JOG Staff: All Staff Retreat 2024
Team Building, Trauma Informed Care, and Expansions on the Horizon at the 2024 JOG Staff Retreat!
This July, all JOG staff came together for 3 days of training, team building exercises, learning, and reflection at MAPS Air Museum in North Canton. This year’s annual retreat was headed up by the Director of Programming, Pamela Crombie and encompassed staff from Summit, Stark, Medina, Trumbull and Ashland Counties. The event covered sharing tips on working with youth, trauma-informed care, teambuilding and a variety of other exercises.
The main theme of the retreat was reflection through our past, present, and future, as Executive Director Chris Canova outlined in his speech on day one. To put the section on the past into action, each staff member was given the task of providing a walk-up theme song, walk up to the podium, and present their highlight or highlights from this past program year. On top of individual reflections, each County Manager came up and presented some of the key points of success they saw in their programs this past year too.
Discussing the present came in the form of team building through scenarios at our tables made of staff from varieties of counties. This was in conjunction with the trauma informed care presentation made by Jessica Porter. This training highlighted how this care format is laid out by the JAG Model and how we can implement it in real life to help break down barriers as part of JOG’s mentorship programming. Staff put this into action by roleplaying a scenario of working with a student in a situation that could arise. As we went point by point, this was reflected back in the actions being done on the team worksheet. At the end of the training each group presented our recap and each scenario’s resolution as we saw fit.
Finally, when discussing the future, Mr. Canova outlined the programs JOG is dipping our foot into at the moment. Those being the Juvenile Justice program, becoming a vendor of Pre-ETS, and the Good Jobs Challenge. These programs all are extensions of JOG programming into new areas where we can support local youth to grow through our educational and vocational training. We have much more on the horizon as well so make sure to stay tuned to all JOG social media for all upcoming announcements.
We are grateful to the whole JOG team for such an engaging and fun event, and we are excited to share our takeaways with our participants when the school year begins again.
