What was your Wood Badge Course like?

[eagle-pete]

This is a Spin-Off from something brought up in another topic which I believe merits its own thread.

 

SueM writes:

 

"Eagle Pete,

 

I think it's interesting to hear about how courses in other places are presented. Our course director and SPL set very high standards of expectations for us in everything we did, which is not a bad thing...they made us earn our beads, for sure!!

 

Though we donated our project board to the District to use at other events, I eventually gained custody of it and I take it with me when the boys do district events and put it up somewhere on display. We had fun putting it together. Did you know that there was once a boy scout doll???? That was one of the interesting finds that I came up with in my research!

 

sue m."

 

I thought it would be good to find out from other Wood Badgers what your course was like.

 

I found my course was generally easy-going but it did have its challenges. Our course director was quite "family" focused and we, Troup 1, were all part of a family and a brotherhood.

 

How was your course? Did you find it lax? Challenging? Hard work?

 

Eagle Pete

[SueM]

eagle-pete,

 

I think our course was designed to make us think for ourselves...by that I mean that things were presented in a very adult manner. The staff was not condescending in any way and it was apparent from the first day that they expected us to think our way through any issue them and come up with the "solutions" if you will for how they expected things to be done.

 

Many of the attendees had said that they had been through similar leadership training either in the military (since this is a big military area) or on their jobs, so for them, much of the course was review work. The trick then was to apply that knowledge to scouting. Most had a general understand of what was expected of us as far as the team building and scout spirit goes. We (the beaver patrol) were able to come together immediately though we were all total strangers, with different backgrounds and talents and personalities, and form a cohesive team within the first 2 hours of the course and we stayed that way.

 

For me personally it was just challenging enough...It made you think every step of the way. I took the course to challenge myself to grow..to help overcome some obstacles in my own life self confidence wise, as well as to help better the troop for the long term, so for me, it was a wonderful experience.

 

My second patrol mate just got his beads last night and we were all there to support him, the 3rd member is getting his next week..and I am getting mine in December.

 

sue m.(This message has been edited by SueM)

[Lisabob]

The course I was part of (C-19-03 at Camp Munhacke in MI) was great. Well-run and (mostly) very professional, also fun. There was a lot of emphasis on thinking problems through and learning to utilize the talents of everyone on your team. 5 of the 6 people in our patrol finished our tickets. I suspect the 6th attended the training partly because his wife did too and she seemed a lot more motivated than he was.

 

The most useful part of the training was the network I developed. I know I can call up any of those folks with questions any time I need to - and of course vice versa. The tickets definitely helped strengthen my pack, and I was excited to see other pack leaders (who hadn't gone to WB and probably never will) start to absorb and use some of the WB skills I brought back too. It really rubbed off.

 

The least useful part to me were the "mandatory" movies. I'm not a big movie buff so this is just my take on it - doubtless someone will disagree. But they were shown very late at night when, honestly, I would've benefited more from a good night's sleep. I'd rather have rented the movie and watched it at home during the 2 weeks we had between WB weekends. Then I suppose we could've discussed the movie as a patrol or something.

 

Interesting/Strange things for me:

1. As a cub leader at the time, I was in a distinct minority in our woodbadge class. Quite aside from the leadership training aspect of the program, I found I developed a better understanding of the boy scouting end of the BSA program, which helped me as a webelos leader.

 

2. Still, it was so heavily BOY SCOUT - oriented that at times the other program areas got really short shrift. A couple of examples, we went from being "tigers" to "webelos" in the space of about 2 hours, mainly through filling out paperwork and "cutesy" stuff but somewhat of a condescending attitude toward the entire Cub program. In the jeopardy/trivia game, questions about the Cub program were incorrect or outdated. None of the staff were recent cub leaders and didn't know a lot about how the cub program had changed in the last 10-15-20-etc. years since they last had direct contact with it.

 

I know the relatively few Venturing people there felt the same way about how their program was incorporated - sort of as an after-thought. We didn't have any Varsity people.

 

3. There was a lot of talk by the WB staff about getting new scouters through WB training within a couple of years of entering the ranks as leaders, rather than having WB be a sort of "crowning achievement" of a longtime scouter's career. At the time I was fairly new to scouting (had been a leader for 2 years, in the Cub program and at the unit-level only) so I was their new target audience I guess.

