National BSA recently released the new Cub Scout Leader Specific (CSLS) training, and North Shore District has adopted it for this fall. We're in the process now of orienting our training staff, and over the coming weeks, we'll be announcing multiple opportunities to take this training.

What's changed? First, the training has been updated, streamlined and reorganized to make it more relevant to the needs of our Cub leaders. It is also more flexible in its delivery format - something our district will take advantage of. The overall training is roughly the same length as the old version, but there are now two 45 minute long modules which are common to all Cub Scout leaders, followed by a 1 to 1 1/2 hour long position-specific training. The Pack Trainer position has also been added to the set of position-specific modules. Also, there are no longer any videos in this training.

We'll be delivering this training in a variety of formats over the coming Scouting year. Our initial training session will be at 7pm on July 31st at Crystal Lake Baptist Church, where we will deliver the first two modules of the training. We'll follow that up with position-specific training opportunities to be held at multiple locations across the district.

This new training is especially well structured for use by Pack Trainers. By the fall of 2009, we hope to have each pack with a fully qualified, registered Pack Trainer who is capable of delivering portions of CSLS directly within their unit.