Troop 29’s 2017-18 Goals

We are excited about implementing some new ideas as we come back together in September.   It is our goal that through these initiatives the troop experiences greater scout unity and stronger scout leadership – a place where your scout will have character building experiences in a tight knit group of friends.

• Given the relative inexperience and younger demographic of our scouts, the adult leaders (SM and ASMs) will take a more hands-on with the youth leadership to more effectively guide and train them on how to lead other scouts.    Adult leaders will provide real-time feedback to the youth leadership in order for them to learn and continue to grow in their roles.    Once the youth leadership has become more effective, the adult leaders will allow for more independence.  Through this we hope to establish a successful model for the young scouts in order to allow the scouts to more easily and effectively perform their roles, now and in the future.
• In order to build strong relationships and encourage cohesiveness within and across the patrols, the troop outings will be geared toward activities that more easily allow for this (e.g. no camporees).  Our outings will be focused on working on activities and challenges as a unit, which will help to further foster unity.
• With this in  mind, the September outing (9/8 – 9/10) will be focused primarily around patrol team building and we expect all scouts to attend, regardless of their roles within the troop.  In order for the troop to be successful this year, we need every scout to participate in team building and training – no exceptions.   Please mark your calendars.  It will be the foundation for the year.
• We will build into the meeting schedule where bullying is addressed proactively.   Other meetings might added as needed throughout the year.  The troop will address it context of scout related activities to help them understand and uphold expectations in Scouting.
• Increased communication with scouts, adult leaders and parents is important to the success and helps identify where in the scouting program adjustments might be needed.
  • Formally, we will tackle this in a few areas:
    • 9/6 there will be a parent meeting at the Charter school the last 30 minutes of  the troop meeting to discuss these goals.    We will set up periodic dates going forward to continue the dialogue about the troop.
    • Scoutmaster (SM) conferences will become more frequent with the scout – not just during advancement.   This will enable the SM to check in more frequently with the scout for their input and to help them stay on track in their scouting journey.
    • Implement trip reports into the SM immediately after an outing.   This might look like with the scouts a brief “how did it go, what did you like/not like” conversation over Sunday breakfast before departing.    The adults on the trip will separately provide a report back to the SM on their overall observations of the outing.
  • Informally, please at all times when there is feedback to go directly to our SM as the main point person.

How Can You Help?    We do need more “brown shirts” (Assistant Scout Masters) interacting with the scouts to be effective in giving them the training, guidance and level of interaction desired.  Please consider if you could be a part of this important role beginning in September.   We ask that all of our ASMs become fully trained.   There are online and classes with council available that supports you in this role – you could begin working on this during the summer!   Working directly with the scouts is a very rewarding and awesome experience having a lifetime impact on our scouts.

We can’t wait to hear the memories and experiences summer camp brings this week.    Begin watching for Troop News emails to start back up mid to end of August.

Deb Ryan                 and                Mike McGuire

T29 Chair                                        T29 SM