so I had a request of doing an nco /staff swap night where cadets become the officers and staff and staff become cadets for a night. Anyone ever doing this before and if so what things did you do ,activities etc?
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I would go back to the person who requested it off you & ask them what they envisaged.
Dealing with the angry neighbours who is upset over parent parking or the civcom member who wants to spend funds on a Sqn museum may not be the idea of fun that was intendedā¦.
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Personally I would thank whoever has given the request but politely advise them itās not appropriate or possible. It might sound ākill-joyā but if there was an accident that night or a fire emergency who is responsible, the cadets as officers or officers as cadets? The lines become blurry, I personally donāt have a problem with tasking out jobs for example, if there is a gala or parade coming up giving parts for the cadets to plan while I will do the paperwork around it etc and if they get really bored if they want to shadow me, then I would be fine with that too. But the role reversal for me doesnāt work.
Iām not sure it does - we ran one recently and the cadets were well understanding of the fact (even without us needing to brief them) that they had free reign over the night in line with their ārankā, but anything serious happening would override it all and the "real"staff would step up to manage it.
Like, while I can see the theoretical issue, I donāt see any cadet with a ārankā trying to take control in lieu of the actual staff when something that serious happens- they know itās all a bit of fun and whoās really in charge where appropriate.
Itās an activity Iāve seen multiple units do successfully, when done properly it absolutely can be both.
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I think this is the key bit to me - itās not a no but there is a bit of what exactly is the plan otherwise it can turn into a bit of farce.
I think one bit thatās close to but not is when you have a dining in night & a cadet is selected to be Mr Vice (president) of the dinner.
Again with planning & support can work really well.
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I think having the staff serving the cadets Christmas dinner is as close as Iād want to go to this. At least serving food would be a productive use of staff time.
Yeah, to be fair our āFlt Ltā for the night had put together a solid written plan beforehand that had been discussed with the (actual) Flt Lt, so we were confident it wouldnāt be a total mess.
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You dont have to have a full swap ā¦.might be fun to set up and office scenario with Cadets acting as Staff and having to deal with an inject ā¦.Staff playing grumpy neighbours ā¦noise complaint etc etc .
Can be set up in an office / classroom ā¦.a bit like they do in OT at Cranwell ā¦.
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Now thatās starting to sound more like useful training. We did something similar on IMLC
As an addition to the above ā¦.might be even better to get a member of the civ com or even a Parent in (not related to the Cadets roleplaying!) ā¦.as that gives it more of a āoutsiderā vibe rather than the Cadet seeing his CO / Adj etc sitting there pretending to be a neighbour! ā¦ā¦plenty of possibilities!
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