Annual Program Planning

A couple of weeks ago, I made a blog post about our “Troop Operations Training,” which took place on a Saturday, starting with breakfast for the “Staff” and ending with lunch for all participants.   This post will continue that same Saturday.   We used one of the small breakout rooms from the morning to do our Annual Planning Conference.  This post will walk through that process.

My standard disclaimer applies – Just because I did something a certain way, doesn’t necessarily mean YOU should do the same.  Pick and choose what works.  (The troop where these events happened when I was scoutmaster 20-some years ago doesn’t use this exact method any more either, but I like it.)

After lunch, we put everything away and then set up the room for the afternoon session.   Quite a few of our scouts from the morning session were free to go.  Scouts needed for the program planning were the SPL, ASPL, Troop Guide, Scribe, Quartermaster, and the four Patrol Leaders (Assistant Patrol Leaders were welcome but not required).  My assistants remained, as did our committee chair, and the treasurer came as well.   Many years, our Chartered Organization Rep and Unit Commissioner also put in an appearance.

For our program planning, we started out with my quick presentation of what I expected.   I typically had a short bullet list like this:

• Sponsor one short term camp or day activity each month, including the month of summer camp.
• Attend summer camp, and provide a second opportunity for scouts unable to attend our traditional week.  (The troop had two large contingents of boys from religious schools.  Our traditional summer camp week was also Junior High Church Camp week for one of them.  So we typically sent a patrol and one or two adults as the core of a “provisional” troop for the council.  Some years we had as many as 8-10 scouts from other troops join us that week.)
• Attend the Lincoln Pilgrimage (a local event every April at Abraham Lincoln’s Tomb), plus the Council Klondike Derby, Spring Camp-o-ree and Fall Camp-o-ree.
• Plan four courts of honor, roughly in July (post summer camp), October, January and April.
• Plan no events during the OA Annual Meeting weekend, and spring and fall conclave weekends.
• Plan an overnight cabin-camp for junior leader training in January or February. 
• Choose eight monthly program themes for September through May.  (Originally, this was to be 10, and we did program all summer, but an SPL led a “revolt” that ended in them asking me to let them have less instruction and more game time in the summer.  I agreed as a “trial” and it worked so well, we kept it). 

After my presentation of the goals, the boys spent a half-hour or so plugging in council and district events, school events (we didn’t want to run a camp-out the weekend of a big track meet, for example), holidays and so on.   We also had to account for a couple of events that our Chartering Organization had that kept us out of our primary meeting room.

Then we moved into the “dreaming” section – this was where they came up with things like “Let’s drive 250 miles to southern Missouri for a weekend canoe trip.  (That became a regular occurrence)  Or “Let’s take the train to Washington DC and spend a week.  (That never happened)

Once they had the camp-outs and summer camp plugged in, we went back and figured what sessions to do in which meetings, and when to have the Courts of Honor and troop reorganizations.   

As a large and fast-growing troop, we tended to add a patrol or two in the spring as new scouts joined from Cub Scouts and shrink by a patrol or two in the fall as some of the new boys quit, and some of our older ones left also.   And, as you can see, we were putting a LOT of strain on junior leaders, so that they tended to want to change jobs every six months or so.   Our basic goal was to have one SPL do the program plan and run the troop up until just before the Cub Scout crossovers happened, and the other SPL for the year accept the new scouts and run troop at summer camp.

As a final note, on our Courts of Honor – by design, each of them had a different character.   The October/November Court of honor was done in place of a regular Monday night meeting.  This tended to be a handful of rank advancements, plus merit badges for older scouts – especially badges that had come home from summer camp as partials.  We usually had cookies and punch afterward.    The January Court of Honor was mostly geared towards recognizing new junior leaders and any reorganized patrols.   It was also fairly short, although it did tend to have a number of 1^st Class ranks being awarded for scouts who’d been really focused since joining 10 months before.   The January event was often on a Sunday afternoon, with pizza or a pot-luck.  The April Court of Honor recognized new and soon-to-be new scouts, plus a rush to get all the awards possible out to the scouts before the Lincoln Pilgrimage (which features a public parade with everyone in his best uniform) – The April court of honor was also a Monday night with cookies and punch after.  Our July Court of Honor handled all of the summer camp advancement, plus new junior leaders and reorganized patrols.  We often used one of the campsites or a lodge at our local council camp and had a pot-luck for this one on a Saturday afternoon.

