Tag: Training

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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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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?”

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Helping the committee go

As a committee chair, what do you think your biggest challenges are? Conducting the monthly committee meetings? Keeping track of finances and advancement? Helping out at pack meetings or troop campouts?

These are all challenges faced by committee chairs, but there’s one challenge common to all of us: Keeping our committee members feeling useful and appreciated.

If there’s one thing we all crave, it’s to be wanted, needed and appreciated, especially in something we care about, like Scouting. Continue reading “Helping the committee go”

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Calling All Scouters!

University of ScoutingAs a Scouter, one of the most important things you can do to improve not only your experience in Scouting but also to improve the program for the boys is training.

In addition to online and classroom training courses, a fun and interesting learning opportunity comes around in most councils about once a year – University of Scouting.

Formerly called Scouters’ Conference or Cub Scout Pow-Wow, the University of Scouting concept has spread across the country. Continue reading “Calling All Scouters!”