Can Someone Explain Woodbadge to Me

[T2Eagle]

I just finished my second weekend and I am still very much up in the air on its value.

I was continuously told this will all make sense when youre done, but it still doesnt. Maybe someone out there can explain the parts that bothered me most.

 

1) For the initial meeting I had to travel an hour and a half each way for a Blue and Gold. There was, being generous, 15 minutes of substantive information provided at that meeting, most of which could have been sent in an e-mail and the remaining maybe 5 minutes of introductory training could just as easily have been given at the beginning of the first weekend. The rest of the time? Three hours having eight dens of scouters each have to perform two skits, two cheers, and two songs. Watching the Invisible Bench skit performed by a group of Cub Scouts is cute and funny, but watching it performed by a bunch of middle aged scouters not so much. How could this be seen as a good use of six hours of my time?

 

2) The final day of the first weekend, late on a Sunday afternoon, all most of us wanted to do was get finished whatever we had to do and get home to our families, but instead we had to sit and watch October Sky a nice movie about a nice topic but what did it have to do with anything? And if I really had to watch it couldnt I have just been asked to watch between weekends? Its not that hard to find, it was on HBO just last week. Again how can that be justified as a good use of my time?

 

I have some other things that I just dont get, but Id like to start with these.

(This message has been edited by a staff member.)

[jrush]

Eagle, it should make sense now, if you look at it from the right points of view.

 

First, WB is about teaching you the "corporate side" of Scouting. At the National level, the BSA isn't a youth program, it's a corporation, and knowing how and why that corporation thinks and operates the way it does can help you present a better program.

 

Second, in many councils, it is the door into Council-level operations. True, some of the best mentors and leaders you will ever find have never gone to WB, but part of "Troop/Pack Operation" includes interfacing with the District and Council...and in many areas those beads are the key to that door. In other areas it may be something else, but many use WB.

 

October Sky is a study on peer-to-peer teenage leadership and adult-youth mentorship. The BSA isn't the only organization which uses it. You weren't watching it for fun. The staff should've made that clear. Same as the military using clips from movies to dissect leadership breakdowns or tactical errors. All the same, the movie in it's entirety isn't necessary.

 

The tickets aren't just about improving yourself or the organization...they should force reflection of why you're in scouting to that extent in the first place. Remember, WB isn't required except for very few scouters in the council. Trainers, National Jambo adult leaders, etc. You can be a perfectly great SM or CM without those beads.

 

Bottom line, it is no more a good or poor use of time than any other training the BSA puts on, except training in unit accounting, youth protection and safety (which IMO are by far the most essential).

[SR540Beaver]

I've staffed four WB courses, so I'll try to answer your questions. This Blue and Gold you speak of sounds like a pre-course meeting. I can't say 100%, but I believe national now discourages them because of possible hardship to pariticipants as you describe. We still do them in my council, but they are voluntary. They have been very helpful to have a face to face between staff and participants so questions can be asked and answered in front of everybody. Many people don't know how to pack and what to expect. The meeting takes care of that. Can it be done in an email? Yes, but many questions lead to other questions and doing it in a large group helps provide more and better information. Often, the information given in a pre-course meeting can't be done during the first weekend becuase it is too late to provide the information that is needed before you arrive. That and the course is designed to be presented in a certain order and time. A course director takes a pledge to offer the course as written and not deviate from it. While there are ways to tweak the presentation, you can't just add other things in to it and stay on schedule.

 

Are you saying that this pre-course "Blue and Gold" took three hours with participants doing skits? That is not part of Wood Badge. Someone cooked that up on their own.

 

Of course you are tired on Sunday. The staff is too. As mentioned above, the course must be presented as designed and you can't take portions out or add portions in. You should have been told before ever arriving when the course would begin on Friday and when it would end on Sunday. Much of what you have had presented to you had to do with different leadership styles and how people use them and respond to them. The movies presented in WB display these different leadership styles in an entertaining form to supplement the presentations you've set thru. What did it have to do with anything? What kind of leader was Homer? How did he communicate his dream and what style of leadership did he use with his rocket boys? What about Homer's dad? What kind of leader was he down at the mine?

