Staying Safe with Rosanne Torpey

Rosanne Torpey was an excellent presenter and I found her program very useful for circulation.
We need to be proactive before reactive. This helped me to recognize everyday stressors and to take a deep breath in stressful situations.
Know when to speak and when to listen. (Biggy for me so my husband tells me)
Demonstrate appropriate response if a person has weapons.
I recommended Rosanne to my daughter to give to her supervisor for a workshop.

What's New in Young Adult Literature and How to Use it in Your Program

On Wednesday Nov. 2 Lesley Mason and I attended the What's New in Young Adult Literature and How to Use it in Your Program. These wonderful seminars are sponsored by the Bureau of Education and Research (BER) and some of you have perhaps attended one at some point. Patti Tjomsland was the speaker - she's one of the best for middle and high school. She knows the material well and goes through new books of all kinds and subjects, Award Winners, Promoting Books, Reading, and Discussions, Activities for Any Novel, and Internet Resources. There are copies of many of them displayed around the room. There is always a handbook of these books with many others listed. I put the handbook in the Professional Collection available for checkout. This one has not yet been processed but there are some earlier ones in the collection. The next seminar info - which I think will be elementary books and will be done by Peggy Sharpe who is also excellent- I will send the info to you. Contact me if more information is needed.

I attended the October 24, 2011 workshop on "Staying safe in a changing work environment" presented by Rosanne Torpey at the LaVale Library. She gave an incredible amount of information to the attendees but the 3 hour workshop passed quickly because of her sense of humor and background stories. Some of the things that impressed me the most from the workshop included the idea that we all need to look at other perspectives on the same problem to help re-frame it into an opportunity by finding another angle - "don't stop at the first "right" answer". It was also eye opening to have the 5 stages of the aggressive cycle explained, from the triggering stage where you have an opportunity to defuse the situation through the crisis stage where you cannot talk/reason with the individual all the way to the post-crisis stage where the individual is calm and can again be reasoned with. Rosanne also emphasized how important nonverbal cues are in de-escalating or defusing possible unsafe confrontations from the way you stand to the look on your face.

Staying Safe with Rosanne Torpey

When I signed up for this workshop (Staying Safe in a Changing Work Environment, Oct. 25 in Clear Spring), I thought this was going to be just another self-defense, working with/around the emotionally or substance unbalanced. Just checking off more CEU's. I was totally WRONG. It was not "just another" workshop; this was one of the most rewarding trainings I have attended, and I would urge anyone who has not participated in one of Ms. Torpey's presentations to jump on the next opportunity that presents itself. Yes, we did learn to recognize impending crisis situations, and techniques and approaches to de-escalate them. The main difference was the clarity with which the material was presented and the sense of empowerment to trust one's individual abilities, creativity, and approaches when dealing with difficult persons, whether patrons or co-workers. Quite invigorating. Woohoo!