The monthly programs varied over the years, but the PLC generally had favorites that they tried to run annually, and also some every two years.   Looking back at troop history, I see that in the 1994-1995 school year, when they were getting geared up for Philmont, they did the following:

Month	1st Year Program	Others	Outing
September 1994	2nd Class Emphasis	Orienteering	Troop camp at a nearby state park
October 1994	Camping requirements for 2nd Class, 1st Class and Camping MB	Wilderness Survival	Council Fall Camp-o-ree/Orienteering Meet Court of Honor
November 1994	1st Class Emphasis	Citizenship in the Community	Troop camp at our local scout camp. Meeting with the Mayor + a City Council Meeting.
December 1994	Make-up sessions	Citizenship in the Community	St. Louis Science Center Day Trip
January 1995	First Aid MB	Emergency Preparedness MB	Council Klondike Derby Troop Reorganization
February 1995	Cooking MB	Indian Lore MB	Council First Aid Meet Court of Honor
March 1995	Make-up sessions	Backpacking MB	Troop camp at a private campground (10 mile hike with Backpacks). Scouting for Food.
April 1995	Tenderfoot Emphasis	Backpacking MB/Hiking MB	Lincoln Pilgrimage (20 mile hike on Saturday with packs for Hiking MB, parade on Sunday)
May 1995	Tenderfoot Emphasis	Pioneering MB	District Spring Camp-o-ree
June 1995	Tenderfoot Emphasis	Summer Routine	Weekend camp at a state historical site. Primary Summer Camp.
July 1995	Make-up Sessions	Summer Routine	Secondary Summer Camp. Philmont Expedition. Troop camp at State Park.  (This happened while most junior leaders were at Philmont and was run by younger scouts.)
August 1995	Make-up Sessions	Summer Routine	Canoe Trip.

On top of all of the above, we had three weekend backpacking trips for our Philmont Crew (which was centered on one “older scout” patrol, plus the junior leadership and a few others).  We also had a large number of active members of the Order of the Arrow in the troop, and so three or four times in that year we had 12-20 members of the troop camping with our OA Lodge, plus a Winter Dinner in January. 

Add to that most years (although not the summer of 1995), a few of our scouts attending what would now be called NYLT for a week in July.

I’m especially proud of the fact that, per my instructions in July 1994, the troop ran an outing in July 1995 when the SPL, ASPL, Quartermaster, Scribe, Troop Guide and 3 of the Patrol Leaders were at Philmont, along with four of our adult leaders.

Once the basic schedule was complete, we finished our day with pizza and cleaning up after ourselves.   

The schedule on paper was typed and presented to the Troop Committee in August.   The PLC had the opportunity to “tweak” the schedule at its monthly meetings, but that’s another post.

On the Topic of Junior Leaders

For my friends who aren't scouts or scouters (the term for adult volunteers), the "Junior Leaders" of a Troop are the scouts who actually run things.  The 11 years I was Scoutmaster, I was the person nominally responsible . . . but I identified myself as "The principal advisor for the Junior Leaders"

Each Junior Leader fills one or more "Positions of Responsibility" in a Scout Troop.

Lately, I’ve had a series of experiences in Scouting with various boys filling Positions of Responsibility.  Here are a few thoughts on the commonality of these experiences.

A few weeks ago, I was present as a Unit Commissioner at a Troop Court of Honor where the Senior Patrol Leader position of responsibility was handed off from one scout to another.  Unusually, the outgoing SPL had not wanted to be replaced, but had lost the election and graciously agreed to serve as the new Assistant SPL.   He said a few words at the Court of Honor, expressing his hope that his successor would do a good job.   He was a good sport about it, but it was clear he was disappointed to be leaving a job he considered to be his.

A few weeks before that, I got to work with Den Chiefs in my Pack, one of whom was leaving with the outgoing WEBELOS den as they crossed over into Boy Scouts, and two of whom are remaining to continue working with our boys.  Our three den chiefs are from two separate troops, and have wildly different levels of experience both as Boy Scouts and as Den Chiefs, so they keep me on my toes.

