Meeting Review

April 27, 2009 Meeting
After Meeting Review

I really am now going to start writing meeting reviews on a weekly basis because I believe that me writing this information down helps do the following:

1. Helps me see what I need to work on. Specifically what skills do I need to develop and what skills do I need to teach others in order to do their job successfully.
2. Helps outside units see how things are run in various units. Let me stress this again, we as a unit do not do everything perfectly or exactly how the scouting method intended but we are always striving to create a program in which we follow the method as closely as possible
3. Helps other leaders within the unit see a perspective on how the meeting went and what we could change.

So lets talk about yesterday's meeting. First off I really did not sit in on the meeting like normal because I was helping conduct a BOR and sat through Scoutmaster and Assistant Scoutmaster Specific Leader Training. These two items tied up most of the night for me. So lets start at the very beginning, first off we need to crack down and start at exactly 7 o'clock pm instead of waiting around a few minutes for more people to show up. If we start on time consistently more and more scouts will get the message that it is important to show up on time. I did not show up as early as I should have because I got into the meeting room at about 7:05 luckily we had not started the meeting so I did not interrupt anything. By the way I informed the Scoutmaster who gave me permission to show up late like I did, as a adult leader that is what I am expected to do, if a youth leader is going to show up late he should contact the SPL. Finally if it is a youth member then that scout should contact his patrol leader. Okay after that announcements went good and were fairly clear, the SPL as along as he writes down the announcements before hand he will get the information out that he needs to get out. After announcements I went into a training session for the course I stated above and did not directly witness the meal planning. In my opinion the group did fairly well with completing the task but the amount of time it took to complete the task in my personal opinion probably was not up to the standard it should have been, it took the group over 40 minutes to plan the menu. This task should not take more than 20 minutes. This 20 minute timeline works much better because it allows the group to get more stuff done, have more fun, and be able to complete something else other than a boring required logistics item which no one in the Troop likes to do. After that the Troop went outside for a game but I was unable to get out for the game because I had to help conduct a BOR. The BOR occurred for a Scout that was going for his Second Class. He of course passed his BOR and during this time I learned several very interesting things about the kid and about what sort of activities the boy likes. I have always found that the BOR experience is more about getting to know the person on a personal level and connect with that scout in the short amount of time allotted.

That is all I have for this meeting. My overall impression for this Troop Meeting is that it went really good once we got the meeting going. the Beginning of the meeting was a little slow but that was because the SPL did not totally prepare or get help with preparing a Troop meeting. I am making a personal goal to make writing or typing out a meeting agenda 2nd nature to the boy who is currently in the SPL.

Yours in Scouting Service
Mark W
Junior Assistant Scoutmaster
Troop 1616
Great Alaska COuncil
Eagle Scout OA Brotherhood Member
NSJ '05 WSJ '07 Philmont AA '08