Information, Observation, and Inspiration for Scouters
You know the feeling. It’s time for the monthly unit committee meeting, and you dread sitting through a long drawn-out meeting which usually degenerates into an open-ended discussion or retelling of old “war stories.”
Perhaps you’re the committee chair and you equally dread the meeting, not knowing how it’s going to go, what you need to accomplish or why you’re even having a meeting in the first place.
Sound familiar?
If you’re a trainer. BSA has some excellent resources on the national website, which are updated periodically. Recently they posted some helpful tips for trainers. Following are a few of them, primarily dealing with the mechanics of giving a training presentation, along with some of my own observations. Continue reading “Tips for trainers, part 1”
A lot of us were drawn into Scouting as adults with the assurance that “it’s only an hour a week.” We’d be hosting a fun activity, we were told, using the published handbooks and planners, so we don’t have to work through it ourselves. We’ll have help – the other parents will pitch in. We can get trained so the job is even easier. And that’s all there is to it!
It’s only later that we find we take on a second hour, then a third, because we like the way that things are going. Continue reading “Your second full-time job?”
A few weeks ago I discussed the advantages of being a uniformed troop. Following this method of Scouting is important to keep your Scouts looking, feeling and acting like an actual Boy Scout troop and not merely a collection of adolescents who go camping.
But what if they feel it’s uncool to wear a uniform?
A recent post on Scouting Magazine’s blog considered the situation where older Scouts were not only reluctant to wear their uniforms in public, but were actually told by their Scoutmaster not to, Continue reading “Scout uniforms: Uncool?”
After a couple false starts, the long-awaited revision to the online Tour and Activity Plan process is now live in most councils and can be used to file a tour plan for outings as required by your council.
The new process is really slick. Whereas the previous online process wasn’t much more than an electronic form which was then submitted to your council, the new system integrates your unit data with what’s on file in ScoutNet, so adult membership and training is verified automatically. Continue reading “The new online tour plan process”