Level III

[Woodsy]

Easier said than done.  Someone has to actually organize and teach the class.

All you need is a couple of experienced people to volunteer to be directors, and a few experienced
members to lead the classes.  The curriculum is canned, and actually pretty good, being mostly discussion.

Maybe you'd start a trend?

Every wing ought to be doing 3-4 a year.

The problem we've had here in FLWG lately is lack of qualified and willing instructors.  Our Wing PDO resigned and left CAP about a year ago and the position was just filled about a month ago (by an excellent member, so I'm sure we'll be seeing lots of classes coming up.)   A couple of the usual instructors have had medical issues and have been unable to do it.  We've also aged ourselves out, so to say, in that many of the long-time active members who often directed these courses are getting along in years and are cutting their activities down.  What we need to do is start getting people trained up on teaching these classes.

Forgive me for digressing here, but while we're on the age topic... 

I've long been a big proponent of getting some young blood involved at wing level. We need guys with energy and passion that are physically and mentally active and able to do these things.  We have 3 people at the director level (myself included) in our late 20's.  It really adds a great balance.  We are respected by the older guys and learn a lot from them, as they do from us.  We often find ourselves helping out in other directorates because we have the energy to do so.  We can run on 2 hours of sleep from one part of the state to another for a weekend event and get home and back to work Monday without it taking much of a toll. We are a great resource for the wing and usually willing to do whatever we can, anywhere, to help. 

I believe CAP as a whole needs to make an effort to recruit (and then actively involve from the beginning) some "young blood."  It also helps mitigate the "aging out" issue, so that replacements are always available and already know what they're doing.  Sure, we get the cadets who cross over to the dark side., but I have found that working with 21 and 22 year old cadets with LT or Captain's bars, that they often still have the mindset of a cadet, and that is not always a good thing when it comes to administration and the like.  We need to be out recruiting at young professionals groups, chamber of commerce, sports leagues, and other areas where active, healthy, energetic people hang out.

Another observation:  I've seen a few sub-30's attend a squadron meeting after hearing about CAP at the local flight school or FBO, only to never be seen again.  I've talked to a few of them and asked why they decided not to join, and they said it's because that except for myself, they felt like they were the only person under 60 in the room. They enjoyed hearing the war stories from Viet Nam but they just did not feel like CAP had anything for them.  We need to freshen CAP up a bit and make it interesting for the younger crowd. 

How do we do this?

I think I'll start a thread about that...  Tips from a young buck to the veterans.  Remember, learning is a 2 way street.

[spacecommand]

In all of FLWG with groups that are bigger than some Wings, you guys can't find one person to be a director of a CLC course?

I'm not sure about FLWG, but courses like SLS or CLC don't need to be initiated by Wing, at least not where I am. 

For example, my unit had some folks who needed CLC, instead of waiting around for Wing to initiate a CLC course, which happens once a year or so, we decided to host one. Of course we can't hold a local CLC for just our members only, so we informed Wing that we would like to host a CLC for all members of the Wing to be held at our unit location.  Wing had no problem with this and began to PR it around.  One of our experienced members volunteered to be the course director and after announcing about 4 other people from around the Wing volunteered to be instructors for the various modules.  Course instructors and directors get credit as well for Level 4 or 5. 

[Woodsy]

In all of FLWG with groups that are bigger than some Wings, you guys can't find one person to be a director of a CLC course?

Oh no, we have quite a few classes every year.  I'd just like to see double quite a few 

Groups can do CLC, but it just tends to be the same group of people that do them.

[Angus]

Took a little bit but my Level III finally posted.  Now if I'm very lucky and a very good boy I might be able to finish Level IV this year too.  Just two tasks left  to do to complete it. 

Edit was to better clariify my original statement.