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 1st
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 6th 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 2nd 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 2nd 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.
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