Do's For Your Dance

During December my community hosts its annual holiday gala dance. It is a semi-formal event with high-end appetizers and a first-class dinner. Every year we try to raise the bar on this special night. After working with my company for the past 18 years, it is a challenge to keep it fresh and exciting, but the evening always seems to be very well received.

With those years of experience come a few lessons that I have learned. You may not host a gala dance, but I think you will still find these points helpful in your job as activities director.

• Promote the date of your event well in advance so that residents have time to plan their evening (outfit, guests, table seating arrangements)
• Book a special musical talent for this night. This should not be someone your community uses on a regular basis. 
• At the same time, you should develop a good working relationship with the performers so that in case they must cancel on you at the last minute, they will work hard to find a replacement for themselves that is as good, as or better than they are for you.
• Make sure the musicians understand the group's ability to stay on the dance floor is not as long as those of people half their age.
• Remind the musician that most of the audience will not be dancing because they do not have a partner. Ask them to include line dances or a song or two that audience members can do from their chairs.
• Hire dance hosts for the single ladies who want to dance. 
• Decorations do not have to be elaborate, unless you want them to be. Sometimes simple and understated can be viewed as classy. 
• If your dance is after dinner, you will not need much more food - but you must have something. A little salty and a little sweet. 
• You will never please all the people at a dance with the temperature of the room. Dancers will want it colder and those listening to the music will want it warmer.
• Create a special feeling with the lighting in the room. Dim the lights like at a dance club
• Just like at the parties that you go to, there needs to be a fun person that gets things started. Be that person or find someone else who will be!
• Make a personal connection by going from table to table and sit down. "How are you enjoying the party?" is a good opener or "I haven't had a minute to talk with you lately, how are you?" Residents love to have the personal contact that only you can offer.
  

Key Ingredients for Successful Holidays

Take time before the full craziness of the holiday schedule begins to get yourself prepared

Have a plan for the next few months, but be flexible enough to change them

Adjust your attitude from overwhelmed to “I can do this,” and see the opportunities for enhancing 

your resident’s lives

Note your community’s traditions for the upcoming holidays, but find new and exciting ways to 

freshen them up.

Keep your volunteers happy and get help from them and from co-workers when you are overwhelmed… and there will be days, no matter how prepared you are

Fill your life outside of work with people who you enjoy being with. Do fun stuff for yourself! Don’t stop planning when it comes to your leisure needs.

Understand that you will never please all the people all of the time. Do your best every day and have no regrets when you walk out of your community at the end of the day

Live, love, laugh, and have a happy Thanksgiving!

 

Scared to Say Yes?

October can be scary! Not because of the ghosts and goblins that might be coming to your community to trick or treat, but because of requests from your residents who live there, when they ask you to try something out of your comfort zone. (And yes, this can happen any time of the year!)

A resident recently came to me to ask if I'd organize an outing to a local Oktoberfest. I shared my concerns for the group's safety on this trip because of the footing at the fairgrounds, the rowdiness of the crowd, and the ability to track down missing residents if they do not return to the bus at the scheduled time. My "final" decision was, no, I would not be organizing the trip for her.

After a few days, the resident came back to me and said that she would do all the research about the trip for me and bring it to me for another look. In addition to all her research, I also knew well enough that she was talking the trip up to her friends in the community so that the trip would be successful if I said yes and offered it to the community. 

As much as I know that my concerns are legitimate, it is my job to figure out a way to be able to say yes to the resident's request. After seeing the information that the resident brought to me, talking it over with her while I had a more open mind, and knowing that she and her husband had attended this festival in the past, I have agreed to organize the outing. I will be sure to promote it with a note that says "good walkers welcome" or something to that affect so that residents who may have mobility issues will be fair warned.

If there is something that you are being asked to do and you want to say no to it, dig deep into yourself, get the facts and look at as an opportunity to grow. I'm looking forward to taking the group to the Oktoberfest and I know that they will have a great time there.

3 Styles of Scavenger Hunts

Boy is it hot outside! If you are like me you may still be looking for indoor activities that are fun for your residents to do. This activity that I will share with you can be done for different levels of care in your retirement community. I encourage you to share it with the other activity professionals that work in those other areas within your own community.

