Mandatory Training

[Eagle732]

I'm in the same council as DPWatson. At our district's Roundtable last night this was discussed. This is apparently a 4 year phase in with Scoutmaster, Cubmaster and Crew Advisors mandatory this year for recharter (recharter is due in Dec. only 3 months away!) 2nd year all Committee Chairpersons, 3rd year all direct contact leaders over 21, 4th year 18 -21 y.o. Assistant SMs. Here's the problem which was brought up at roundtable, one needs the Individual Leadership Outdoors Skills (ILOS) weekend course to be "trained" as a Scoutmaster, ASM or Crew Advisor but our district only offers it once a year in April. The same with the Scoutmaster Fundamentals, only offered once a year. The answer we got to that one was go to another district! I'm wondering what happens when a SM quits a unit in say July and the guy willing to take his place needs to come up with all this training in short order. Do you think council will not recharter? We'll see.

[John-in-KC]

Eagle732 hits the key point, and I think it's cogent to Neil's post as well.

 

Training has to be available more than once in a blue moon. There are multiple ways to handle that, including coordinating training amongst Councils.

 

Lack of frequency to training is a distractor from training.

 

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There's one other comment I want to make to your post Neil. Lisabob and I have both commented on it over the years: The quality of the training has to add value to the time spent. I know people who will not attend training. They've been burned, some more than once. There is no excuse to reading from the sylabbus. There is no excuse to just reading the slides. Add value to the training aids. Never start class with "I got this package 20 minutes ago, let's discover the learning together."

[DPWatson]

Eagle723, I was at the Roundtable last night as well and somewhat surprised that there wasn't some discussion of this. Either everybody is trained, or they don't understand the implication. I may be able to rearrange my troop activity schedule to do the classroom work in October, but there's no way I can make the Outdoor Leader weekend. That's it for the year. I will see if someone else can register as SM in December. Failing that, I guess we will just have to hope that the Council doesn't decide to put my 60 kids on the street...

 

/dpw

 

[Eagletrek]

First let me state I'm all for trained adult leaders. My 13 den leaders, most of their assistants, ACM, and all committee members are currently trained. I expect to pick-up at least 3-4 additional adult leaders on Thursday and plan to have them trained within the next two months.

 

 

That said, frequency and quality of training are issues that I've had to deal with. For example, units are just getting started with their round-ups within the next week or two so what does our district do? They schedule adult leader training for this weekend; prior to the majority of the district's cub pack round-ups!!! What do they do when informed? Shrug their shoulders and state they'll have to schedule some additional training but don't state when.

 

Based on the size of my pack, I've been fairly lucky in getting training conducted just for our guys and gals because when can generate enough of a crowd to bring out the instructors.

 

The second issue I faced was quality of training. In order to solve this issue, pack leaders have attended TDC so we would be able to present classes to our own unit. We insure quality control and the pack's leaders are always able to contact an instructor to check up on an issue.

 

Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands!!!

 

[Docrwm]

I hate to ask - thereby showing yet again my ignorance - but what is TDC? Acronyms are great when you are a member but for new members of the club they can be a barrier. Sorry.

 

EDIT:

Just found it online - Trainer Development Conference.

 

Good source for Scout related acronyms =

http://www.scoutway.net/scouter/abc.html(This message has been edited by docrwm)