Essay #5 Divison Essay Part 1

Essay 5 Division/ 3 Weapons of an Activity Director


Activity Director is a job title that seems to imply that the purpose of the job is to direct activities but truly the job description should include that you need to wear combat boots, possess a social work degree, a nursing degree, have a lawyer at your beck and call and being a certified notary republic to name a few and this may allow you to just scrape by in your job. The three main components you must have to be an activity director is a profound sense of humor, knowledge of geriatric aging issues, and absolute love. I became an Activity Director in 2005 and it was the best thing I have ever done thus far in my life. It gave me the most challenges, the most fear, but by far the greatest rewards. I worked for Sunbury Village which is a gracious retirement facility and the average age of my residents was 88. I had 155 residents and this is independent living so these people are all reasonably in good health as you must be able to come to meals. They have private apartments, they get linen and housekeeping service once per week, and three chef prepared meals a day in the gorgeous dining room. To me this place represented a nirvana the ideal place for your loved one to be if they couldn’t stay in their own home because it was so luxurious and they had emergency pull cords in each room of the apartments for their safety. The managers are on duty 24 hours per day and they had a full time activity director to add enrichment to their lives. You must be independent to live her and many people skirted the system by hiring their own help usually a C.N.A. to help them get to dining room if their mobility was failing or to help with meds, or help with personal care in their own apartments. If they could make themselves independent by hiring help they could still live in the facility. I stumbled into this job as the Activity Director was retiring and she was 66years old. I had worked privately in the Village for over 3years and had 22 patients on a 7 day rotating schedule. The retiring director approached me about the job because I knew all the residents and volunteered with her when they had big events and I loved the people and she knew I had gone to teaching school. I interviewed for the job and was pleased to get the job in January 2005 however I had no idea what I had signed up for it was like joining the foreign legion without a reference manual.
I found out right off that I would need a sense of humor. Many of the residents knew me very well because of my presence in the building as a C.N.A. and I had done hospice for partners of many of the husband and wives that were now widowed. The retiring director Bonnie was well loved and I knew the transition would be difficult as I was only 34 and many of them viewed me as a child. My first day came and that Monday morning I was all dressed at 4am and my work day didn’t begin until 8:30am and ran until 5:00p.m. Bonnie had done the same activities over and over for example they had Bingo Monday and Wednesday at 4pm and Pokeno Tuesday and Thursday at 4pm. She also hired the same entertainment groups over and over on a schedule, didn’t do many trips even though the facility had a