by Dick Broene, Training Coordinator
DCE’s, are you ready for another year of helping the counselors in your council to become more effective in their ministry with boys? DCE Team Leaders, have you mapped out the training for the entire 2024-2025 season and sent that plan to your Regional Training Coordinator (RTC)? If not, please do so (at least, by the end of August)! That way, your RTC can begin to actually coordinate training in your region. In other words, your plan helps him do his job. Specifically, it helps him in two ways.
First, he can see what workshops will be available in February, which is usually our workshop exchange month. He can help councils determine which workshops they would most like to see – led by DCEs from other councils.
Second, he can use the lists of workshops to help plan a regional conference. If one council has an especially good or popular workshop, why not let the other men in the region benefit from it?
So please, DCE Team Leaders, take your job seriously. Let’s make this a great year for training men in the Cadet ministry.
Training Tips
Reviewing key workshop points is a valuable way to end your workshop. Instead of just asking questions, turn it over to your participants. Here’s how. Put slips of paper in a bowl, each containing one review question. Have participants take turns drawing and reading the questions. To ensure that everyone will listen carefully as each question is read, tell them they may select the individual to answer the question. Caution them to read the question slowly and carefully (possibly twice) before selecting the person to answer. If you are concerned about putting participants “on the spot,” simply have them ask for volunteers to answer.
There are two types of people that are difficult to draw into the learning process: the know-it-alls and those who came because they didn’t have anything better to do. Even if your DCE Team is able to use learning needs assessment as the basis for each workshop you offer, you may have several of the latter. You may always have one or more of the first. So begin your session with some type of working exercise. This draws in those who are there to pass time, and it helps demonstrate to the know-it-all that there is something to learn after all.
At the beginning of a workshop, and when you have participants working together in small groups, it can be challenging to gain their attention. Here are some tricks that might help:
- Flick a lightswitch. This isn’t offensive, if you do it rapidly and briefly.
- Make a dramatic announcement. Say something like, “Testing, 1, 2, 3, testing, 1, 2, 3” or “Now hear this, now hear this” or “Earth to counselors, earth to counselors.”
- Create a verbal signal. Instruct the group to repeat after you whenever they hear you say, “Time’s up.” Before you know it, they will be assisting you in indicating that it is time to stop what they are doing.
- Use clapping. Instruct the group to clap their hands once if they can hear you. Within a few seconds, the first participants to hear your instructions will clap, getting the rest of the group’s attention.
- Use a sound signal. A gavel, bell, whistle, or kazoo will do. Novelty stores also have a variety of sound-making gag toys.
Finding Time
Becoming a DCE, mentor, or coach doesn’t help your time management problems, especially now that you have new challenges and responsibilities associated with it. You want to perform well, but … well, you know.
The key, of course, isn’t how much time you have. It’s how you use the time you do have. Here’s an exercise that might help you to focus better on how you spend your time and how you might alter your schedule to use the time you have more effectively.
Begin by listing on about ten individual sheets of yellow paper the key categories of where you spend time (work, family, Cadets, DCE, etc.). Then on each sheet, write down exactly how you usually spend your time in that category.
Next, arrange the yellow sheets in this order: from the category that takes the most time to the one that takes the least time.
The next step is where you have an opportunity to find the time to do what is really important. Take ten small sheets of white paper and write the same headings on them. Write down on each how you would really like to spend your time in each category.
Compare the yellow and white sheets … and decide what changes you will make in your use of time. You will be amazed and pleased with the results!