How would you do it?

[BrentAllen]

Bob,

No, it is simpler than that. As an example, we run a Scout CPR Saturday a few times a year. The CPR/AED Course is divided up into 4 classes, progressing from #1, which is a video viewing session, to #2, which is working on the Aktars learning and practicing CPR, to #3, learning and practicing AED and FA for choking, and #4, testing. Classes start every 45 minutes. Each class has their own instructors - they stay in place as the groups of participants rotate through.

 

Same thing could be done with Cub Leader. We've never had the courses run over 1 1/2 hours when conducted in a one-day format, but let's go with 2 for an even number. Reduce the Gathering, Opening, Break and Closing from 50 minutes to 15. Registration for all courses is taken care of at the start. Start classes every 2 hours. NLE is #1, Leader Specific is #2, which is divided into the different program groups and leaders. Each class needs 2 trainers, so you are looking at around 10 trainers (we always combine CM and Committee). Our district training team would have no problem fielding 10 trainers for 1 Saturday a year, working from 9 - 5. The trainers would teach their course 3 times that day. When the participant completes training, he goes right into the Scout Shop and buys his uniform, with a 20% discount coupon. Several birds killed in a single day.

[evmori]

 

"So, how would I do it? Require mandatory training at the local level for all registered adult leaders with materials supplied from National.

 

But isn't that what we do now???

And yet not all leaders are not trained or resieving the same information even though every district and council has the exact same syllabus!

How is that possible? What would have to change for the current training system that is in place to get the same information to every participant?

 

Training is not mandatory. A Scoutmaster does not have to attend any training. If training was required, there is an excellent chance the training would be better at the local level. And one more thing, if the district or council isn't passing along the necessary information, the volunteers who do the training can't be responsible for missing information.

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[Beavah]

That's...hmmm...a...'unique' way to view a national program, any national program. But it also explains a lot eh? I wish you luck with that.

 

We have great luck with it, all throughout our region and da nation. It's called the Boy Scouts of America, one of the most successful volunteer-run youth programs of all time! Settin' up local service corporations and relyin' on local trainers allows us to be examples of servant leaders and respond to each area's and unit's needs, usin' the best of local resources.

 

I'm sorta fond of da system myself.

 

BA's description of da Red Cross is also another great example of a national volunteer-delivered program, eh? And it's very similar, with local service corporations and locally implemented (and sometimes developed) program. Tough thing is they have a much smaller and more well defined product. CPR is pretty straightforward compared to youth outdoor leadership & citizenship education. But they're another great model to look at, fer sure.

 

Beavah

(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[Bob White]

Well close Beavah. Packs and troops used to be real good at it. But youth members have been dropping steadily from the Boy Scout program for 8 years. And the big problems seems to be un-trained unit leaders. Compounding that problem is the number of "trained" leaders who adnittedly do not use the program they were taught.

 

Dressin like a scout leader doesn't keep youth in the program. Usin' the scouting program Methods does.

 

What would be your guess as to the number of "trained" leaders who actually follow the scouting program and don't just go campin' and hopin' the scouts will stick around?

 

Let's be real optimistic and say 50% of all basic trained leaders purposefully follow the Scouting program. And others do their own thing because they "feel" it is a better than any EDGE or Blanhard voodoo leadership 'stuff'.

 

Any idea what the current figure is for percentage of direct youth contact leaders in the BSA that have completed basic training nationwide?

 

Take a guess.

[Beavah]

But youth members have been dropping steadily from the Boy Scout program for 8 years. And the big problems seems to be un-trained unit leaders.

 

Yah, yeh know. I see da numbers when they go by. This is a bit like da FCFY thing, eh? A correlation does not equal causation. There's just no good data to support da conclusion you're drawin'.

 

And if we think about it, exactly how much learning are we really gettin' in the small amount of time it takes to complete NLE and BASIC? Is it really at all practical to think that our couple days of trainin' is that effective?

 

I don't buy the notion that membership decline can be blamed on "bad" unit leaders.

 

If there's a correlation with unit leaders at all, I suspect it comes from adults these days bein' more mobile and not as "rooted" in a community, and not thinkin' they have the time to contribute in the deep, long-term way required to be a good unit leader. With smaller families, one son and out.

 

That, and da loss of good folks from gettin' ticked off at sellin' camps, membership fraud and the like. Which we all suspect was a chunk of da loss of numbers the last 7 years, eh? Can't blame volunteers for those losses.