Last weekend, I served as the Advisor to the youth chair of my Order of the Arrow Lodge’s annual One Day of Service.   For this event, we use every campsite in our local camp, and have troops spend the day retiring U.S. Flags.   This has been happening for several years, and gets larger each year.    This year we spent from 9am to 5pm working at eight different sites within camp and burned more than 1500 flags that were in poor condition.   We ended our day with a very impressive campfire, capped with the calling out of approximately 30 scouts and scouters into the Order of the Arrow.

The common thread in these experiences was the continuously high quality of the youth who make these programs happen.   

The outgoing SPL had inherited a mess when he took over in August.  The Patrol Leader’s Council meetings had largely become just an excuse for the older boys in the troop to hang out and eat pizza together.  Over just six months this young man, still in junior high and only a Star Scout, had restored the PLC to a functioning body, and had put together a full-year program plan that his successor will complete.  He’d also worked with two different Cub Packs to assist in recruiting.  (Very successfully too, the troop’s almost 30% larger than it was in August.)

Our Den Chiefs are given a one-session orientation in the fall, in which I explain that they have the most difficult job in Scouting, seeing as how they have so many different people that they have to keep happy, from the leadership of their home troop, to the leadership of the den, to the boys and parents in the den (and most especially me, the coordinator of the Den Chief Program at our pack).   They’ve performed admirably – showing up on time, in uniform and prepared for their role in our meetings.  I was able to award two of them the Den Chief Service Award for completing a successful year in the role at our February Blue and Gold Banquet.

Finally, the OA Event.  I can’t say enough about our Order of the Arrow Lodge Leadership.  From the rookie event chair (Who’s only been in the OA since last June) to our Lodge Chief and his Vice Chief, to the random Arrowmen who stepped up on no-notice to assist in a number of tasks on Saturday, the youth leaders performed magnificently.  (How many 8^th graders do you know who are willing to stand up in front of an audience of 80 of their peers AND ADULT SCOUTERS, and speak off-the-cuff about the schedule for the day?)

The best lesson for a scouter in all this, of course, is to give the youth their initial training and get out of the way.   When they know you’ll have their back, and give them the support they need, they can do amazing things.  (The Lodge Chief came to the One Day of Service event at lunchtime, directly from his college placement exams, with a box full of the orientation packets for the new candidate members of the Lodge, and his assistant arrived with personalized scripts for the Ceremony Team to use Saturday night – despite the cast changing as late as Thursday and the list of new candidates not being finalized until Wednesday.)

Of course, the prudent scouter also makes allowances for the fact that they ARE youth . . . I got an e-mail on Monday pointing out that I was still responsible for the lodge we used as our HQ on Saturday – and there was mud on one of the doors and a cot left set up in one of the rooms.   I’d left before things were finished on Saturday night and had another commitment Sunday, so I’d hoped the youth staff would get everything cleaned up . . . but they missed just these few things.   I ran out to the lodge Tuesday night and spent not more than 15 minutes putting away the cot, cleaning the door, shaking out two rugs and sweeping the floor.  

Give your Junior Leaders the room to fail . . . most of the time their successes will be spectacular and their failures will be small.

"Troop Operations Training"

A little background – my two boyhood troops and the first troop I served as an adult (when I was in college) were “mature” troops, fully functioning with good programs.  The SPL tended to be a high school student, and patrols were led by 1^st class or Star scouts who were 13-14 years old.  

In 1991, I became Scoutmaster of one of the oldest troops in my new council, but the troop had fallen on hard times.   When I had joined the troop a year before as an Assistant Scoutmaster, we’d had zero scouts – the troop had been chartered with four, who’d all quit soon after.  At the moment I became Scoutmaster, we had 10 scouts.  Our oldest scout, and SPL, was 12, as was his assistant.   The other 8 scouts were all 11, and were split into two mini-patrols of four scouts each.

We worked very hard on recruiting that first year that I was Scoutmaster, and we were phenomenally successful.  We brought in all of the WEBELOS Cubs from three different Packs.  The first was a den from the pack sponsored by our own chartering organization, and it had four new scouts.  The other two were from nearby packs that weren’t associated with a troop.  One of them sent us six new scouts and the other sent us 14 new scouts.   So between March and May, we ballooned from 10 scouts to 34.

