The Value of Our Media

Attracting quality employees, training them and ensuring their job satisfaction is a challenge in any industry, and it's the strength of that workforce that equates to the integrity and efficacy of a business or institution. In the juvenile service arenas––justice, corrections, and child welfare––when troubled lives are at stake, the importance of having the strongest, most competent and effective workforce possible is huge.

Calamari Educational Media helps create stronger workforces in the juvenile service professions. We strengthen team dynamics and improve efficacy. We increase safety, broaden powers of judgment, and improve competency.

We hear it all the time: the first days on the job––be that on the bench, in the detention center, in the field doing home visits––can be daunting, if not downright terrifying. Little can fully prepare a social worker for what will be encountered on that first day of home visits.

But preparing a social worker for such things directly affects safety. Preparing a judge for the diversity of courtroom dynamics represented by a heavy caseload improves their decision making process. Giving a juvenile corrections officer a broader understanding of the adolescents they are charged with keeping safe increases job performance and satisfaction.

People want to be good at what they do, but traditional education and training only goes so far toward building expertise. There is a gap between graduation or certification and real-world exposure to the variables that define life on the job. Prior to entering the workforce, a student or trainee's only option for experiencing the real world of their profession is through observation and written case studies. Observation––ride alongs, shadowing, sitting in on court hearings––isn't always prudent or logistically feasible.

Still, would it not improve a workforce if every social worker in the state had the opportunity to observe a home removal before performing one? Would not a judge's decision-making abilities be strengthened by observing several other juvenile judges in action? Would a corrections officer not be better prepared for work in a maximum security facility after observing dozens of scenarios that could unfold in a typical day?

Training programs are designed to prepare incoming staff for the challenges they face. Our job with Calamari Educational Media is to make that training process more effective by integrating actual video case studies and scenarios that demonstrate the dynamics of the job. It's one thing to read about the intake process in a juvenile detention center; it's another thing entirely to watch actual intakes, to see how they vary, and to understand the complexities of working with newly arrested teenagers. By blending existing curricula with relevant media we can change and improve the way people learn.

Our goal with Calamari Educational Media is to diminish the gap between learning and experience. As the only company in the country with continuous access to film documentaries and video case studies within the closed confines of juvenile systems, Calamari Educational Media is uniquely poised to provide a window into the inner workings of these professional environments. We make observation accessible to all.

Represented by our digital video library are hundreds of hours of juvenile court hearings, social work proceedings, interviews, and fly-on-the-wall observation of juvenile service professionals at work.

Our case studies are thought provoking, often riveting, and never boring. They inspire dialogue and seed debate like no simulation or written case study can. Any educator will confirm that the moment you lose your students' attention, you've lost your opportunity to educate them. Beyond its topical relevance, Calamari Educational Media enhances engagement which is critical to the learning process.

Since 2000, Calamari's documentary programs and vignettes have been used in classrooms and training programs around the country, helping to enhance the way people learn. Since 2006 we have been working with publishers and curriculum developers to integrate topical video into traditional training programs, and to develop interactive learning platforms able to reach greater audiences via the Internet.

If you would like to learn more about our library and how we can introduce a media component into your training programs, call us. At no cost to you, we'll send you a couple sample DVDs and we're confident that once you sit down and watch one of our programs, you will see the value.

Use the links at the left to learn more, or:

|| View Child Welfate samples ||
|| View Juvenile Justice sample ||