Woodbadge, big whup?

[skeptic]

All councils and districts seem to have the "few" WB'ers that reflect a bit poorly on the program. It is funny though, that in our council anyway, we have a few mostly really old time scouters who find WB to be fighting words. They simply hate Woodbadge, and put it down whenever the opportunity allows. Why; who knows for sure, other than they met someone who went through the old course and somehow suddenly acted like they knew everything. Of course these old goats (lol) already had that attitude, and pretty much the skills to prove it. You learn to accept the good and the not so good, and put it in context.

 

All training is useful. What we do with it is the real test. I found all the courses I took at Philmont to be great learning as well; but the scouting camaraderie there was always almost overwhelming. I hope to get back at least once more before I get "too" old, if that is possible.

[SR540Beaver]

Barry and I are in the same council. We've both staffed WB, but not together. We know many of the same people. We have a person from Barry's district that is very connected to WB who gives one of the most inspirational WB recruiting talks you'll ever hear. He refers to WB as magic. He also calls WB the BSA's elite leadership training for adults. He is correct on both counts. We have a ranger in our coucil that I am friends with who has also staffed WB who will tell you that he wishes people didn't sell WB with words like magic and elite. He likes and respects WB. But his take on it is that it is an "additional" volunteer training for adults. It is a great course that anyone can take something away from back to the troop, job, home, church, life, etc. I think they are both right in their own respects. We shouldn't sell WB as the end all, be all course for Scouters. That being said, of the literally hundreds of people I associate with who have gone thru WB, there is only one who didn't like it. He was a guy from my old Pack who was the eternal pessimist and found fault in absolutely everything. Don't judge WB based on other people. Just about every council's website has info on WB. Read what it is all about and then determine if it is right for you as an individual. Additional training, if you have the time and money is NEVER a bad thing.

[HICO_Eagle]

One thing I liked about Wood Badge was that it is the only place, save perhaps this board, where I got to spend real time talking about scouting with dedicated scouters.

 

Um, I got that in my first year (and beyond) as an ASM by sitting down and talking with other Scoutmasters at morning coffee and cracker barrels at summer camp. The other Scoutmasters were frequently old-timers (as evidenced by the number who proudly continued to wear their ODs or forest-green uniforms instead of the de la Renta uniform).

 

Wood Badge won't make a crappy leader into a good one -- but it might make him less crappy. Less subjectively and more to the point, it will help the inexperienced leader make up for his inherent deficit of knowledge if he wasn't a Scout.

[scottmphoto]

PACK15NISSAN,

 

If you want to do Woodbadge and not miss church, check into an LDS-friendly Woodbadge course (no Sunday's). Most councils offer them now because the LDS usually can't do camping or even travel on the Sabbath. I'm a non-church member Scoutmaster for an LDS troop, I run into this subject every month during our monthly camping trip.

 

 

[Lisabob]

HICO, I'm glad you got that as an ASM. Not everybody does. Some are in small troops where they're it! Some are in troops where collectively, they couldn't find their way around the campsite with two hands and a flashlight. Some are not ASMs/SMs, but committee members. Some serve cub packs where, often, all of the adults are pretty new and clueless. Some live in districts where Round Table is a joke. Some are not unit volunteers but district or council volunteers. Around here, some are lonely Crew advisers with maybe only 2 or 3 functional crews in their whole council. And so on.

 

For me, I was a Cub leader when I went to Wood Badge, between my son's bear and Webelos I year. The pack had gone through a leadership disaster and I and our cub master were left holding the bag. Neither one of us wanted to ever go through that again so we agreed to do everything in our power to improve the pack. That included both of us attending Wood Badge. I'm glad we did. It made a huge difference in how we approached the rebuilding effort.

 

One of the (many) things we had trouble with in our pack was making contacts with other leaders. There are 10 cub packs and 6 troops within about a 10 mile radius of us, and we knew hardly anybody in any of those. This resulted in mammoth amounts of work re-inventing the wheel at the cub level, and it meant our webelos didn't really make good connections with area troops and therefore either didn't cross over, or didn't stay involved due to poor fit, once they did cross over. And the only time we ever saw boy scout folks was at the cross over - no connections back and forth, ever. That changed as a result of attending WB and getting to really know a bunch of other folks.

 

Another thing that I found invaluable was having a sounding board of folks OUTSIDE our troubled unit. Not only were most of the other adults involved in the pack not really inclined to spend their time thinking and talking about scouting, but also, we needed constructive outside suggestions. And yeah I know - UCs - but as I may have mentioned elsewhere, we really didn't have those in our district. So I used my Wood Badge patrol as a sounding board for ideas and, occasionally, just to voice frustration. Among other things, my husband appreciated not having to listen to so much of it!

