Hi, Lindsay and everyone-- Sounds like those cubs got to take on entire dances before they were truly ready. Might be interesting to double or even triple cubs like them up during a single dance, maybe even just the first half, so they can conference with each other or with a seasoned caller to enhance the learning that happens. There could be other strategies for "professional development" as well --- what if your dance series required a cub to go to a workshop like David's before they could qualify for prime time (as well as demonstrate that they were ready to give the dancers what they need)? They might get ready a lot more quickly. I think cub callers (with whom I still feel considerable affinity despite my own slowly-accrued experience) need to do what earnest aspiring public servants of other kinds do: take some time to think about the various stakeholders involved, what it takes to meet those stakeholders' needs, and how they (the cubs) need to prepare to fully meet those needs. Yeah, that sounds pretty analytic (just noticed that "anal" is part of "analytic!"---) but those needs revolve around an incredibly rich shared experience of pleasure, so it shouldn't be too painful for them to indulge in some constructive reflection. Of course, if things have stayed the way you described for years, trying to implement some developmental programming might threaten to bruise some egos. Guess what I would do in a situation like that would be cook a lot of really great food, invite a buch of caring stakeholders including the cubs, and have an open, non-judgemental discussion of how the dance series is doing and why. After that, float proposals for solutions to perceived problems and other ideas about how to move the dance upward and nward. Chip Hedler [original message follows] Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:48:20 -0500 From: Lindsay Morris <lindsay(a)tsmworks.com> To: "Caller's discussion list" <callers(a)sharedweight.net> Subject: Re: [Callers] Callers' workshop Message-ID: <73ec9f2f0912160748p120b518eo203919930ebe614b(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Our dance group brought along a group of half-a-dozen "cub callers" a few years ago. It was a bad thing. After they got into the calling rotation at our weekly dance, they never wanted to get off, of course. Our really good callers got to call less often; the new callers only got to call a dance once every 3 months, so they never got any better. The dance was plagued with inexperienced and not-very-great calling for years. Sorry to offer problems without solutions, but this well-intentioned debacle has stayed on my mind. Seem like this is the place to share the "cub-callers" problem. Lindsay Morris Principal TSMworks Tel. 1-859-539-9900 lindsay(a)tsmworks.com