Classes for Cadets

[MnOfficer]

I'm the flight commander/acting cadet commander at my squadron. When I joined, we had a CC but he almost never showed up, never really taught us classes, and transferred to another squadron within a couple months. We didn't really have any staff then, but slowly have been building up until now we have a 1st Sgt, Flight Sgt, and then me as a Flight Commander. We are starting to grow and now have 18 cadets (Yay!!). But, as we are building this thing from the ground up, I have never seen what sort of classes/training other squadrons do. I've tried visiting other squadrons but I can never get a good enough picture from that. We are trying to teach more classes now and do activities (like sit. leads and impromptu speeches) as well as have team building exercises. As it is winter now, we can't drill up here anymore. So I'm wondering what sort of classes/activities you guys do to train/teach your cadets? What sort of stuff does your squad do? This would include training for staff/etc. Thanks!

[jeders]

First, welcome and congratulations on rebuilding your squadron. I know how hard it can be to go from a few people with little experience, to a functioning vibrant squadron.

First, what sort of classes are you teaching? are you teaching any AE or leadership classes, or are you expecting cadets to learn that at home mostly, and then come take the tests? If you're teaching classes, especially leadership, are you using the old Leadership 2K curriculum, or the new Learn to Lead curriculum?

The old L2K chapters could easily be busted out in 45 minutes, but were dry and boring. I haven't taught any of the new L2L chapters yet, but that will change after the new year. The new curriculum is best done by taking one part of a chapter and working on that. Then do some sort of practical exercise that reinforces what was taught in the class. By the way, the new activity guide is built for exactly that.

For AE, are you doing any Model Rocketry or AEX stuff? Are you teaching AE classes at all? One thing I did WIWAC was to teach an AE class every other month on some unique/interesting/weird aircraft such as the XB-70. Like I said, I did this every other month with the intervening months being AE module classes.

That's just a "scratching the surface" look at some of the things I've done for classes. Give us an idea of what you're already doing, and I think we can help even more.

And again, congrats on building your squadron back up.

Edit to add: if you haven't done so already, check out CadetStuff, even though it hasn't been updated in a lifetime, or so it seems, there is a wealth of knowledge there. I have turned some of the articles into classes/presentations several times. There is also a forum over there geared specifically towards cadet programs and helping cadets.

[mmizner]

Check out the Cadet section of the CAP website.  There are a few books on Leadership and Aerospace activities.  Also, each squadron was sent these new books about 8 months ago.

[GTCommando]

As already stated, welcome to CT and congratulations on rebuilding your squadron. Your post interested me, because I'm in almost the exact same position. I joined in September of '08 and was made Cadet Commander as a C/Amn in January of '09. We had only 8 or so cadets, then one joined the Navy, previous C/CC became a SM, and a few became inactive, however we've managed to more than double in size on both sides of the aisle.

As to the question, we try to conduct one leadership, one AE, one ML forum (now referred to as Character Development), and one health and safety class per month. Every class is assigned a cadet instructor, with the exception of Character Development, which is usually conducted by the Squadron CC.

[MnOfficer]

Right now we don't teach any leadership classes, but I want to change that. Half of our cadets have the old L2K and half have L2L, and right now they are mostly responsible for learning the material on their own time. Are there like powerpoints or anything that are used to teach from the texts? Or how would I go about teaching them? The activity guide sounds like a good idea, I take it I can find that on the National CAP site?

Right now we have a senior member who teaches all AE classes once a month on various topics. As far as cadets go we don't teach anything other than my staff and I are starting to try and teach sit leads etc. So our senior member teaches about the science behind lift, etc. Are these classes normally taught by cadets? And, if so, is there a specific curriculum (powerpoints, activity guide, etc) that would be used, or is it mostly just lecturing from the book?

We also have a senior member teach us about SAR/ES once a month, but now that I have my GTM3 I'm going to try and teach more of it myself. Because its winter there is a limited number of subjects I can cover about that though, but I'm going to purchase a GTM handbook and start going through that.

Our chaplain teaches ML once a month on Blues night, we have a safety briefing by a senior member twice a month, and that is basically all the classes we teach right now. As I said, my staff and I try to teach other random classes (show shining, basic uniform prep, etc) but right now have no real plan.

Thanks for all your help so far! I'm definitely starting to get a picture of what I think we need to do!   

[jeders]

Ok, I know exactly where you're at then.

There aren't really any powerpoint slides for any of the classes, a lot of it is lecture out of the book. But, don't just read out of the book. Just because you're lecturing from the book doesn't mean it has to be boring reading. There is a teachers guide for the AE modules that you can use to get you started. The L2L books also have a lesson plan guide to help you out.

