National Activity Professionals Week: Celebrate the JoyMakers!
National Activity Professionals Week: Celebrate the JoyMakers!
It’s always fun to kick off a new year with a celebration (and often much more fun than trudging away at the New Year’s Resolutions). Fortunately, a simple Google search can give us reasons to celebrate monthly—as well as weekly and daily! This month features one of my favorite awareness weeks: National Activity Professionals Week. For years I worked in older adult settings (nursing homes, CCRCs, independent living communities, and senior centers) leading or overseeing activity departments. I rejoiced every January when we had a week dedicated to the professionals who help develop the spirit and joy within a community.
Looking online, there will be themes to utilize in planning an awareness/ recognition week—check out NAAP to see their theme for 2021. Other themes may be featured by the National Certification Council for Activity Professionals and even by promotional products companies. However, there is no need to be tied to a specific theme. After all, showing appreciation is a valuable theme in and of itself.
Check future blog posts for a checklist for celebrating awareness months/ days/weeks. Following a few simple guidelines, you can raise awareness of an important department as well as recognize the individuals who work hard in that department every day. But this post is focused specifically on activity professionals because, after all, January does include their week! So let me share three things that are nearly universal with activity professionals and a simple question you can ask—no matter what your role in your organization is—to recognize their dedication.
National Activity Professionals Week – How to Recognize Their Dedication
Ask Your Activity Staff About Their Why
First, what makes an activity professional special? From my experience, some of the best activity staff I knew did not set out to work in programming. They came from a variety of other paths (teaching, performing as musicians, running art studios and classes, acting, serving as a nursing assistant). They somehow learned of this field and explored it, often as an assistant or entertainer. Then they jumped in. This is special. Finding your passion through an unconventional journey is special. These amazing “activity people” brought a new level of creativity and a unique set of eyes to their communities—they brought years of clowning, lesson planning expertise, craft skills beyond the traditional, theatrics, and so much more.
As you recognize your activity staff, take a minute to ask them their why. What drove them to this profession, and why do they love it? Asking this question demonstrates your appreciation for the people who work in activities and for the work they do. Use their why to help recruit new effective activity staff and volunteers—look for the same motivators (not necessarily the same experience)—and to reward the current ones.
Ask Your Activity Staff About Their Behind-the-Scenes Efforts
Second, activity professionals work in a field that is consumed with behind-the-scenes work. I remember in my first activity job, I was an activity coordinator on an Alzheimer’s unit. I worked 40 hours per week in the facility. But I spent probably an additional 20 hours per week getting ready for those paid hours. While many staff in healthcare put in long hours, those hours are many times expected and related to the specific job (the DON assembles procedures and makes rounds at varying hours, social workers respond to concerns after typical business hours to meet the needs of family members).
But my extra hours, and those of so many in the field, were a distinct combination of seemingly busy work, building connections, and begging friends and family to help. Examples include cutting out homemade puzzle pieces for residents to put together, recruiting friends to dress up in period costume to serve at a Victorian Tea (and securing said costume), and adding up how many hours per week each resident participated in the offered activities (a facility obligation). These were things I needed to do to offer an amazing activity program and to comply with requirements but couldn’t do during the workday because of the things I needed to do to offer and amazing activity program and to comply with requirements.
True activity professionals love what they do and want to share the joy of the world with their residents and the joy of their residents with the world. They need to freedom to run activities all day, so they spend their off-hours figuring out ways to do that better. It’s incredibly rewarding but also tiring and generally unacknowledged. Perhaps it’s just assumed that the behind-the-scenes work happens (kind of like how people don’t think about the hours teachers spend grading papers or writing lesson plans). Regardless, it’s valuable time and immense dedication. Ask them to share some of their favorite stories about their behind-the-scenes efforts. You’ll likely be surprised at some of the lengths they’ve gone, and you’ll certainly help them feel seen.
Ask Your Activities Professionals About the Special Moments
Finally, activity professionals love the little moments, the sometimes imperceptible difference they make, the fleeting reactions that validate a month’s worth of planning. The big events are seen and celebrated. Administrators, and activity professionals, gush about how many residents attended a concert or showed up for a family night. But more often than not, within and outside of those big events, the small successes are the ones of which the activity professional is most proud.
I once organized an Italian dinner for a family night—we had opera singers and tiramisu brought in and donated by a local restaurant, on-point decorations, and a fabulous dinner prepared by our dietary manager. But the thing I remember most was the end of the night, as we played “That’s Amore,” a nearly immobile resident stood from his wheelchair and danced with his wife, softly singing every word to the song. She didn’t want to leave that night. And from then on, she and I had a special connection that began with a beautiful moment built on an intimate memory between two married people who couldn’t live together anymore. I will forever cherish that moment.
The thing about activity staff is that they don’t design these magic moments. They don’t plan all the details or determine the themes assuming something beautifully unexpected is going to happen. Rather, they organize and promote their activities, and they identify a Plan B—because often the unexpected happening isn’t magical but rather disappointing (an entertainer not showing up, for example, or a fire drill in the middle of a luncheon). The backup plan covers the possibility that something could go wrong.
The joy of an activity director lies in the possibility that something will go wonderfully right. This is beyond the initial why. It’s not why they get into activities; it’s why they stay in activities. Ask your activity professionals to give you some examples of the most special moments they’ve experienced in their jobs. They will be thrilled to let someone in on these extraordinary flashes of wonder that so often go unnoticed.
Celebrating the JoyMakers During National Activity Professionals Week
Activity professionals are passionate, are committed, and are celebrants of the meaningful minutiae. Take a minute this month, during the all-too-short National Activity Professionals Week, to dig a little deeper into their world and honor how special they are. Their hearts will thank you for it.
