PRIDE: Developmental

P-R-I-DEVELOPMENTAL-E

Being developmental means being committed to the growth of our students. It also means that, as a team, we need to be looking at our development as a collective, as well as our development as individual parts of that collective. In order for our students to get the best experience and grow to their full potential, we need to ensure that our staff is as strong as possible and that we're continually growing as well.

During this past week's training for the NSO OTLs and grads, we've seen development on several levels within our own group, as well as other groups outside of Rutgers. A good example of the developmental process took place when we visited the "All Hands on Tech!" off-Broadway workshop. During this time, we came together as a group to put on a mini play, and man-oh-man, there's a lot that went into it! At face value, you'd think that we had to master only our own roles (i.e. being a performer, director, set designer, light crew member, etc.). However, in order to effectively put on our show, it was absolutely necessary that we communicated with one another and had a full understanding of each individual role. We ran through it multiple times, learning from our mistakes with each practice, which is one of the most crucial parts in taking on a developmental approach.

Another strong example of this developmental approach surfaced during our tour of St. Peter's Hospital with officials from the hospital's department of security. One of the officials stated that one challenge for the department is making sure that each of their security staff members is on the same page and working at optimal performance, since their department is in charge of maintaining safety throughout the hospital. He said that when someone slips up, it's important to give that person a chance to learn from his/her mistakes. We thought it was great to know that all around, people are committed to helping their staff members grow as strong as they can possibly be, which helps to provide the best experience for anyone, whether they be students, audience members, hospital patients, etc.

-- Adam Carlson, Nina Duong, and Greg Gerken J