Ideally what you should be doing, IMHO, is slowly moving away from Seniors teaching everything to Cadets teaching about 95%. There are some things, particularly in ES, where a Senior with much greater experience should remain the teacher, but with a Cadet teaching the simpler items until they gain the experience.

If you already have a Chaplain teaching ML/CD, then I'd leave that one be.

The transition from where you're at to where you want to be should take 3 or 4 months so that the new Cadet teachers get comfortable teaching. Realistically, each cadet should have a real lesson plan of what they are going to teach before the class. That lesson plan should then be kept somewhere with the squadron, either paper or electronic, so that you can refer back to it for futures classes. Ideally, they should also have a handout of some sort to help emphasize the primary points, and so that the cadets aren't just reading along in the book while the teacher "teaches."

Now, there are some people out there, I've never met them personally but I hear they exist, who think that Seniors should run everything and Cadets should sit still and learn. While this works alright when you have a very small squadron where no one is beyond their second or third stripe, a squadron such as yours should run away from that mentality. The reason being that the CP is here to teach you how to be a leader. Obviously, you can't be a leader if you are always stuck following. You have to have the chance to put some of that leadership we teach you to good use. So teaching to cadets, as a cadet, is one of the basic ways to do that. If all that the cadet staff is doing is drill and herding cadets from place to place, you're not getting very much good leadership practice, and you're definitely not getting the most out of the program.

[MnOfficer]

Thanks! I found the lesson plan and activity guide for the L2L books and will try to start incorporating these into our squadron.

So as far as going about doing this, what would you suggest I do? What steps should I take to go from very few cadet classes to mostly cadet classes? What I would do right now is 1. place some cadets in knowledge officer positions (AE officer etc) 2. Pair up an experienced cadet off of my staff to work with them to develop classes (following the idea of each cadet teacher making a lesson plan, clearing it with me and my staff, and then practicing for the actual class) 3. start slowly mixing in cadet taught classes along with the regular senior member taught ones. All of this AFTER clearing this idea with my senior staff of course. Does that seem like a good plan for action?

As far as the leadership aspect goes, I completely agree. Allowing the cadets to teach a class would increase their sense of responsibility as well as give the slightly more experienced, but still pretty new, something to be in charge of.

[Ron1319]

I'd highly recommend also reviewing the Great Start material so that as you get more new cadets you can start them off on the right foot.  It's also a great way to see how a very well planned set of meetings work that really accomplish a mission.  I'd recommend being very mission oriented in your meeting planning.  Right now you say that your cadet staff is working on teaching each other classes.  With 18 cadets, I think the cadet staff could focus on teaching the new cadets the basics and in that would be their learning and leadership experience.  I'd also recommend setting aside an appropriate amount of time for drill.  A basic meeting schedule looks like this:

7:00 Sign-in/opening
7:15 Class block 1
8:00 break
8:05 Class block 2
8:45 Closing/announcments

Adjust at will.  As you get to have more than one flight then you can assign a block as flight time and allow the flight commanders and flight staff to determine what material the individual flights require focus on.  Options include leadership, aerospace, uniforms, drill, etc.

[HarmonicDeviant]

The word 'class' is one of my biggest peeves in the cadet program... maybe even bigger than ranger tabs :-P. Try replacing the word 'class' with 'activity' in your squadron's vocabulary and see if it makes a difference. It may seem like splitting hairs or a matter of semantics, but the instructions "Plan a uniform class" and "Plan a uniform activity" will be received very differently.

Language is a reflection of our thoughts. If you can change our language, you can change the way we think.

[DakRadz]

The word 'class' is one of my biggest peeves in the cadet program... maybe even bigger than ranger tabs :-P. Try replacing the word 'class' with 'activity' in your squadron's vocabulary and see if it makes a difference. It may seem like splitting hairs or a matter of semantics, but the instructions "Plan a uniform class" and "Plan a uniform activity" will be received very differently.

Language is a reflection of our thoughts. If you can change our language, you can change the way we think.

I immediately thought of different ways of planning each situation, and it was a huge difference... Good call, sir.

[davidsinn]

The word 'class' is one of my biggest peeves in the cadet program... maybe even bigger than ranger tabs :-P. Try replacing the word 'class' with 'activity' in your squadron's vocabulary and see if it makes a difference. It may seem like splitting hairs or a matter of semantics, but the instructions "Plan a uniform class" and "Plan a uniform activity" will be received very differently.

Language is a reflection of our thoughts. If you can change our language, you can change the way we think.

That right there is a sign of a good CP guy...