 

Not to brag, but my council puts on two course a year and we kind of have it down to a science. All of the course materials are warehoused and used from course to course. We have a WB committee made up of former course directors who help to ensure the quality, value and continuity of the courses. I sometimes have to stop and remember that there are councils who only do one course every few years and basically have to reinvent the wheel each time. We have a small neighboring council who has not done a course in years and now can't because they have no WB trained scouters who can serve on staff. I can't say why you didn't "get it", but it could be that you had a very inexperienced staff.

[SR540Beaver]

jrush,

 

While I agree with some of what you said, WB has absolutely nothing to do with teaching participants about the "corporate" side of scouting. If that is what you got out of it, your course director didn't present the course as designed.

[emb021]

I have to agree with SR540's assessment of jrush's comments. This isn't what WB is about.

 

"The tickets aren't just about improving yourself or the organization...they should force reflection of why you're in scouting to that extent in the first place."

 

No.

 

The purpose of the ticket (there is only 1 ticket, composed of 5 or more tasks or goals) is a chance for YOU to put in practice what you learned in WB in a practical way. This is very valuable, but something too many people loose sight of. Too many leadership courses are just going over leadership concepts. All well and good, but if you don't put it into practice, its useless. Some leadership courses ask you to make commitments to yourself to put what you learn into practice. That's nice, but with WB (and a few other courses), you actually DO have to put it into practice to full graduate from the course and get your beads et al, which are the outward sign that you completed the course.

 

This is why the ticket is called the 'application' phase of WB.

 

 

[Basementdweller]

T2, I don't get it either. I was looking/waiting for that epiphany moment during the course. Never happened.

 

Not sure about your scouting experience.....I attribute my experience to my long tenure in scouting youth and adult. It took NYLT back in the early 70's. So basically I had already taken it.

 

 

the other thing that effected my experience was my patrol......Patrol was spread over too large a geographic area 4 hour drive one way. We never bonded.

[T2Eagle]

I did Brownsea back in 75, and I thought so much of it that I convinced my troop two years ago to start sending our leaders to NYLT and pick up half the cost. I tell the scouts before they go that I learned leadership skills there that I saw again in college, had to read the academic support for in graduate school, and then saw in virtually every leadership training I ever participated in professionally.

 

For me the theater of Woodbadge --- spending hours watching and then participating in campfires, attending faux PLCs, wearing the same uniform morning noon and night, watching the staff do a Gilbert and Sullivan number --- just didnt seem to be something I could use to provide more service to my unit.

 

 

 

[Basementdweller]

T2 you didn't happen to take Brown Sea at the now defunct Camp Avery Hand?????

 

 

[T2Eagle]

No, I was in Bucks County PA outside Philadelphia, Camp Ockanickon.

[desertrat77]

As a non-WBer, I won't attempt to explain WB, but I would like to make a comment.

 

If this is not appropriate, I'll take my beating.

 

Seems to me T2Eagle is asking why WB does A and B. The upshot is that A and B don't seem have much value added, and if someone is going commit to WB, they'd like to have the course be the mountain top experience it is promised to be.

 

Here's the vibe of explanations, so far: yes, sorry about the blue/gold, that was weird, but overall, the course is the course, deal with it, etc.

 

Rationalize it any way you want, but watching a movie in the camp mess on Sunday evening ain't leadership training. It might be a good movie, with some insights that can be shared over a cup of coffee. But if you are selling a top of the line experience, movie-watching isn't even in the ball park.

 

As a career military guy, any time a briefer has movie clip (or, heaven forbid, an entire movie) as part of his brief, I groan inwardly...because usually it's just a waste of time. Get to the point already. One of the lamest, overused techniques around. It's passive.

 

To sum up, I think this discussion serves as a good example of why we have the "spirited" WB discussions now and again. Two different points of view of what is "value added."

 

PS I didn't get to attend Brownsea back in the day, but the folks that did always raved about it. It was the real deal.