 

I freely admit that I did not understand much about the patrol method, going in. Probably not surprising since I was a Cub Leader at the time and for obvious reasons, never a boy scout either. I did learn a lot about it. Had I waited til my son joined the troop and I had a better understanding of boy scouting (as opposed to cub scouting), I probably would have gotten different things out of the course. But you know, my son's pack needed me back then in a way that my son's troop does not need me now. So I think that was the right time for me to do the course.

 

ETA: We don't have a council-run boy scout summer camp. While we do have a cub scout resident camp and cub scout day camp, many times these operate on a family-by-family basis, rather than a whole pack signing up at once. And while there, parents are pretty much engaged with their kid. Not a lot of time for sitting back and talking about scouting in the big picture.

(This message has been edited by lisabob)

[BrentAllen]

Deciding whether or not to attend WB should be simple - if you love Scouting, you will love WB.

 

The course is not going to make perfect leaders out of all who attend. It will give you the opportunity to improve your leadership skills. I think one of the bigger benefits is it gives everyone attending (participants and staff) the opportunity to really study Scouting. To really dig in and look at different parts of the program. The amount and depth of study depends on the individual. During those two weekends (or week), an individual can take the opportunity to reach out and ask lots of questions of everyone there, to seek out opinions and experiences, or they can keep to themselves and do the minimum to complete the course. That is up to the individual. The course gives you six days to eat, sleep and breathe nothing but Scouting. Again, if you love Scouting, you will love WB.

 

Back when I used to shoot High Power, we would go to the National Matches at Camp Perry, OH. If you went to the first week of the Rifle Matches, you shot in the Presidents' 100 on Monday and the National Trophy Individual on Tuesday. You fired 30 shots on Monday and 50 shots on Tuesday. Wednesday was the Juniors Match and Thursday and Friday were Team matches. A lot of shooters didn't shoot the Team matches, but hung around for the week and helped out. A new shooter would look at the schedule and ask, "Why would I want to drive to northern Ohio and spend a week of my vacation to only shoot 80 shots over two matches?" The answer was, if you love shooting, this will be the best week you ever spend on this activity. You are surrounded by people who love the sport, you get to rub shoulders with the best in the sport, and all you do is eat, sleep and breathe shooting for an entire week. It is intoxicating, and you will go home wanting more. They were right.

 

From my WB experiences, I can say the same thing - it is intoxicating, and I always went home wanting more.

[HICO_Eagle]

Lisa --

 

Good on you for doing what you felt you needed to for your son. My point was that you don't need to go to WB to talk to other Scouters and get suggestions. I got it at summer camps by keeping my eyes and ears open and talking with some of the more grizzled Scouters but you can do some of the same at Camporees, Roundtables, etc. although (truth in advertising) many Scoutmasters will send surrogates to Roundtable. At one troop we had a direct conflict between Roundtable and troop meetings, in another, I just didn't have time for both.

 

I highly suggest WB and other training for our adult volunteers with no background in Scouting. I have yet to be convinced that it has anything of value to offer to those with a lot of background in Scouting (although they probably have a lot to offer to WB) if you don't care about beads or belt buckles (I'd rather wear my Philmont or Eagle belt buckles than a WB belt buckle anyway).

[Lisabob]

HICO, I don't disagree that there are other venues where people MIGHT get a chance to just chew the fat about scouting. Few of those venues compare to Wood Badge though because of the single-minded focus of Wood Badge participants and besides some of them (camporee, summer camp) tend to exclude large numbers of scouters other than ASMs/SMs. Roundtables are more open to scouters in a broader range of positions, but they typically have an agenda to follow, leaving little time for deeper discussion, and besides they're only an hour a month.

 

Back when I started grad school and I was an impoverished student imagining how nice it would be to have a tenured position as a professor someday, one of my profs took me aside. She said yeah, the money is nice, the job security is nice, the work is mostly rewarding, etc. But by far and away, once the basics are covered, the biggest thing you'll end up wishing you had more of is not money or security - it is uninterupted time to think, read, research, and write (these are an academic's life blood). Over the years since then I have found that she was 100% right about the luxury of time. Most people just can't think deeply and seriously in short bursts with a million other duties and distractions pulling you this way and that.

 

I know sometimes I talk too much so let me try to boil this down. What I find most valuable about Wood Badge is the sustained, uninterrupted, focus on developing a vision that will translate into delivery of a better scouting program. This sort of soul-searching can benefit even the most seasoned leaders who may need to look at their program with fresh eyes from time to time. All the other stuff one gets from Wood Badge is ancillary, in my view.

[BadenP]

I have to agree that there seems to be a little more arrogance among many WBers that they seem to think they have reached some sort of pinnacle towards scout sainthood, but the truth of the matter is they are only as good as their instructors, what they learned, and how much of the material they use in their own units.