The activity is the Scavenge Hunt. This can be done in three different ways and I will describe them below:

1)      The Stay Seated Scavenger Hunt

v  Ask audience to bring in items they think will be asked for. Encourage them to fill their purses, pockets, bags, etc. and bring it to the event

v  Make a list of items that they could bring with them

v  Include items that would be funny, that might have a story to go with them, or that people would be surprised someone would actually have. (Green Stamps anyone?)

v  See the list I used

v  Cut the list into pieces and place them into a basket

v  Ask people to draw the item out of the basket. (This gets more people involved, even if they never have an item on your list, they are participating…..)

v  Use the resident’s names as often as possible.

v  Teams can be seated at a table or divide your auditorium or meeting room into sections

v  After reading the item out loud, give people time to find the item – but not much time. Keep it moving!

v  Count all the items and record them. I had an assistant help with this buy using a dry erase board.

v  Prizes or no prizes…. It’s up to you.

2)      The Semi-Seated Scavenger Hunt

v  Same as above, but have each team bring the item back to the team’s table, which is at the front of the room

v  You can do this with a captain who gets it from his team, or do not have a captain and each person brings their own item up to the table

v  Make sure that all the items are returned after the program is over

3)      A Serious Scavenger Hunt

v  Look around your community and make a list of items that are unique to your community

v  Include items on the list that are specific so that there is no confusion

v  Gather the participants and give them the list of items that you want them to find

v  Give participants a deadline to return the items to you

v  This event can be done over a few days, or in a few hours

v  Bringing back the items can mean taking a picture of them on your smart phone or tablet (with or without the resident in the photo with it), a note on the list of where they located the item, or asking them to return a sticker that is next to the item on the list. 

v  Make the prize something special so that people are more serious about playing the game independently.

v  This game can be played individually or as a team

v  Items can be inside or outside.

Here are a few websites that have Scavenger Hunt ideas that take you beyond what I’ve used with seniors before:

http://www.recreationtherapy.com/tx/txhunt.htm

http://www.diva-girl-parties-and-stuff.com/scavenger-hunts.html

http://icebreakerideas.com/mall-scavenger-hunt-lists-ideas/

And here are some books from Amazon:

200 Ideas for Scavenger Hunts

40 Incredible Scavenger Hunts that Really Work

52 Scavenger Hunt Ideas

Scam Education Made Easy

From time to time the issue of resident's being scammed rears its ugly head in our community. The issue is brought to our administration usually by a brave resident or two. What usually happens after we see a pattern or increase in frequency is that the administration office sends out a memo reminding people not to fall into the current trap that was reported.

As Activities Director at the community, I think this is an opportunity for an activity. It is not necessarily a fun activity, but one that would educate the community about the current trends in scamming, and more importantly, how to avoid becoming a victim. 

First you should understand why residents living in alone, in continuing care communities, assisted livings and nursing homes are prime targets for scammers. Take a look at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) website. It addresses telemarketing fraud along with other types of scams that our resident's fall victim to. If you prefer to watch a documentary from Dan Rather about the scale of fraud against seniors, this is worthwhile. Many victims of fraud will not speak up because of the fear of embarrassment, or possibly losing the ability to get the "big prize."  After reading about the many ways fraud takes advantage of seniors and watching this video, you will see that it is very important to provide the programming necessary to help our residents avoid these evils.

In my area we were able to find a group of local seniors who presented skits on frauds affecting seniors. It was great because the audience could see the interaction between the scammer and the victim and put themselves in the victim’s position. It was done with humor, so it was fun, in a way. Here is an article about another group that does this kind of show about seniors and scams.  

If you don't have a group around your community that can perform an educational skit for your audience, you have some other options. The first is that you, the staff of the community or the residents might want to put on a skit. It would be a learning experience for those producing it as well as for those watching the final production.  The other option or educating your community might be found on the Stop Fraud website that the government sponsors. There you will find lots of resources with contact information for national and state-specific sites that might provide you with speakers who will come to your community.

Based upon my experience in working with senior adults, this is a subject that you can present to your community a few times a year. I suggest that you put a new spin on it each time, with a new speaker or with a skit, to assure the residents continue to come to the program. I believe that residents can't hear about this enough. Also, encourage those who attend to bring someone else with them. A victim may be reluctant to attend for fear that she might be recognized as a victim.

Play Music More Often

"Music is the soundtrack of your life," said Dick Clark. When you hear a song, if you are like me, it takes you back to that time in your life when you heard the song for the first time or to the occasion where you heard it. That is powerful. Can you imagine the music that our residents have heard in their lifetime? Just like the world in general, they have experienced so much and it is nice when we, as activities professionals, can take them back to the happier days, with the soundtracks from their lives.

So, the question I pose to you today is how do you find and present music to your residents? Of course, the first thing that comes to mind is by way of hired professional performers. That is a given in our jobs, so in this post, I'd like to focus on a few other ways that you can bring music to your residents that they will recognize and enjoy, along with theme music for your special events.

