When Leaugeay Barnes, EdD, NRP, FP-C, NCEE became a paramedic instructor in 2001, she had field experience, a bachelor's degree, and no training as an educator. So she taught the way she'd been taught: long lectures that led to sleeping students. Now program director of Hawaii's only paramedic program, Leaugeay joins Hilary Gates, Rob Lawrence, and Maia Dorsett, MD, PhD to revisit those early years and what it took to improve. The conversation covers her shift to teaching "how I wish I'd been taught," why every student gets a whiteboard, treating failure as a required part of learning, and removing the shame from needing a second try. The hosts also take on the "sink or swim" culture that greets new EMS educators, and how team teaching, mentorship, and succession planning can give them a better start. The episode closes with a tribute to the late Ray Fowler, MD, FAEMS, FACEP.

Ginger Locke highlights the episode's key points with her "Mindset Minute."

Mentioned in the episode:

Ray Fowler tribute: https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/douglasville-ga/raymond-fowler-13080257
EMS Educator Episode with Ray Fowler: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-eagle-original-ray-fowler-on-ems-education/id1573326528?i=1000533708160

Fatigue research by P. Daniel Patterson: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3228875/

NAEMT Lighthouse program: https://www.naemt.org/initiatives/lighthouse-leadership-program

Zone of desirable difficulty: Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). “Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning.”

Socratic Method: Pylman S, Ward A. “12 tips for effective questioning in medical education.” Med Teach. 2020;42(12):1330–1336. doi: 10.1080/0142159X.2020.1749583

Alex Honnold on failure: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4-7rIwMzaJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&srtk=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

The EMS Educator is published on the first Friday of every month! Be sure to turn on your notifications so you can listen as soon as the episode drops, and like/follow us on your favorite platform.

Get your CE at www.prodigyems.com

Follow @ProdigyEMS on FB, YouTube, TikTok & IG.

Recorded live from EMS World Expo 2026 in Orlando, this episode asks a simple question: where do you find joy in a job that isn’t always joyful? Rob Lawrence, Hilary Gates and Maia Dorsett sit down with Chris Kroboth of Lifeline EMS Training and Consulting. Chris is a fire captain and longtime educator who advocates leading people rather than leaning on rank. Chris argues that leadership is an ability, not a title, and shares how he builds ownership in his crews, from letting them run the assessments and debriefing as a team to a station “word of the day” and sitting down with your team to talk about life. Maia also segues into Kim Scott’s Radical Candor and its unforgettable toilet-paper-on-the-shoe example, exploring the ways to provide feedback that shows you genuinely care.

Listen, then ask yourself: what brings you joy in this work?

Plus, congratulations to Prodigy's own Ginger Locke, EMS Educator of the Year.

Mentioned in the episode:

https://www.radicalcandor.com/

Ginger Locke highlights the episode's key points with her "Mindset Minute."

The EMS Educator is published on the first Friday of every month! Be sure to turn on your notifications so you can listen as soon as the episode drops, and like/follow us on your favorite platform.

Get your CE at www.prodigyems.com

Follow @ProdigyEMS on FB, YouTube, TikTok & IG.

What if distance was always a clinical variable, right alongside heart rate and blood pressure? On this episode of The EMS Educator Podcast, host Hilary Gates and co-host Rob Lawrence sit down with two seasoned leaders in austere and frontier EMS: Tracey Loscar, deputy director of the Mat-Su Borough Department of Emergency Services in Alaska, and TJ Bishop, interim chief administrator for San Juan Island EMS in Washington State. Tracey and TJ dig into why rural systems demand a different training model, one built on closing feedback loops, teaching situational awareness and clinical gestalt, and distinguishing competency from fluency. They describe how they've redesigned field training, onboarding, and scenario-based education around each system's highest-risk, lowest-frequency calls, and why mentorship and cross-agency learning are essential for developing confident, independent-thinking clinicians in resource-limited settings.

Ginger Locke highlights the episode's key points with her "Mindset Minute."

Mentioned in the episode:

"Same Stakes, Fewer Reps: Decision-Making in Low-Volume EMS"

https://www.hmpgloballearningnetwork.com/site/emsworld/feature/same-stakes-fewer-reps-decision-making-low-volume-ems

"EMS in the Ash Zone" https://www.ems1.com/disaster-management/ems-in-the-ash-zone-alaskas-mount-spurr-and-the-volcanic-challenge

The EMS Educator is published on the first Friday of every month! Be sure to turn on your notifications so you can listen as soon as the episode drops, and like/follow us on your favorite platform.

Get your CE at www.prodigyems.com Follow @ProdigyEMS on FB, YouTube, TikTok & IG.