 

I have completed both the old and new WoodBadge courses and the staff on the original class were vastly superior to the later course and as a result the second class, IMHO, was almost a complete waste of time, except for the friendships formed.

 

As far as the "big whup" is concerned WB is quite an accomplishment for any scouter, but if they act superior to other scouters they have missed the message and should have their beads taken away until they realize what idiots they have been.

[scoutldr]

Here's the test. IF they did away with the beads, necker and woggle, would people still sign up? How about just a pocket training card and a handshake? If WB is really worth the experience, shouldn't make a difference, right? Or are they just in it for the status symbol doodads?

 

I used to be just a Scouter...and still am.

[dg98adams]

As a participant in C-31-05 and now on staff for C-9-09 my view of WB is a bit clearer.

 

I do like the description of WB as "another opportunity for adult leader training"....and not an "end all be all" status course.

 

In all, I think for an adult who has not experienced a "focused group effort" to try to become better leaders, it is invaluable, but maybe not right for everyone.

 

Status symbols (beads, woggels, tartan), a WB values not these things (cheap yoda ripoff quote)....for more than what they are versus what they represent.

 

Introspection, and "big picture" of how things can be....are what I see. In fact, in a recent staff weekend, I am humbled to bring what I know of Scouting to the staff. I hope they were once where I am today so that would mean I can have a chance of being where they are now.

 

The only thing I see when I see the "evidence of WB (beads, woggle, Tartan)" is someone who makes a personal commitment to see Scouting grow. A WB staffer puts in a lot more hours that the 6 days of training, I know that now. This is in addition to how many times you have seen a WB at Scout events.

 

I used to a Buffalo......

[SR540Beaver]

HICO,

 

If you don't see any value and don't want to go.....don't. I've been to WB and staffed two courses with a third coming up. While it is rare, we occasionally get someone there who reluctantly signed up and has walked in with a bad attitude. They are miserable and affect everyone in their patrol. Sometimes though, they actually get i nthe groove and decide that it was indeed a good move on their part.

 

I'll tell you a true story for what it is worth. In the troop I served before my current troop, the SM I was ASM under was also the District Training Chair. He was also an Eagle Scout. He told me that the hardest person to get to attend training of any kind was the Eagle Scouts like him. He said that they figured they knew it all from their experiences 30 years ago as a boy who earned Eagle.

 

Additional training never hurts, even for those who have been there, done that.

[desertrat77]

Great discussion!

 

Thanks to the WB proponents for the interesting counterpoints.

 

Wondering: how much activity (hiking, cooking, pioneering and the like) is there in WB today? What would be the ratio today of classroom v. outdoor activity?

 

I ask because one of my beefs about WB is it seems to mostly stationary...classroom, briefings, discussions.

 

 

 

 

[BDPT00]

SR540Beaver,

I'm very glad you said that, because I'm hearing it when I read some of these comments.

I have a very good friend whose brother has absolutely no interest in attending Wood Badge (he's 50 something). Why should he go?! Afterall, he's an Eagle Scout. End of conversation.

BDPT00

[Eagle92]

Let's look at the origins of WB. BP wanted to create a training course for SMs to bring back to their troops and incorporate into their program. The WB trained SM would instill the elements of WB into is troop's junior leaders. Hence the Wb training would fan out so to speak. Thus according to theory, a WB trained SM, would instill the same knowledge, skills,and abilities into the scouts he works with. So in essence, an Eagle of a WB trained SM would have very similar expereinces as a WB course.

 

Most people i've met who are upset with WB21C are upset b/c they took alot of the outing of it. Yes you do some basic camping, but you are inside for most of the classes.

 

When I went though BA22 back int he day, we did a bit of backpacking, a bit of pioneering, a bit of orienteering, a nit of wilderness survival, etc. Classes were either in the program areas we were camping in, or on Brownsea Field with the entire troop of 8 patrols. 4 patrols were int he base camp area, 4 patrols in the out back area, and the only time we saw the other half was the first day, one day in the middle of the week, Friday for the camp service project and feast, and graduation. We didn't have group classes, except for one class int he middle of the week.

 

Today I reread the Philmont Leadership Course (PLC) that takes what is learned in WB, and "takes it up a notch" THAT course reminds me of what I went through with Brownsea 22, the JLT course I staffed, the the old WB course I've been told and read about. If that was the current WB course, or even a slightly watered down version of it, I would have no doubt I would take that course before Powderhorn.

 

I really regret that I didn't take WB when I had the opportunity to 15 years ago. Even if, as one of my youth staffers who turned 18 told me, " the same thing we taught and did at JLT, just without the ticket."