The mission
My mission is to provide a welcoming space for people to get great training. I prioritize comfort and inclusion while providing trauma-informed courses that give students prudent skills. Let me explain.
The culture
Peace Mindset Training is working at the forefront of a new approach to firearms ownership - one that recognizes that the very people who are most likely to need to defend themselves - who should be welcomed the most in firearms culture - are those who are instead often ignored and shunned at gun stores, sporting goods sections, shooting ranges, and firearm training courses. The trainings are planned and organized with that understanding at the forefront as the community works to develop a new culture around firearms. Please join us in crafting Gun Culture 3.0.
The content
Over the years, the training content has been expanded into a few other areas, and it continues to grow. I've realized a lot of my communities and my students like to learn about some other topics I'm into.
As you can see from the courses, I teach First Aid, Stop The Bleed, knots, some camping-related courses, land navigation, and radio. These are all skills I've studied or used extremely thoroughly.
The instructor
Above all, I'm a teacher. I'd like to put before my other qualifications. I've been teaching, coaching, training, tutoring, and developing courses since I was a teenager, both professionally and personally. I've formally studied teaching and coaching through many different topics (K-12 education, volleyball coaching, ski instructing, firearms training, medical training, and more).
Since 2017, I've taken an average of 50 hours per year of training that applies to the topics I teach and how to teach them. Some of that training is what many would expect - NRA, Rangemaster, advanced tactical training from military and law enforcement instructors, medical training from paramedics and the Red Cross, etc. Much of it is typical but not what people expect - pedagogy, assessment and feedback, questioning, teaching methods, developing learning activities. A significant portion is not what people think - de-escalation, close protection, surveillance detection, inclusion, sexual harassment, suicide prevention, non-violent crisis intervention, legal observer, and more.
The skills
The firearm and defensive skills come from what I've learned in courses, in content, and in life. I've learned a lot from some of the best instructors, but I've diverged from much of their style or their content. Where I've diverged, I've since watched the industry follow me. (They're not following me. They're figuring out the right answers.) In broad strokes, I've been able to determine several aspects of mission creep or misunderstandings that don't apply to civilian self defense, and I teach a more prudent and useful skillset. There's no better example than my Legal, ethical and practical considerations of use of force course.
The knots and camping content come from my love of camping and the outdoors. I spend about 30 days a year camping. Some of it is me leading groups of autonomous adults (novice or experienced) and showing them how to enjoy their time in the outdoors. I've organized a few campouts a year since 2018 that incorporate shooting, rucking, night hikes, land nav, radios, medical trainings, and other learning opportunities. I was also a Scout for many years, so I've learned the skills formally as well and used them extensively. I'm learning many years later that my scouting experience was uniquely robust and, let's say, thorough.
The land nav courses come from my love of hiking and traveling. I've hiked in various styles, climates and regions, and I'm of the pre-GPS epoch of human history. I recognize that there are real navigation skills that people use in the outdoors, in cities, in traveling and in road tripping. My courses pull from the pragmatic skills that people actually use, although I also teach people the basics of the orienteering hobby with compasses and stuff because it's fun.
The medical courses come from the incredible research-based methods of the American Red Cross and the American College of Surgeons. I'm not a medical professional. I've simply taken trainings on emergency medical response and how to teach them (First Aid/CPR/AED many times, WFA twice, TECC twice, Street Medic twice, TCCC, Care and Prevention of Athletic Injuries, and many miscellaneous trainings). To give an example of what I alluded to above regarding my scouting experience, one time, during a medical training, we thought we had encountered a real medical emergency because the simulation was so realistic.