 

Lots of discussion among participants about this. How would it change the WB experience? Generally feelings were mixed. IMO a cool thing about our patrol was that we ran the gamut of experience and age. We had a 19 yo brand new ASM who had earned eagle not long ago, all the way through a guy in his 60s who had been a scouter with the same troop for years, me as a Cub leader, a couple of Venture leaders starting a new Crew. Each of us brought different perspectives and skills. As a patrol we capitalized on that and I think it was good for all of us. Newer leaders gained from the experience of longtime leaders, and the "seasoned" veterans said they gained from our (still fresh) enthusiasm and knowledge of how the programs had changed since "their day." I'd hate to lose that mix and only have new leaders there.

 

On the other hand, I can see that the leadership skills emphasized in WB for the 21st C. might be most useful to newer leaders, rather than expecting them to figure out half that stuff through years of trial & error. Also if you want Cub leadership to benefit more from WB then you need to encourage newer leaders to sign up since most Cub packs don't have very many of the "seasoned veteran" types in their leadership cadres.

 

 

Lisa'bob

A good old bobwhite too!

 

[John-in-KC]

I'm going to echo much of what Sue M said (review of the leadership psych and soc, how fast we moved from forming to performing as a team).

 

I'm also going to echo the key point Lisa made about the network. My fellow Owls helped me understand Scouting from 3 different Councils and seven different personal viewpoints. Often the rural Council with the humongous districts has an idea that saves time, money, and energy. Because of where I live and the wealth of resources at hand, that really smart idea just would not have hit.

 

As a sidebar: Today I was in charge of Den Chief training at our local pow-wow. Ran into many, many good friends ... Scouters all, staffers all. That's another reason for breaking the comfort zone and going out of council for Wood Badge: I DIDN'T run into "the usual suspects." Broadening the network is a good thing.

 

We received a commitment from our TG at the end of the 1st weekend: During the intersession, HE answered our questions. One question he did answer was why Boy Scouting was the primary vehicle ... and it had to do with maturation of the youth and the responsibility we give them in a well executed boy run troop. Venturing extends that; Cubbing is still focusing on developing primary skills. Even so, I'm glad for what our resident Fox CD said about forthcoming changes to the sylabbus; I think the additional time overviewing the Cub program will be useful to all.

 

It really is all about people, and I'm glad so many of my good friends are Scouters.

 

John

A Good ol' Owl

C-40-05

 

 

[SueM]

Absolutely agree on the networking benefit of Wood Badge! It has been really wonderful for me. I am naturally very shy and had a very hard time not being intimidated by many of the staff...but through getting to know them as they rotated through having meals with us, etc. I was able to start to relax and have gotten to be friends with many of them. It always surprises me though that they seem to not only remember me, but also seem to respect me!!! Even among the participants...as we all got to know each other during the down time, it was really fun. The whole group came together as a family. We watched out for one another if there were any issues (and there were a couple!) and tried to support those who were having difficulty,no matter what patrol they were in. It is still wonderful to run into the others here and there and see what they are accomplishing!! We have a local Wood Badge Association, so I do keep up to date as much as possible with what the others are doing and who is completing their tickets.

 

sue m.

[StormingBuffalo]

Lisabob mentioned a number of things that I remember from my course, which was C-16-3, the same year and same region as her course. Our patrol was probably the only one with not only one, but two Cub scouters in the group. I found it rather amusing that the three boy scouters (our sixth member was our district Executive) didnt know the Cub Scout Promise, or much at all about cub scouts. Our knowledge also helped us win the trivia game. But my advantage went away within a couple of hours, and then I was much more the novice.

 

I really enjoyed the films. We watched October Sky all the way through, but watched only snippets of Remember the Titans, though I was motivated enough to watch our copy when I returned home.

 

I generally found the topics very useful, even though like many of you, I have attended management and leadership training, and I am also a higher education consultant. Perhaps I enjoyed it because I found it interesting to see how the same concepts applied to scouting, especially to the more boy-led activities present in boy scouting versus cub scouting. So while much of it was review, the way the concepts were applied kept me interested and engaged.