 

Really, though, our core demographic is shrinkin' in da U.S. Can't blame that on unit leaders. And shiftin' charters out of the public schools, while necessary, has cost us a small bit, too. Can't blame that on the unit leaders, either. Add all these factors up, and we're doin' pretty good in a world where middle school youth program competition has been growin' like mad.

 

Beavah

 

[Bob White]

So the program knowledge of the program leader has no effect on program quality? Interesting.

 

If the rates of scouts leaving had not increased greater than the rate of scouts joining you might have a bit more credibility in your theory. But that is not the case.

 

So what do you think the current percentage of trained leaders with direct youth contact is?

[evmori]

Actually, if ya look at the membership numbers over the last eight years you would notice they are pretty stable.

 

I would agree with Beav to some extent as to the reason there is little movement in the membership numbers. I would add there are a lot more things available for kids to do now. Sports are no longer seasonal & video games suck up a ton of time! When we were growing up, we didn't need daytimers! Some kids have them today! And let's not forget the parents who want little Johnny to "get" everything he deserves.

 

Ed Mori

1 Peter 4:10

[scoutldr]

Sorry I didn't answer earlier, but one way to deliver training would be to solicit community partnerships with businesses that have satellite capability...around here we have "Cinema Cafe" theaters who regularly have Bowl parties with closed circuit broadcasts. VTC capability is not that expensive now and most major businesses, high schools, colleges and military bases have capability.

 

To chime in on the more recent posts, I think there's plenty of "blame" to go around. Today's kids and parents are not interested in following the anachronistic model of "boy led"...it's too hard, and they're not used to achieving things like merit badges unless spoonfed as a group. They are willing to give "an hour a week"...but that's all they have to give. Too many other things to get done in the same week. You can train leaders all you want, but if they are experts at delivering a product that the public no longer values or wants, we're wasting our time. We make the best buggy-whips in the world.

[Eagledad]

Interesting how the discussion is driving. Some of us predicted the decline and our conclusion had nothing to do with training or demographics. It was based on "leader burnout" we were seeing in the Cub Program.

 

Through the 90's we saw a big problem as the Tiger program was changing. The more involved the Tiger program was getting, the more we saw the problem of leader burnout by the end of the Bear year. Then National made a big change to the Tiger program in 2000 that really force the packs to bring in more Tiger leaders and increase the number of Tiger meetings. The Pack needs almost as many adults to run the Tiger program as they need for the rest of their pack. I know on paper it doesn't look like it, but the program is demanding.

 

Well understanding that the average volunteer of any volunteer program gives between two and three years before burnout, you can see the fallout. Adding to the problem that the Webelos program is very demanding in the outdoors program, we expected the the loss of scouts from Webelos to increase, and I and very sorry that they did. Now I haven't looked at the number the last couple of years, but I would have expected drop out rate to be somewaht stable now. Meaning percentage drop has quit falling and is holding. I keep saying that the Cub Scout program is hard and more then most folks want to endure.

 

We are going to have to make the Cub program easier and less demanding on the adults. It is killing the whole program all the way to Venture.

 

Barry

[Beavah]

So the program knowledge of the program leader has no effect on program quality? Interesting.

 

Nah, lad, what I said was that we've got no method of measurin' the program knowledge of the program leaders. We have only a poorly-kept set of records on whether they've been talked to for a day. Not even close to the same thing.

 

Eagledad, that's really interestin', eh? As you know, I'm not a cub program division guy. I've always wondered why our losses at Bear are so large, sometimes the single biggest loss of youth - more even than webelos to scouts.

 

There's some other interestin' choke points. We've always seen dropoff in high schoolers, but I'm seein' it tied to FCFY programs. The "Eagle early and out" bit (or "don't Eagle early but get out") is more than anecdotal. Dat's behind some of da discussion about makin' Venturing a required division step at high school, eh? To give those lads a "next thing" rather than lose 'em.

 

But cubs is definitely the area to focus on.

 

B

 

[Bob White]

I believe national figures have identified the largest loss in cubs is during the first year as Tiger and during the fourth and fifth year as Webelos, not as Bears.

 

I wouldn't say cubbing was difficult but a Den leader is certainly the hardest working person in scouting. And I also agree that solving the membership loss in Cubbing would help Troop membership a lot. Although it would have no effect on Venturing.

 

But even in Cubbing the problem is leaders selection and training quality at the local level. The resources available for a Den Leader are excellent, the training is fun and thorough WHEN the syllabus is followed. The problem in Tigers is that we put our least experienced leaders with our newest scouts. I don't see how we can expect that to succeed.

