic decline. It’s been my experience that unless every endeavor and every initiative is fueled by a sincere trust between the mentor/coach and the recipient, the results fall short of objectives and longevity is lacking. I applaud news announcements of well intentioned community efforts be they soup kitchens, coat collections etc. but I’m perplexed by how there seems to be no comprehensive, long-term sustained advancement. It intrigues me how a military campaign would never be waged on such a scatter shot format.
For this reimagining of careers and service delivery to be truly effective and rewarding for both providers and recipients, the following must be in place:
Trust & Integrity
Everyone must feel that everyones best interests are at stake. One-on-one mentorship with plenty of time and energy expended by all participants is the most cost-effective path to measurable results. This re-definition requires an all-in, full-court-press approach and not the usual half hearted, Monday thru Friday, press conference followed by radio silence approach. Everyone in the relationships (be they the cops-criminals, teachers-students, social workers-clients) must know that they “have-eachothers-backs”.
Accountability & Consequences
Those who provide the services and implement the programs designed to fulfill the missions of their respective careers must be held accountable. Likewise, the receivers of services and the beneficiaries of programs must be accountable. There must be consequences for their actions (or their failure to act). There must be room for stumbling but there also must be a recognition of the point at which “good-money-after-bad” has created a financial/energy sinkhole. We must be alert to the danger of the “sunken cost syndrome” trap in which we keep funding and exerting energy in the hopes of achieving a better outcome. Everyone must be clear eyed about the reality for the need for mandates when cajoling, suggesting and recommending fails to result in an acceptable return-on-investment in resources, time and enegy. In a worst case scenario, if there is a potential for harm to oneself, others or the community at large, we should not shrink from mandating behaviors. In the carrot/stick equilibrium, the “carrot” is the re-orientation to a mentoring/coaching format. However, it will be for naught if there is no “stick” component when required by the circumstances. Those circumstances might include, for example, repeated absences, violations, fraudulent or disruptive behavior or in worst case scenarios danger of harm to self or others.
Flexibility with Reasonable Oversight
If the careers in law enforcement/criminal justice (including probation and parole officers), education (including teachers & counselors) and social workers (including all sorts of counselors) were to shift into mentorship-coaching person-centered roles, it will require recruitment of persons to these professions who are oriented to this approach. In the long run, this reorientation will bolster recruitment and retention in these fields because the employees will derive a greater sense of satisfaction and fulfillment knowing they truly are “making a difference”. Greater flexibility will require heightened oversight to insure that workers entrusted to work on a more personal and programmically fluid basis are held accountable to ethics and accomplishments. The oversight can not be the cumbersome “bean counting” record keeping that accompanies traditional program administration. That said, but there must be independent transparency and oversight to keep everyone honest and protected.
I hope that my reflections offer some fresh perspectives concerning careers that, in my opinion, are way overdue for an overhaul.
Why:
We can’t keep doing things the same way and expecting different results
Just hiring more cops, more teachers and more social workers will not magically cause better results. The day has come when we can not afford to do this.
Recruitment and retention in these fields will only become more challenging unless the format and the culture of these careers change. In the longer run, the candidates for these jobs and the criterias by which we measure success needs to upgrade. Employees in these fields will be less likely to be trapped in the “golden cufflinks” syndrome awaiting the date when they have logged enough years to retire. Employees in these fields will transition from the treadmill of generating reports to more anecdotal, measurable, rewarding success stories of the persons they have assisted during this short time on earth.
And when all of us look back on our life’s journey….isn’t that the only thing that really counts?
Dunn Writes Well 