METCOM 911

We've been part of a local homeschool group for the last four and a half years, spending every Friday morning together during the school year. It's been a great source of friendships, education, and fun. Nothing changed about the group and we were still happy with it, but toward the end of last year I realized it was time for our family to shift our involvement a little bit. 

We do little or no school on Fridays because we're with our group, but sometimes there were other outings I wanted to go on with the little Ws during the week and we just couldn't sacrifice two days of work. So I decided that this year we'd revert back to the level of attendance we had for our first three and a half months in the group, going just twice a month and freeing up the two remaining Fridays for other activities as a family.

I have a tentative plan for how we'll spend the two weeks we don't join our local group, but I'm holding the plan loosely and we'll see how things go. However, we did start things off according to the plan. Our local dispatch center, Metcom 911, allowed us to visit yesterday. As I coordinated schedules with them we realized Tim would be able to join the kids and I, which was an unexpected perk. 

We started off our time with one of the supervisors, then finished with one of the dispatchers. Among other things, we learned about the geographical area they cover, how many calls they get, agencies they work with, how they determine whether or not to activate Life Flight, what kind of education is required and the training involved, average length of time people stay on the job, explanations of all the computer screens the dispatchers work with, how they keep tabs on what the other dispatchers are doing, what the pedals at their feet are for, and what they personally like best and find most challenging about the job. The supervisor and dispatcher both offered lots of information and we asked lots of questions, so it was an informative and interesting visit. 

I didn't think to take any pictures while we were inside, so we snapped a quick one in the parking lot before we headed home. We're just going to pretend that half of Naomi's face isn't missing.

UPDATE: Metcom 911 posted the following on their Facebook page on 9/7/17. How fun is that?!