We knew by late fall that most of these boys were coming, so we spent a winter weekend cabin camping and using the then-new video based “Troop Leader Development” course.   That course, like the current ILST, was focused on “Leadership” – managing people.    But because our average Patrol Leader in the summer of 1992 had only been on two camp-outs and was looking forward to starting 6^th grade in the fall, we needed a more “nuts and bolts” course.  

I did a couple of ad-hoc sessions that summer, with our new scouts (the first year campers were rotating through the job of Patrol Leader a month at a time until the boys from different packs got to know each other well enough to vote on a permeant PL that fall).  But those just barely got us through – our SPL, ASPL and the Troop Guide were having to spend an awful lot of time walking patrols through the most basic of operations.

So in the fall of 1992, I started seeing how many birds I could kill with a handful of stones.   That fall, I was working full time, serving as Scoutmaster AND working toward my college degree as a night school student.  I happened to take a course in curriculum development (EDU312, if memory serves).   My professor approved the idea of using scouting as my classroom for curriculum development (I was the only student in that class who actually got to USE the curricula I designed).   My two big projects for the class were a program to allow our new scouts to earn First Class in a year and an ongoing Junior Leader Training plan for the troop.

My goals for the training were:

• .       Deliver training in the “Hands-on” techniques needed to lead a patrol on a weekend campout, including menu planning, duty roster scheduling, evaluating equipment needs and pricing/purchasing food.  (The target for this training was my 11 year old patrol leaders)
• .       Enable junior leadership of the troop to learn their jobs well enough to explain them to younger scouts, as well as to develop public speaking skills.   (The target for this was those 12 and 13 year olds filling the roles of SPL, ASPL, Quartermaster, Scribe and Troop Guide)
• .       Assist younger scouts in learning which of the junior leaders could help with a specific task.
• .       Ensure that all of my adult leaders (most of whom had less than two years of experience as Scouters) understood the various junior leadership roles, AND understood that “stepping in” to see that a junior leader’s job got done was a failure on the part of the adult leadership.
• .       Use the BSA’s Junior Leader Training curriculum to develop “leadership skills” needed to be a successful junior leader.

The first weekend that we tried the training proved to be a bit overwhelming.   We ran an all-day session the Saturday before Scout Sunday in 1993.  The BSA curriculum of the day had an exercise in the class that was built around lunch, so we started about 9am and did the video based course until about 3.   Then dove right in to the “hands on” stuff – mostly using the Camping and Cooking Merit Badge pamphlets for the “how to” instruction.  Luckily that was a pilot group – just our five Troop Level leaders (SPL and his guys) plus four patrol leaders and four assistants.

The summer of 1993, we tried again – the course was nearly in its final form.  On a Saturday in late July, the Committee Chair, my assistant scoutmasters and I met with the SPL, Assistant SPL and Troop Guide about 7:30 in the morning to set up tables and chairs and get things ready.  As “host,” I provided doughnuts and juice (adults were on their own for coffee), and our “students” arrived at 8:30.   We had invited all current patrol leaders and assistant patrol leaders, plus a number of scouts who were 2^nd class or higher rank and who we knew would soon be moving into a leadership position of some sort.

Our morning went along this schedule.

8:30 – Welcome an introductions (we recognized that some of our 2^nd class scouts were still pretty new to the troop and might not know the Committee Chair, and might not know what a “Quartermaster” does, for example.  So each adult and junior leader explained who they were and a 30 second job description.  Mine was “I’m Patrick Provart, and I’m the Scoutmaster.  I’m ultimately responsible for all of the troop’s programs and I serve as the principal advisor to the Senior Patrol Leader”)

8:40 – SPL speaking on leadership.   The speech varied year-over-year, depending on the needs of the troop and the abilities of the SPL, but we wanted to emphasize that it was OK to make mistakes, that adults and junior leaders would be providing guidance and assistance – but that the scouts would REALLY be responsible for getting the program done.

8:50 – Scoutmaster/Committee Chair joint session on troop structure.   This was the troop org chart right out of the Junior Leader Handbook and Scoutmaster’s Handbook.  We talked about what our adults were doing and how that tied in to the job of the various junior leaders.

9:00 – 5 minute break, and re-convene in the next room, where a patrol box was set up with all of the gear taken out of it and spread on the floor.  An additional small pile of gear was behind it.

