Roundtable for SPLs?

Having worked with half a dozen or so troops in my locality, I have noted a almost total lack of communication between the troops older boys. case in point; troop 111 has an amazing camping-hiking program, but has 5 minute openings that last 20 minutes mostly because the Spl keeps stopping amd waiting for the scouts to shut up, or worse losing it and screaming at them. This has been SOP for years it seems, "boys are like this, nothing we can do" I'm told. But, troop 222 a few miles down the road, has more scouts and the spl and pls can transition the boys from a loud game playing mob, to standing in ranks, at attention, and you can almost hear the legendary pin drop, all in under 30 seconds .Meanwhile troop 333 has some of the most outstanding Patrol leaders I've ever seen. So how do we get troop 111 to see it is possible to control boys,troop 222 to see camping is fun ... you get the idea. When I was a scout the spls met at OA chapter meetings. but that seems to be dead and gone. So any ideas?

Oldscout

Well our OA meets monthly (an at our roundtables!).. But, they are not usually the SPL's who are going to the OA meetings..

Our troop sometimes invited other troops to things.. Maybe just a campfire to socialize, or a bowling night.. Boys would socialize then..

Don't know about an official SPL Roundtable though.. The SM would have to have two deep leadership to take the boy, the parents probably would not take the boy due to the distance and waiting around (unless your district is inner city and is the size of a postage stamp, ours is not), so mid-way roundtable is a long drive for many..

We promoted troops have their SPL's go visit other troops on the other's troops meeting night to get ideas from each other.. (If you are a really sad troop and fear loosing boys to the other troop, rather then exciting them to follow some of the ideas in the other troop then take them to visit a troop that is a distance away half an hour or hour ride..)

My SPL and OA Rep always attended the monthly Roundtable with me. They were the troop leaders, they were responsible for picking up the fliers, they were the ones that ran the show back home, why was I involved in the council contact? It was their job. In August, the boy responsible for the popcorn sales showed up for the pitch from the council and collected the packet that would be needed for the event. As time went on more and more of the other troops brought their SPL's. The OA Reps went to the OA portion of the meeting. If a troop is boy-led why aren't the SPL's at Roundtable with the SM's? and the OA Reps with the OA group?

Worked for me, your mileage may vary.

Just to clear up a misconception -

"The SM would have to have two deep leadership to take the boy" is not correct.

The SM would have to have one other person, youth or adult, along for the ride to follow the prohibition on 1-on-1 contact. That is different than two-deep leadership, which applies to outings.

SPL and OA Rep means two boys and SM. I usually took along my ASM to fill up the car. When the popcorn chair went along I had 3 boys 1 adult driver, not a problem.

Stosh

As of May 2012 we had our first SPL Roundtable, June and July we do not have a roundtable sceduled, so come August we will have our second. It is the hope of those behind it to do exactly as you suggested.

The first roundtable turn out was low but we expect it to grow as we present the idea at program kick off nights and through our contact with the units. Communications continues to be the problem getting the word out.

I hope to be able to give this a year before we evaulate if it is worth while.

Matthew

Interesting idea.

Perhaps OA meetings ought to be concentrating more on troop leadership for Scouts?

Perhaps at least some Boy Scout Roundtables should be planned for Scoutmasters, Assistant Scoutmasters, SPLs and Assistant SPLs.

Have a joint program for youth and adult leaders at least some of the time.

Now I do admit this concept may seem contrary to the SM being responsible for leadership training of the troop, but if you think about it it is a great resource.

When I did Troop level leader training, it was an all day event done by the district. All the troops did have adults present, but only a few taught any of the classes as they were tauht by the SPLs and older scouts of the various troops. All of the youth instructors were BROWNSEA 22 participants, and the few adults were WBs. Not only were the courses taught per the book, ideas were exchanged for activities and dealing with problems. And friendships were made.

This is a fantastic topic. I have some experience with your idea and there are some challenges.

First we must understand the difference between your troops is not the scouts, it's the adults. I'm not suggesting one is worse than the other, just different like those different at music or golf than others. Some adults are better at some aspects of scouting.

The challenge is that it doesn't matter what new skills the scouts take home, the adults don't know how let them in the program. They aren't being mean, they just don't understand the point. I fixed this at JLTC (today's NYLT) by requiring at least one adult leader spend half of the last day of training with their scout. In fact, I have come to believe we would go a lot farther sending SMs to NYLT instead of the scouts because they would understand better what we want the scouts to learn. The adults have to participate with the scout to have real impact on the troop program.

The first problem I found with the SPL RT was getting both the scouts and adults to understand why. What is the point of taking more of someones time if they don't see the advantages? Does troop 111 really have a problem that they "want" fix? Every troop thinks they have a good boy run program, how are you going to convince they can be better?

Second big problem for me was boys time. Even the best SPLs are busy. Adding one more scouting activity is a challenge. So it better be worth it. I learned the shorter the better. Minutes, not hours. That goes for adults too. They need to walk away excited to try the new idea.

I hope I'm not discouraging you because SPL RTs is a great idea, but it will require a dedicated program leader for at least two years if not three. Keep it very simple for the next leader to take over and create simple documentation to refer back to and hold the program to it's intended boundaries.

One last thing, unit visits is another wonderful idea. Visiting five troops was one of my ticket items and I got so much from it that I encouraged it when I was a Wood Badge Patrol counselor.

Great subject.

I love this scouting stuff.

Barry

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I agree with this. Most unit leaders are buried in their unit and have very little experience with other programs.

Perhaps a feature of Roundtables would be an opportunity for unit leaders to invite people over for visits, or perhaps some other mechanism could encourage that.

Our roundtable has a boy leader break out session, it rotates thru some of the positions, inviting say all SPLs and ASPLs to attend one month, all QM the next month. It goes thru cycles of good or bad attendance probably based maybe on when each troop's elections are held in the district.

Good stuff everyone! this is the feedback I was hoping for. Eagledad you asked a very good question "Does troop 111 want to fix their problem?" No they don't. Heck, they don't even see that it is a fixable problem. It's always been this way. The scouters can talk to the plc all night,but it is the older scouts who must lead and if they don't believe us, it will do no good. I am hoping to find a way to make them look beond the four walls of their meeting place.to see other flavors of scouting and say " that's a darned good idea, why don't we do that in our troop? Let's bring it up at the next PLC."

Also I'm looking to find a way where they can talk about their problems (a pl who never shows up for campouts, a new asm who seems to be an ex-drill instructor) what did you do in your troop?

what worked? what didn't work?

please keep it coming guys

Oldscout

I proposed this to our district about 10 years ago and was shot down. The reasons I was given was the sometimes "adult" topics were discussed at roundtable and the roundtable staff did not want youth present.

In my 10 years or so of attending roundtables, I did not find this the case. I would much rather have had my SPL attend to hear about the upcoming district jamboree preparation, sharing of scouting themes, best practices, camping ideas, etc. It would have been a hard sell to parents sometimes but well worth it in my book.

I think it would be an excellent idea, but you might have to split off the SPLs into a breakoff group before some issues are discussed. (Actually, I think that most Roundtables would benefit from more time in breakoff groups at all levels.

I really like getting the SPL's together. I just got back from Summer Camp and learned a lot just from casual conversations with other Scouters.