The Selection of trainers.

[Eamonn 61]

I don't know how it works in other Councils or Districts. Training comes under Program. Our Vice President of Program selects the Council Training Chairman. He selects Council Training Chairs to cover all the program areas.

The Districts are requested to select: A District Training Chair. A Cub Scout Training Chair. A Boy Scout Training Chair and a Venturing Training Chair.

While the Districts can ask the Council Training Chair to help them in with the selection, they normally don't. This of course means that the Council Training Chair. has little or no say who he is going to work with.

This happy band meets a few times a year to discuss dates of training, up date records, report on past training's,look at the needs that each District has and plan Council Training events. JLTC, Pow Wow, Trainer Development Conference and any other council wide events.

The District Guys have the tools that they need. Whatever that might be AV Equipment, books, handouts and the date of the training. They need now to recruit a staff.

This is where things to get really iffy.

The District Training Chairman, working with the District whatever (Boy Scout, Cub Scout..) Chairman, should be developing people to be trainers. Getting them to the Trainer Development Conference. Nearer the date there should be planning meetings to plan for that training, going over the material, seeing who is doing what. Sad to say this doesn't always happen. I think what is happening is that someone asks someone to present a session at a training is given the syllabus and told when to be where.

Most of the people have are asked to present are busy people to start with, busy working delivering the program to the youth in whatever program. There are a few that are asked because we know that they are not busy - Which begs the question why are they not busy?

At present Trainer is not a recognized BSA position. I'm wondering if things would be better if Trainer were to become a registered position and each trainer were given so many units to cover. May be a lot more than a Unit Commissioner say 6 -8. He or she could visit the unit, promote training and see what was happening in the real world.

Eamonn