Cadet Activities

[captearhart]

My squadron is showing a movie this week during the meeting, but I have approximately 5 cadets who will not be allowed to watch but will still be attending because of testing opportunities. I need additional activities for them to participate in; does anyone know of any fun activities for a group this small?

[ol'fido]

Is there a reason they are not being allowed to watch?

[captearhart]

It's Saving Private Ryan.  Some of the parents aren't comfortable with their kids watching.

[a2capt]

How about.. an alternate movie for them. It just means a smaller setup, perhaps a TV in a different room.

Or use the time for some well structured drill, aerospace review, a lesson on speech and essay planning, things geared towards future promotions.

You say they're still attending due to testing opportunities, but they wouldn't be testing if they were watching a movie.. so..  there's still ambiguity here.

If you mean taking a test, and then spending the rest of the time doing something else.. that goes back to an alternate movie, if the idea was to have a movie night. Obviously some staff member(s) is/are going to have to lead that alternate session, too. So..

[Eclipse]

Why are they showing an "R" rated movie at a squadron meeting?

Tell them to run Band of Brothers or We Were Soldiers instead.

[a2capt]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and figure that parental permission has been obtained, otherwise the "5" wouldn't be excluded already. Which is why I didn't go there with the MPAA rating.

[Extremepredjudice]

What's the point of showing that movie? It seems like a waste of valuable squadron meeting time...

[MajorPayne]

    Some good points given here. In my opinion, squadron activities such as a movie night are a fun way to get to know your fellow cadets on a more casual level per say and just have a good time. But if the goal of this is to have fun as a squadron, why would you want a movie that excludes those 5 or so cadets? I agree with Eclipse, a movie that is suitable for everyone would in my opinion seem like a better path to follow. Hope this helps

[a2capt]

.. a movie that is suitable for everyone would in my opinion seem like a better path to follow. Hope this helps

That's kinda the direction I was hoping to get to .. with a little bait .. er, tro, ... er .. yeah. That.

[Garibaldi]

In my old unit, 5th meetings were family-oriented, and the week before encampment, we had movie night, which had a fairly good turnout. We watched "The Tuskeegee Airmen" and aside from a few bouts of bad language, we all had a good time. No one complained about the language, and most of our cadets were homeschooled church-going Christians. It may have helped that the movie was agreed upon weeks in advance and parents were notified and were able to research it.

[a2capt]

In the Summer months we'll use the 5th of beach PT, or leadership activities with a both fun and learning intent to their madness, and sometimes we'll just do PT at the beach instead on the typical night for that, since it happens to be exactly 1 mile along the road route to the beach from our location, that's really handy. Mile run to the beach..

[Eclipse]

A much better choice.

Seriously, would anyone argue that our cadets are not already consuming enough pseudo-historical mass media?

Anything which causes some cadets to be excluded should be a no-go from the start, and another couple of hours
in front of a screen isn't really the best use of anyone's time.

[LGM30GMCC]

If you want a good movie with Zero violence, a positive message, good leadership lessons, and only very marginally hinted at gore (and pretty mild at that and only if you are really paying attention and catch it) I recommend 'Taking Chance' with Kevin Bacon. I think 'the "s" word' is said twice in the whole movie and the character that says it apologizes for saying it, and then is told by the other character in the car that it was ok and he wasn't offended.

Seriously...that is a FANTASTIC movie. Tie in some questions and you can turn it into a character development forum pretty easily.

[Walkman]

Every once in a while, we'll do a movie + pizza on the 5th week as well. Seems that the films are usually PG-13 at the highest.

[Rick-DEL]

We'll show videos from the USAF's Red Flag competition. Then we'll try to tie it into a quiz about aircraft models, characteristics, and so forth. We have also recently shown one about the evolution of flight from the Wright Brothers to the F-22 Raptor and stealth technology. Cadets seem to enjoy it.

[Walkman]

We'll show videos from the USAF's Red Flag competition. Then we'll try to tie it into a quiz about aircraft models, characteristics, and so forth. We have also recently shown one about the evolution of flight from the Wright Brothers to the F-22 Raptor and stealth technology. Cadets seem to enjoy it.

That sounds like a cool activity! Where do you get those specific videos?

[Rick-DEL]

Luckily we have a Captain who flew C-141's in the Air Force and is an avid collector of all things regarding aircraft from models to movies. So, he is a great resource to be our AEO, when he's not spanning the globe as a commercial airline pilot. I do believe you can stumble across videos like that at Wal-Mart in the $5 bin.

[a2capt]

Fry's has a pretty decent selection of documentaries, too. I've picked up quite a few from there. Attached is a list that contains a good portion of what I have. I should try and add more to it.

It's mostly World Air Routes/Airports and JustPlanes.com stuff, but there's a lot of others too.

World Air Routes are where a camera crew shadows and aircrew on a scheduled or charter route and you get to see everything from dispatch, planning, preflight, boarding .. the flight, and arrival.  Though mostly on overseas carriers, for us, due to FAA cockpit access changes since 2001. Some pretty unique ones, too, like Chalk's Airways when they still flew the Mallards.

JustPlanes and World Airports are plane spotter videos with narration.

One unique item is the Sept. 11th broadcast as it was unfolding live, that I happened to accidentally capture due to a hurried night before and mis-programming on my then Rube Goldberg like contraption for recording video, using a relay, the cable box, and a shoulder mounted 8mm camera that had an overexposed tube rendering it to becoming a 'VCR'.

[addo1]

Why are they showing an "R" rated movie at a squadron meeting?

Tell them to run Band of Brothers or We Were Soldiers instead.

Haha - have you seen Band of Brothers? One and the same on that "R", I must say.

In all serious, though. There are so many opportunities. While setting up another viewing station for a different movie is a great choice, perhaps you could also explore other options such as fun, interactive TLPs, or something that provides a bit of entertainment, yet accomplishes some objective.

[Майор Хаткевич]

A lot of BoB episodes are barely pushing PG13