 

(This message has been edited by desertrat77)

[KelcemaChief]

I'm a new scouter and hope to attend WB someday... just wanted to throw in my two cents on movies in training. I agree somewhat with desertrat77 - I also cringed at films used for training in my military career (and especially in my college career). However: when I worked in management at a large financial company I took a two-day "Situational Leadership" course that was phenomenal. Part of that course involved watching "Twelve O'Clock High" and then discussing and writing about the various leadership styles used by the characters. Very illuminating - but only because it was all brought home by the discussion and exercises that followed the movie. The course was not developed by the corporation but by a third party company that specializes in such things.

[Basementdweller]

Kel......I bet you viewed the movie in an air conditioned dark room and you were properly rested. We watched at the end of a three day camping weekend with two very late nights. The dining hall we view it in was about 100 degrees and not even remotely dark, so the movie was difficult to see and with all the fans running you couldn't hear it very well.

 

I was thinking about the long drive home, getting gear unpacked and dried. I was hungry, very hot, wet and tired. I was done and ready to leave.

 

With your stated leadership training, I would not take woodbadge. The training you have already received is far superior.(This message has been edited by Basementdweller)

[desertrat77]

Kel, I love Twelve O'Clock High! Got a copy at home. However, I'd be hesitant to show the whole thing in a leadership seminar, even a formal military one. Tough to pull off without people mentally checking out. However, it sounds like the contractor that showed it at your course cracked the code on keeping participants engaged--my hat is off to them, that's quite good news.

[jrush]

SR450,

 

Maybe that's just how I saw it because that's what I was expecting to see.

Since it's national that comes up with the WB syllabus, I took the course to be a "window into the mind of national". I know that's not what the book says or how the course was presented.

 

emb021,

 

I didn't say each participant wrote 5 tickets, I meant tickets, plural, as "we all sat down and put together our tickets". Although, by the time mine got signed, I had written 5 tickets...anyways, the workbook is pretty clear that it's 5 goals. If the ticket was just the capstone to put into practice what you learned, you could have a reasonable ticket that only takes a couple of months at most. Why else have a ticket that takes 12 months or so to complete, if there isn't some time to think about why you're doing it built into it?

 

[SSScout]

I had a chemistry teacher in high school who knew and loved his subject, and was so good a teacher he could inspire catfish to fly. (local jargon). I also had a physics teacher who ,I am sure, had the proper credentials, but too often had incorrect items on his tests and even when the students would show him IN THE TEXTBOOK where the test was wrong, would not accept it. We learned how to pass his class, not necessarily what physics was.

I think from hearing about some WBcourses, it's sometimes like that.

The first part of the course is partly about what Scouting is, and this is a very cursury review for folks that have no large experience. Blue and Gold includes a graduation, Cub Scouting into Boy Scouting and from the Den to the Patrol. That smiling overly solicitous fellow that was following you around should have gone from being a Den Chief to a Patrol/Troop Guide: From telling you what to do, to telling you what should be done, to helping and enabling you to do what YOU know needs to be done.

The whole course SHOULD give one alot of snippets (Gmoms jargon) of different types of leadership styles, different Scouting experience, alot of fellowship and networking among Scouters, and finally a overseen chance to use what you've seen and learned (and been inspired to do?) in creating and hopefully succeeding at some useful Scout projects.

 

I like jrush's comment about "reflecting on why you're in Scouting". That part seems to slip aside sometimes. It (WB) can't only be about "here's how to do it Scout style" but needs to be about " why " YOU do it. Hopefully, that reason is similar to why I do it.

It also needs to be noted that WB should never be considered only about Scouting. Much of the course can be applied in the workplace and at home. And the self reflection is also approbriate, and painful for some (see tne threads about the (Get All You Can game).

 

So I came to WB and found that some of my instructors were very like my chem teacher and a few were like my physics teacher. I nodded my head at what I already knew, appreciated when my collegues had their "aha" moment (if they did) and was grateful for the new stuff I had'nt known before.

Of my 5 projects, 3 were fully successful, one is still ongoing (2 years later) and one was fully finished and garnered many congrats from folks (both Scouty and non) but I considered a failure. I think my time in WB was useful.

And too, it was fun to camp among adult folks and leave the family behind for a while...

(This message has been edited by SSScout)