A Professional Custodian

We will be in Casper, tomorrow for the workshops, presenting workshops for the new custodians on what we do and why we are different from the Janitor, as well as Professional Custodian workshops where we discuss how to manage our service instead of letting it manage  us.

We will be reporting each day.

As a long time member, board member, newsletter editor, and workshop presenter of, and for, the WCA, I am trying a different way to contribute this year. I asked for, and was granted Professional Leave from my school district for the purpose of presenting these workshops. I believe strongly that Professional Development is not just for Certified staff, the college educated, or administrators. We in the trades, as users of public money, need PD as well. I thank my employer for that leave.

I have paid the Association’s vendor fee entitling me to present and talk to the custodians attending. We do have some printed material:

A Professional Custodian 2018_Final

Are We Fit

Stay Tuned this week

Custodians by definition are heavily involved in public facility security. With the most recent high profile shooting in Florida, resulting in 17 of our users, dead; we have to be involved in the discussions going on around the country, about security.

I work in a large, modern, very public High School.  It can be described as a school with a multi purpose public event center attached, or an event center that has a school of approximately 600 students attached. I, as one of the athletic/activity/pool operator custodians, am the face of that conflict between access and lockdown. Security is the first thing I deal with on shift, making sure the proper doors are either open or locked down, and the last thing I do before checking out. When a practice is done, the needed doors for use, are locked down. It is a habit, a way of life, to check every door I go by or through. Students, athletes, coaches (the worst), administrators, teachers, officials, and the public are very demanding of their rights to access in public facilities, and very creative at providing for it when we are not there.

Security is a core responsibility for custodians in public facilities, and that demands our professionalism in providing for it.

So lets talk about it. Describe your successes, your failures, your frustrations, your ideas of how we can public facilities accessible, usable, and safe. How many of us are armed? Have access to arms?. Tell us your stories. Lets make custodians part of the discussion.

The Challenge

This is the article that started it all. A coworker and friend was elected Vice-President of the Wyoming Custodian Association. One of the duties of that position is the newsletter. I wrote this, paring it way down to accommodate a 2 page newsletter. But it has served as the basis for everything I do on this subject. This version here, is even more pared down from the original article, because it focuses only on the challenge. It is part of some of the workshop material that I provide at workshops.

Once you issue the challenge, it must be presented. At my Professional Custodian workshops, I always begin by asking; How many of you here think of yourselves as a Professional?

A few tentative hands is what I usually get in response.

What say you?

Seeking comments on the What is this Blog page.

What does it mean to be a “professional” for the public facility custodian?

That my friends is the reason for this blog.

My name is JS (Steve) Sturdevant. I am operating on two tracks with this question:

• As a Contributing Board Member of the Wyoming Custodian Assocation
  • Always presenting a workshop with that title at our annual conference
• As a general focus of interest, research, and internet developer of a process that can be outlined and defined and thus taught in workshops and consults.
  • Working to take the general to the specific.