 

In Webelos, because many councils roll all the training into one ball, we have Webelos leaders who face a very different program then they have practiced for the past three years and they are supposed to remember training that for this new den program that they have not seen in three years. So they end up running Webelos like a Cub Den rather than as a transitional program to Boy Scouting. Kids don't want to be cub Scouts for 5 years, they need a taste of what is ahead in Scouting.

 

So again getting back to the thread topic, If we don't use the current training mechanism then what do we use? If trainers won't follow this syllabus what one will they follow? And take time to think through the actual lgoic of your plan. You can't have do out door training with recorded programs. Scout training is hands on and active. We train leaders that effective teaching and learning require hands o activities and then posters ay we should teach that withrecording messages. That makes no sense.

 

You cannot take Q%A from a class of 61,000 people.

 

The current mechanism allows for large group learning, small group learning, or personal coaching. every council has identical resources and syllabi, all they need is to have trainers who follow the plan they are given. No mechanism will be perfect, but having good trainers in a room with properly selected leaders is still the best way to teach this program.

 

Mandatory training has failed. A lot of councils have gone to it and the number of trained leaders in the program should be unacceptable to all of us. Combine with the number of "trained" leaders who do not follow the training it should be unacceptable to parents.

 

So what percentage of direct contact youth do you think there are trained in the BSA?

[Beavah]

Yah, BW, I can't tell if you're askin' for innovative new methods, or whether you're like me and support da current BSA program delivery model. Seems like yeh want da current delivery model to do somethin' it's not designed to do and will never be able to do - present a standardized talk that's uniform across da country. If yeh want that, you give folks a DVD.

 

Now, if you're askin' for innovative methods, I think da best yeh might come up with is a well-done MMO environment. It would be interactive trainin' on demand, with levels to attain and plenty of opportunity for application and practice. Sorta a condensed and simplified environment for "real life" trainin'. Youth leaders could participate, too. Could be fun.

 

Beavah

 

[Eagledad]

>>In Webelos, because many councils roll all the training into one ball, we have Webelos leaders who face a very different program then they have practiced for the past three years and they are supposed to remember training that for this new den program that they have not seen in three years. So they end up running Webelos like a Cub Den rather than as a transitional program to Boy Scouting. Kids don't want to be cub Scouts for 5 years, they need a taste of what is ahead in Scouting.

[Bob White]

I am asking for less emotional outburts and a more thoughtful approach to see if there is a method that is as flexible as cost effective, as locally personalized, and as hands on as the current training approach for basic leadership training.

 

Rather than "I don't like it" come uop with a feasible alternative.

 

 

 

 

 

[Beavah]

Yah, not sure anybody is bursting emotionally, eh?

 

To answer your question, I'd say yeh have an overconstrained system. A bit like asking for a full-sized SUV that gets 100mpg, can park in small spaces, and can tow a large boat.

 

If I'm understandin' your criteria correctly, we want local personalization, rapid dissemination that matches the schedules of new unit leaders so they're trained promptly, hands-on, standardized, and high quality in terms of both learnin' and presentation. And cost-effective in a way comparable to the current very inexpensive volunteer delivery system.

 

Can't be done.

 

So I reckon you're better off askin' us specifically about what problem you're tryin' to solve, eh? Does your council have weak trainers? Or is getting new leaders to training difficult? Or is training not havin' the effect you desire? Or are we just kickin' around ideas we wish Irving would consider, as a sort of fun exercise? Throw us a bone.

 

But to toss out random ideas:

 

* For creative new delivery system, try MMO which would get yeh rapid dissemination, somewhat hands-on, standardized but perhaps also customizable on a regional basis, and perhaps more thorough. But very large development costs and perhaps some adoption problems for us old farts.

 

* For local personalization and cost effective, do what we're doin'. If yeh want a bit more standardization, incorporate video presentation pieces like Red Cross. Dat's probably as good as it gets.

 

* If you're in a council where yeh have concerns about da quality of training, most often it's not just a case of folks not followin' da syllabus, it's a case of folks who aren't that knowledgeable on the topic or on how to teach. Just takin' Trainer Development and havin' the training yourself ain't enough, eh? In that case, I think yeh gotta set aside low cost and make a real push to recruit new folks, solicit outside contractors, and invest in higher levels of trainin' for your council and district folks. More PTC courses, send a half dozen each to LNT Master and Risk Management and WFR, etc. Pay for it. Da reason people give us FOS dollars is so that we can invest in our people, eh?

 

* If you're in a council where yeh have trouble gettin' people to trainin', you're probably thinking about it wrong. Yeh gotta take training to them. Not schedule a session twice a year. Recruit more trainers and be creative.

 

Beavah