Good evening everyone,
As I sit planning the year ahead for my unit, I have many questions for myself as TO, which leads me to wonder what other TOs in my position are thinking. What are your training goals for 2019? What are your main focus areas?
Given that this will be my first full year as TO, I want to get it right and part of me is unsure on how to begin planning the year ahead.
Cheers
Valiant.
Same here. Picked up the TO role mid year with cadets about 18 months behind where they should be in terms of classification training. I should be caught up by mid feb!
From that i want to embed the PTS properly. At My Sqn we have the capability to do up to Silver Cyber and Bronze Radio as well as Blue and Bronze FA. Also really nail the blue leadership training.
In my wing we have a cadet development course workbook, its basically a Pre NCO I want to turn that into an actual course we can run at sqn to enhance their learnings.
I want to get it into a solid place then hand it over to a junior member of staff who is looking to go into uniform to manage it going foward
My training goals are fairly usual, and don’t change greatly from year to year:
provide the same development training as every year - classification, PTS basic leadership & teamwork and NCO development
Provide several larger scale activities - a few whole-evening command tasks, a full day task and a fieldcraft exercise
Get as many cadets on off-unit activities as possible, and provide them with whatever they need to do this
Additionally, we’re trying to get a bit of inter-flight stuff going, and provide a framework for a cadet of the year competition.
Yes, I really like the idea of implementing the PTS syllabus throughout the year. Is it as complicated as it seems?
Makes sense, keep it simple. I would like to run some NCO training in the new year in particular.
My tip would be to plan the year very vaguely, then do the detail for no more than a month in advance - I find that after a few weeks, something always has to change!
Happy to share some material with you to give you some idea.
Its fairly easy aslong as you have the qualified staff to train and assess
Personally I’m hoping to:
I’ve also got a massive intake of cadets to deal with and get through First Class training as efficiently as possible.
PTS isn’t really a thing - it’s many different things, tied together under one banner.
So some stuff is simplicity itself - eg first aid blue is just Heartstart, one night of presentation and practice without an assessment.
Other stuff can be much more involved with multiple lessons and assessments, eg shooting and comms.
Cadet recruitment is something I have also been tasked with. The CO would like two school presentations minimum this year.
Delegate as much as possible and stay alive until 2020.
Fortunately that’s not my job but I would say go for an intake system if you can. I’ve been trying to convince my OC to go over to proper intakes for years and he steadfastly refuses, co-coordinating 30 odd new’ish cadets at different stages of the first class syllabus is a nightmare.
You are right…i did let it take over my life this year maybe because it needed fixing and that took a lot of effort
I can’t delegate much as a CI, I am doing OASC later this year though.
Maybe not formally but you can ask others to take responsibility for certain sections i.e. sports.
Ultimately the OC has delegated responsibility for training to you so I would say it’s within your remit to delegate on specific areas of training if your staff team is large enough to do so.
If you hold the training role you are in an executive role. you need to act as an officer. Feel free to ask junior members to help
Yes I like the idea of regular intakes. Problem is that some people will not come back on the intake date after showing interest and you can’t gamble like that when you average 15 cadets a night.
I never thought of it that way. It is still difficult when you do not wear a uniform though.
I suppose a lot of it depends on your relationship with the other staff on your unit. I struggled initially but people are more than happy to take stuff off your hands if you ask.