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Teaching is communicating

If you’ve ever had to stand in front of a group and try to teach them something, you’ve experienced it. Sometimes you can talk until you’re blue in the face and still get the feeling that you’re not getting through.

Over on Clarke Green’s ScoutmasterCG blog last week was an article called Escaping the Classroom. It’s about employing teaching methods more appropriate than classroom instruction when dealing with Scouts. After all, they get between six and seven hours of class each day. No wonder they won’t want to come to “Scout school” at a troop meeting or on a campout. Clarke discusses involve using the EDGE method to not only train but to develop more trainers in the process. Continue reading “Teaching is communicating”

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Scouting’s “one piece of paper”

Most successful leaders didn’t get that way by accident. Leadership is a learned skill, based on guiding principles and developed through experience. For an organization, these guiding principles are usually codified in a mission statement, which members of that organization follow in carrying out their responsibilities.

In addition to a mission, true leaders need a moral compass that guides their stewardship and service within their organizations. For most, the way to arrive at which way their moral compass points is through introspection and careful consideration of their personal values and vision. Continue reading “Scouting’s “one piece of paper””

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Do you have a troop handbook?

It’s been said that the Boy Scouts of America is responsible for more dead trees than any other organization – based on the sheer number of handbooks, guidebooks, pamphlets, training guides, and other publications.

Don’t believe me? Just visit your nearest Scout shop. There you’ll find for sale copies of the Scout handbook in multiple formats, a handbook for Scoutmasters, a handbook for the troop committee, the Scout fieldbook, handbooks for various youth leadership positions, over one hundred twenty different merit badge pamphlets, books containing troop meeting planning guides and resource books. There are syllabuses for training Scoutmasters, committee members, and youth leaders, as well as guides for planning Roundtable. Guides for safe Scouting, conducting trips and outings, health and safety … the list goes on. And I haven’t even delved into Cub Scouting. Continue reading “Do you have a troop handbook?”

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Please stay behind the rope!

An AP news item which ran in our local newspaper last week told of an Easter egg hunt in a Colorado town being canceled for behavioral reasons.

No, not the kids misbehaving – the parents.

Aggressive parents were to blame for the sponsors of the annual event deciding to call it quits. Too many parents were jumping over the rope to make sure that their child got her fair share and wasn’t disappointed. Continue reading “Please stay behind the rope!”

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Ever try to cook an avocado?

One of the things I like to do in my spare time that isn’t taken up by Scouting is to cook. The Food Network has a lot of shows that I enjoy watching, and one of them is Worst Cooks in America. In this series,  two professional chefs each adopt a team of highly inept home cooks and work with them through the episodes to hone their skills to the point where they can cook a restaurant-quality meal by the end of the series.

The chefs teach cooking skills to their “recruits,” as they are called, by demonstrating how to prepare various dishes, explaining what they are doing along the way. They then turn the recruits loose in the kitchen to either replicate the dish they were shown, or ask them to prepare something similar. While they are cooking, the professionals watch over their trainees, giving them pointers along the way. Eventually, the amateur cooks develop enough skills that the pros can watch from the sidelines without having to interact.

Does this sound familiar? Continue reading “Ever try to cook an avocado?”