Hello! My name is Justin Zarb and I am an activity director (ADPC) at an adult day care in Michigan. I began this site for a couple different reasons:
1. I really enjoy what I do and I was hoping to find people that would share a similar passion.
2. There are so many stories of wacky things that have happened at my job and I wanted a way to remember them all.
3. I am an English major (U of M, Ann Arbor 2004), and writing down my thoughts about what happened in our facility each day really helps me unwind and sort it out.
4. I hope my thoughts can be a benefit for people in our profession. Even if you’re a volunteer, activity assistant, a CNA, or social worker, my goal is that my posts and articles can help us as one unit provide better quality-of-care to the people we dearly interact with each day.
You may notice that in my posts I usually refer to the people I work with as “members.” This is because I currently work at an adult day care and we the term “resident” would be off-base for my setting.
I am enrolled in a MEPAP 2nd Ed. course (Modular Education Program for Activity Professionals) in order to become an Activity Director Certified within the next year. Please visit www.nccap.org for more information on becoming a certified activity assistant, director, or consultant.
I have been working in the field since May of 2005, which I kind of slipped into and have been loving it ever since. When I graduated I didn’t really know exactly where I wanted to work (I got an English degree, after all) but I had a lot of volunteer experience in nursing homes and exposure to the dementia population. I saw an opening as an activity director at an adult day care and applied but never got an interview. I was told the director was on vacation when I sent my resume, and when she got back the position was magically filled! A month or two later I saw an opening for an activity assistant at the same place and did get an interview. I think I probably got the job because I was a male and I could bring my guitar in and play for the members. Hey, I’ll take what I can get. Eventually the gal who was the activity director left for a better paying position and I was promoted to activity director in 2006. I never knew this was an actual profession, but now I can’t see myself doing anything else (well, anything else wouldn’t be this much fun)!
There’s one last thing I’d like to add, just so I don’t get caught up in trying to do it: I vow that this will not be a Creative Forecasting type site. I believe in my heart that while Creative Forecasting and other programs that give you ready-made (or as I like to say ‘cookie-cutter’) activity calenders and games can be helpful for someone totally new to the field, we can give better care and quality of life to our residents and members if we design activity programs with their unique personalities and lives in mind at the begining. I really believe that there is a craft, or art, to creating activities for an individual, a group, and an entire facility. And to fool ourselves into thinking a cookie-cutter activity program is good-enough to get by, only lets down the people who are the reason I do this job.
