In high school, I obtained my food safe certification. This was beneficial to have as I spent some time in university serving at Black Iron on Tobiano Golf Course. I learned how to safely handle food. I completed the serving it right certification as a server. When I moved to Alberta I completed the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis agency equivalent, ProServe (4.1). I learned best practices in responsible drinking such as appropriate serving amounts over the duration of the time one is drinking. The knowledge I gained from these certifications has been beneficial working in event management. Often liquor is served at the events I plan and guest safety is of the utmost importance.
I received training on soft and hard skills while working as a part of the summer youth staff at the Sorrento Centre from the leadership team. These skills included communication (4.2), leadership, conflict resolution (4.3), teambuilding and program facilitation (4.4). I learned how to communicated effectively, various leadership styles, how to defuse conflict and facilitate programming. I created the program to deliver these skills to the summer youth staff in my role as children and youth coordinator. For the past three years I have been refining my delivery of these skills to the youth I work with as a LEAP facilitator.
I received specialized training to ensure student safety while working for the Centre for Learning@HOME. This included standard first aid and CPR training (4.5) and crisis prevention training. The skills I learned in these certifications have been instrumental. I’ve learned to stay calm when conflict arises. The content in this certification covered extreme circumstances such as entering homes with negligent or abusive caregivers. I found the content increased my day to day conflict resolution and communication skills as it covered topics such as little and big trauma. This workshop gave me insight that people are responding to all situations in ways that make sense to them. I have learned to be more compassionate because we don’t know everyone’s backgrounds and circumstances. The standard first aid and CPR training has come into play in my role as LEAP facilitator. The youth are often enthusiastic to participate in all activities and this leads to the occasional trip to the hospital. I learned that it is always better to be safe than sorry when making the decision to take someone to receive additional care from a medical professional. This certification also provided me with the opportunity to serve as the advancement department’s safety officer for the 2017-2018 school year.
I have learned many skills during my time at TRU so far. Some of the skills I have learned include organizational, marketing and communication skills. I am a member of the Kamloops Rotary West club and sit on the Iron Sommelier Kamloops 2019 committee. This event is an annual fundraiser. Three sommeliers are tasked with pairing wine for a 5-course meal. Guests vote for their favourite pairing after each course. One sommelier is named Iron Sommelier at the end of the evening. This year’s beneficiary is the Kamloops School of the Arts. My role for this event was to find new sommeliers to compete for the title of Iron Sommelier. The wine supplier fell through this year and the committee thought it would be great to feature our local wineries. This meant having the wineries compete against each other for the title of reigning champion. The committee’s new initiative to include our local wineries shifted my role. My new role included not only getting the wineries on board to participate in the event as a competitor, but also asking them to provide someone to compete and sponsoring the wine that they will pair with for each course. This proved as challenging because some of the wineries don’t have sommeliers on site. I was able to connect with local sommeliers to pair the wine on these wineries behalf. The other challenge was getting the wineries to sponsor all of the wine for the event. This is the first year that our Rotary club has taken on the entire event. Last year, we worked with a supplier that provided all of the wine at cost. When the supplier fell through, it was my responsibility to seek new sponsorship. My time working as an events coordinator on the 2019 Foundation Gala prepared me for this. I was responsible for the raffle and part of the live auction sponsorship for Gala. Rotary is a volunteer driven club and as such, it does not have the same resources that we have at TRU. At TRU we create collateral that is sent to all prospective sponsors for events that include a formal ask and the return on investment. This was not the case with Rotary. I created an email correspondence (4.6) that outlined the ask and return on investment for each winery. The wineries all were delighted to participate. My experience at TRU gave me the skills to save $2000.00 on expenses for this event.
The marketing skills I learned at TRU have empowered me to collaborate on other projects. My experience working in ACM, Canva, Publisher and social media in my current role has given me confidence to create other content, including the creation of this website for my PLAR portfolio. I am a part of an emerging community yoga practice. I developed the e-collateral. This includes developing a color scheme, logo and other collateral such as a Ykashtanga 2018 Winter Workshop (4.7).
I learned the importance of time management while obtaining my yoga teacher training certification. I never gave much thought into what it took to plan a class. It takes a lot of practice to ensure each posture is given the same amount of time and that the class begins and ends on time. Being prepared while maintaining flexibility is an integral part of planning a class. To prepare for classes I begin by writing down each posture I want to guide the students through. Then I break down the counts of each posture and assess how long each posture will take. This includes how many breathes it will take to enter, exit and hold the state of the posture. After I do this, I practice my plan. I find the most challenging part of leading class to be adjusting students while keeping the pace of the class.