Pandora, Amazon, (search MP3 Download then search free songs) and YouTube are places that I have personally used already. In doing research for this post, I found a few helpful articles that deserve a good look if you just starting to download music. Since I am not an expert in this field, and because I want to give credit where credit is due, I will simple direct you to the articles that I found relative to our use and hope that you will click the links to read more: 

• The Top 14 Places to Get Free Music Downloads.  
• Best free apps for downloading music with an android device.  
• If you prefer to watch a video, here is one on how to load music or listen to it offline on an android.
• How to use ITunes
• How to Sync our Entire ITunes Library to Spotify

And there are online music players available for free:

• Spotify
• mp3skull.com
• Jango
• and more

So that is how to FIND the music. Now that you have it what can you do with it? Just recently, I spoke with the man who set up our sound system in the Auditorium, and asked about connecting my IPhone to the system. He said "sure, it can be done." Shortly after that, I received a new cord that has been one of the best items that I've gotten for my job! It is an adapter cable that allows me to plug in my phone to the system. I had a 50's theme party and I found music of the 50's on Pandora. I used it for background music the night of the party. And then, we had a Cinco de Mayo party and music from YouTube was played that was just right for the evening.  

As I sit here and write this, I can visualize the 100's of CDs that I have in my office that I've collected over the years of being an Activities Director.  Just think how much space I can save and how organized they can be if I can turn them into mp3s, I can't wait to go back to work and find the right volunteer for this job! 

See, inspiration can come at any time. LOL!  I hope this article helps you add more music into your community's programs. It shouldn't cost you much financially but may take some time to get a nice library of music together. I truly believe that music will add an extra touch to your programs in the future and will enhance your resident’s journey on the "sound" track of their lives.

Mentoring Lessons

Being a Mentor is an important role.  As I write this article, it is not yet Mother’s Day and I am writing for the month of June, which is when we celebrate Father’s Day. For many of us, our parents were our first mentors.  In this article, I am sharing a mentoring encounter with you because it was a learning experience….for both of us!

The company that I work for has communities throughout the United States. At one location a young lady was recently hired to fill the position of Activities Director, but had little experience with the profession, and none with the company’s procedures. Her Executive Director had meet me and my counterpart at a neighboring sister-community, and sent her to train with us.  At first my co-worker and I were considered about the time it would take away from our regular jobs, but we changed our mindset after talking it over. We felt that it was an honor to be asked, because the Executive Director could have sent the new hired Activities Director to any other community instead of to ours. We then split the time that the new hire would be in town into what worked best for us. After that, we made our lists of items that we would cover with her, and allocated it to the person who felt it was an area that they could explain the best.

In my time with this smart young lady, I found myself recalling my first few months in the profession. (That was 28 years ago already!)I found myself recalling that I was not even sure what to ask about when I wanted to set up a dinner outing or other “field trip,” as I heard a 10 year old guest in our community call the advertised trips he saw in the Lobby.   As we went through our time together, I found myself saying “I’m going to tell you how I use to do it….. or intended to do it…. or when I have time to do it…..” Despite those comments, I feel confident that I showed her some important tools she could use to get off to the right start in her career as an Activities Director in the areas of organization, time management, resident satisfaction, and more.

What was surprise to me was how much I learned from the time that we spent together. realized that a system is only good when you use it. For example, if you keep a list of entertainers on your computer and have their evaluation score next to it, and it is not up to date, then it is not as valuable to you as it could be.

• I realized that when files are put away and you have not referred to them in a few years, that you probably don’t need them anymore.  For example, I like to keep my desk calendars from the past filed away, in case I need to see something I jotted down or what happened that day in 2002. But when I opened the cabinet to show my mentee this idea, I realized I had calendars from 18 years ago! I was so embarrassed. Who cares what happened 18 years ago? Phone numbers might not be the same anymore, and if a program worked then, it does not mean it will now.

• Another big lesson for me was that sometimes going back to basics could be a smart move. For example, I use to use a worksheet to make sure that I had all the details I needed for a successful program and to refer to it the next time that I wanted to recreate the program. But, I've gotten away from that, partly because of the easy access to information on the internet. The reminder I received while mentoring this new hire was, that I can’t determine the success or failure from the information on the internet – but I could from my worksheet, if I used the system I had in place for each program (including an evaluation afterwards).

There were other lessons, or reminders, I received in the days I was training my new friend. And yes, I was there to teach her about being the best Activities Director she could be in our company, and for the residents she will serve, and I do believe that I succeeded in that.  I am glad to say that I too learned from the mentoring experience.   I think Phil Collins said it best when he said,

  “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.”