9:05 – Troop Quartermaster, explained what was provided in a patrol box when he issued it, what the PL should expect to buy for his patrol, and how to use the various equipment in the box.  Our Chartering Organization had a patio outside one of the rooms we were using, and at our lunch break we actually used the troop’s camp stoves, and made sure everyone knew how to light and use them.

9:35 – Back to our original room, which had been re-arranged by adults while the scouts were with the Quartermaster.  Now the “students” were sitting at three tables.   During this session, led by the SPL, the Assistant SPL was at one table, the Scribe at another and the Troop Guide at the third.   Each group planned a menu for a camp out, and a duty roster for the camp out, using forms provided.   At the end of this session, the menu was then broken down into a grocery list.

9:50 – The Troop Guide led this discussion from the front of the room.   He walked through the timeline leading up to a camp out.  At that point in time, we used a 5-10 minute patrol meeting in each troop meeting.  This presentation showed how the patrol would bring money to the grub hustler (usually the PL) at the meeting before the campout, so that no one had to buy food with their parents’ money.   That of course, meant that the PL or grub hustler had to announce the price two weeks before the outing (we provided page that they could use to plug in the “price” they figured by adding things up in a store.  The sheet then had them add 10% for errors and omissions, and sales tax).    The THIRD week before the camp-out, then, was when the patrol had to finish planning the menu.

10:00 – Five minute break, and then return to the three tables

10:05 – Troop Scribe led this session.  Because we had so many newbies on all levels, we provided a lot of forms.  This session was the scribe talking about the important ones – the troop calendar, the monthly meeting plans and the campout planner.    The calendar is obvious, the other two, I’ll explain a bit.   We provided a monthly sheet to each patrol leader after the monthly Patrol Leader’s Council Meeting.  This sheet listed what needed to be done in each patrol meeting the upcoming month.  Losing it was no big deal as the same information was available each week at the beginning of the meeting.   The campout planner was a sheet that the scribe provided about a month before each outing.  It listed where we were going, departure and return times, special equipment and preparation needed (like “Canoe trip: all scouts attending must have passed the BSA Swimmer Test within the last 12 months”) and any fees the troop needed to charge (“Troop Fees: $8 per person, for patch and campsite fees”).  The PL was expected to add these fees to his food cost, and to collect the fees and bring them to the Scribe or Treasurer.

10:30 – Five minute break, recognizing that this stuff was pretty boring and we needed to keep some activity going.

10:35 – SPL and Scoutmaster jointly lead a session on “leading a game” – our troop meetings, right out of “Woods Wisdom” (Today’s Troop Program Features) featured a 20-30 minute game near the end of the meeting.   We also eventually evolved into having patrols take turns running games during pre-opening.   Of course the real purpose of this session was to burn off some energy because the boys had been sitting and doing paperwork for an hour.

10:55 – Back to the tables.   Troop Guide led a session on the troop’s advancement program and a PL’s place in it.  Per the Woods Wisdom plan our troop meetings had a pre-opening, opening, and then the patrol meeting.  Then we broke for “instructional time” – which varied depending on the feature for the month.  However, it was a given that the various junior leaders – especially the troop guide -- would spend some time with our first year scouts, working toward First Class Rank.   We expected Patrol Leaders to help track which of their scouts had missed meeting requirements, and needed to make things up at the meetings periodically set aside for that.  In the fall and winter each year we also worked on Camping, Cooking and First Aid merit badges within the troop setting.   (At the same time, the second year guys would be working on Wilderness Survival, starting on Hiking, and working on Emergency Preparedness).

11:30 – Troop Scribe one last time on the Baden Powel Patrol Star.   (This award is nowadays called the National Honor Patrol Award).   To earn this award in the early to mid 90’s a patrol had to meet monthly outside of troop meetings, among other goals.  We always encouraged it, but only had one patrol win it.

11:45 – Scoutmaster’s Minute

11:50 – Grace, then move into the next room, where box lunches were set out.   The lunches were one of the exercises from the national curriculum.  As the boys opened the boxes they discovered that one scout had all bread, another had a box of apples, and someone else had a box of ham and so on.  If they all worked together, everyone could have lunch.

This final format got codified and distributed to other interested troops around our district as part of my Wood Badge Ticket for C-29-1994.

I'll make another blog post a little later in the week talking about our afternoon Annual Program Planning Conference.