One goal of the program of the Boy Scouts of America is to provide leadership training to the youth of a troop. This occurs through troop meetings, patrol leader council meetings, weekend sessions, conferences, and the National Youth Leadership course.
Troop 68 holds elections every six months for the offices of patrol leader and senior patrol leader, in March and September. These leaders than appoint the other troop and patrol leadership. Ideally, I like to hold an afternoon training session after an election. This has not worked out for the last year because of scheduling conflicts.
The troop’s theme for this month’s program was scheduled to be “Laughs For Lunch”. We had planned to practice songs and skits for a community campfire style program. (See post about Laughs For Lunch HERE.) Unfortunately, due to a small troop roster and some high school sport conflicts, we had to drop the Laughs For Lunch theme. The patrol leader council decided to use this month’s meetings for leadership training. We would break down the afternoon training session into three parts for our January meetings.
The first of these meetings was held last night. Six of the eight troop members attended, four of who had never taken part in a youth training program. We watched the first portion of the video which covered styles of leadership training, sharing leadership, communications, and knowing the skills of your team members. The game activities helped to demonstrate these leadership points.
The meeting went well. The boys seemed to enjoy the session and even picked up a few leadership points. I hope next week goes just as well.