 

We also had only two Venture adult leaders in our course. Also, the staff advisor for the course was a Venture DE. But we also had a Venture Crew participate in the course for a day and a half with some of the team building activities, and they even won the spirit stick for part of the day. Since the Black Swamp Area Council has been pushing Venturing for the past few years to keep the boys involved, this was a wise move, and helpful for those of us who were new and only remembered Exploring from our youth.

 

In terms of the staff, I found myself getting very annoyed with my SPL, as he was playing the drill sergeant leader to the extreme. Since he is a retired state trooper (I can just see him saying 55 means 55) this is probably natural. Our troop guide was good, though I think the party line question of Where can you get that information got old really quickly. One thing that was really positive for me were the other course participants. There wasnt a great deal of rivalry going on, though we wanted to drown out other patrols yells, and when anyone needed help, he or she got it. I remember during our remote overnight, the Beavers cooked a bit too much, and walked around to other patrols sharing some of their great cooked apples. We did the same with some of our breakfast food with the Antelopes. And this was par for the course for C-16-03. Whether that is part of the networking or not, it certainly made the entire practical course experience meaningful for me.

 

 

[John-in-KC]

You mentioned rivalry.

 

I'm still confounded by "Win All You Can." The beginning of the game reinforces the teamwork concept, within the Patrol, and doesn't allude to the Troop or even the middling team of the 1/2 Troop.

 

There's a reverse psychology going on here; I do not yet "get it."

[Eagle74]

John: It's a take off of what is known as the "prisoner's dilemna" and can be applied to game theory among other things such as political science, behavioral analysis, etc. I will PM you with additional info.

[Lisabob]

I teach the prisoner's dilemma as part of a course on war and conflict so I had a pretty good idea where the Win All You Can game was going. Still, the way the game was presented or maybe the way it was designed, I don't think the point came through very clearly. Then again maybe this was just the way things worked out in our particular WB course, I'm not sure.

 

Lisa'bob

A good old bobwhite too!

[emb021]

I was first exposed to the "Win All You Can" game in the OA's National Leadership Seminar (WB picked it up from NLS). I found when I staffed WB, they seemed to present it a little different from what I had recalled from NLS. When I brought this up amoung the staff, the answer I got was "that's what we were told to do at WB CDC", so I dropped it.

 

This bothered me later on, as I think most of the participants 'got it' at NLS, but there seemed to have been some confuse at WB. Not having access to an NLS syllabus, I have no way of knowing which was right.

 

[John-in-KC]

Ahhh. Now the light blinks on.

 

I think Lisabob hit the nail on the head. Given the time we received the game (about 8:30 PM Saturday of weekend 1), our minds were stretched and we were slowing down a tad. A quality explanation of the Dilemma afterwards would have been a help.

 

I do have one question for the group: Is "Scouting Jeopardy" a piece of the Curriculum, or is it something my local staff thought up on their own. It was fun, and it promoted intr-patrol teamwork.

 

John

A Good Old Owl...

[SueM]

I think it's part of the course...we played it as did the course before mine.

 

sue

[Lisabob]

We played jeopardy too. Only problem was that several of the answers for the cub scout questions were wrong. For example one about the beltloops hadn't been updated to include the newer loops, but Wb staff (not recent cub leaders) wouldn't believe that this was the case! Actually we had some fun with this, "awarded" the new beltloops to them as "dangles" for their patrol flag in a little ceremony on the second weekend.

 

Lisa'bob

A good old bobwhite too!

[John-in-KC]

Yes, "stump the chumps" (err, Council Executive Board members) was rather fun, since we had a couple of places where they were flat out wrong.

 

I think that's part of the fun of WB: There is so much to Scouting that one cannot know it all, and when you bring together a bunch of us, we all learn together.

 

 

[emb021]

"We played jeopardy too. Only problem was that several of the answers for the cub scout questions were wrong. For example one about the beltloops hadn't been updated to include the newer loops, but Wb staff (not recent cub leaders) wouldn't believe that this was the case! Actually we had some fun with this, "awarded" the new beltloops to them as "dangles" for their patrol flag in a little ceremony on the second weekend. "

 

Same thing with my course, SORT OF. The problem is/was the syllabus has the old/wrong answers in it, and our course director wanted us to stick with those answers and we told this to the participants. Why we couldn't have just gone thru the game and updated/corrected it, I have no idea. It caused a few issues because of this.