Last Monday's Meeting
We hade a good turn out for our virtual meeting last Monday, if you missed it you missed a bunch of things.
Here are my notes from Monday Nights Troop meeting, the video of the meat of the meeting is here, feel free to watch it, there is a second part where it was open for discussion, if you are limited on time, please at least listen to the first part, but not sure you want to miss the entertaining part of the second half.
Premeeting-
So here is some info on what we can’t do right now
-Three Harbors Council has requested we not meet in person, and all meetings at all levels of the Council have turned to alternate ways or canceled.
-Events, the council has canceled many events, the Council camps have been closed and will remain closed till at least the middle of May.
-These closings are similar across the nation, depending on where the outbreak is at this time. Different parts of the country are experiencing different levels of the outbreak.
-Will summer camp be open this summer? It is still a big question. I know that nationally this is an active discussion and the camps have a lot of prep work to open the camps and they are continuing with that prep work with plans to open. There may be governmental restrictions as well as local and council restrictions that may prevent that, but as this is an evolving situation and we can not predict at this time. In the next week or so I will be sending out the info to sign up camp merit badges, you should follow through on this to help camp with their planning process. As far as camp physicals, I have not heard any variance from the 13 month rule, but I am going to question this as this is not a good time for healthy people to be going to the doctor. We will see if there is any variance on this, but at this time, I am going to suggest you not worry about getting that physical. We may be able to work out some alternative
Based on the guidelines coming out from the Scout office, in person activity in April is OUT, it appears that our May campout is on the cusp of the acceptable time to get back out right now, as a Troop, I am not sure we are ready to start on Day 1 if the restriction is lifted.
So with adversity comes advantages
We would like to make sure our new Scouts get off to a good start with the Troop during this time of distancing. Mr. Kozlik, Mr. Sisak and myself will be working on setting up some online mini-classes to talk about some of the requirement and work on them with our newest scouts. Some of the requirements are about talking and discussing things and that is very doable in an online venue. Any of the older scouts who would like to help, we would be glad to have your help online as we would if we were in person.
We are looking to see if we can do some of the totin chip requirements online as well, if any older scouts would like to help, please let me know. Anyone who lost their card, great time to clean your room to look for it, but if you don’t, let us know, we will make sure you get info on the upcoming presentation.
For our older scouts, the council advancement committee which Mrs. Andersen and I are part of are working with other councils as well as our own on identifying merit badge work that can be done online with counselors via phone or video conferencing options. On the Troop web page is tab called “Scouting at Home” which has a list of them. There are some good ones there. You might want to take a look at them and see if you can start working on them..
Those needing blue cards, we will issue blue cards electronically to you for any of these online merit badges.
Some councils are doing online merit badge clinics, you are welcome to participate in those as long as you get a blue card in advance as we have in the past.
One of the requirements we have for online clinics, they MUST BE sponsored by the council and the sign up needs to be done via their council web page. We want to ensure people are not just randomly doing merit badges without the proper training. Those offered by the council will be certified counselors, but you need to have a blue card before you begin working with the counselor or clinic.
Those wanting to work on Eagle Project, that is still restricted at this time but other than one person in the Troop who has approval to start, no one else is really to start. Those wanting to do one in the near future, you can do all the planning and write up work now when things are restricted, and that approval process is still up and running and can be done with video conferencing.
If all your work gets you to a point where you are ready for advancement, the National BSA has approved the option for video conferencing for Scoutmaster Conferences and Board of Reviews during this time, so if you finish something, we can work out those details.
Just because of the situation, NO requirements can be overlooked, you must do them all, there are NO exceptions to the requirements, no more, no less, still applies.
Parents, your SON should be working on these advancements, while we do ask that you are around when they are being tested on the work they did, I want to take this chance to remind you that it’s THEIR advancement program and please respect that they need to answer the questions and do the work, please respect and understand those working with your son expect that.
Staying safe and Youth Protection expectations
ALL, repeat, ALL Youth protections and Cyber Chip security guidelines remain in place during this time. Those who would like to meet with Merit badge counselors and others for any online items must first have parental permission AND parents should around and providing a second layer of supervision when working online, on phone calls or whatever with any adults.
Scouts, DO NOT participate in any online networking that has not been approved by parents. Parents, please make sure that the people working with your son are supervised with you in the backround in quiet common areas. If anyone has concerns or questions, please feel free to share your concerns with me or other leaders.
Troop Meetings
We are working with some ideas for Troop meetings. We have some things that will fit nicely to an online setting and hope to have them coming out soon. This situation makes us step out of the box and come up with some innovative ideas, please be patient as we work through getting our youth leaders to forge a new path on topics and processes on how they are presented, they have no standard that others before them have done, so they will have a clean slate to work with, but also have some trial and error as we find out what works best for all.
As before, as we bring some things to the online world, let's not forget the uniform as well. If its Troop meeting night and it's online put on your uniform and be part of the group. We are a unified group and let's show it that way.
Behavior, just as we don’t expect you to talk during a meeting, we expect you will do the same with online meetings as well. People should and will be respected as we have expected in the past. We will do our best to eliminate distractions, it will be a group effort to stay on task, stay focused and accomplish great things.
Parental help
We need parents to make sure that their scouts are supervised while involved in anything online related to Scouting, please be sure they are doing is safely and respectful. Please encourage your son to be on his best behavior, just like at regular meetings.
We are looking for program ideas. Do have a skill or knowledge you could share with the Troop online?? This might be even a great opportunity to show off something that would be hard to do with a large group but might work well in an online setting, example, fly tying might be interesting cause camera could get in and see what you are doing, wherein a group setting it would be tough. Please think about some of your hobbies and skills and let us know if you can help, you can even record them ahead of time and we just run them. Also, might be a time where we would view things maybe where tours are not allowed? The inner workings or say a backstage look.
We are also looking for Merit Badge Counselors, if you be interested in working on merit badges, we can schedule an online merit badge training and get certified as a counselor. Even after the bug is out of the air we can use more help in that area, but if you can help online, that is a bonus! If you are interested, please let Mrs. Andersen or myself know.
Having fun
We want scouting to be fun and tonight’s stuff was kind of serious discussion, just thought it would be to spend tonight maybe stepping back and clearing the desk for some good entertaining and educational information to follow. We know everyone is missing hanging around with friends and stuff like that but we are looking for ways to do that, maybe it’s a virtual campfire where we all get to chat about things, sing songs and play games maybe it’s a virtual campout where do our own thing at home but it is a lot like a campout too. We are looking for all kinds of ideas. I will tell you my email box is full of info on some things like this, just not have time to sort through it all, but if you hear of anything you want to do be sure to tell you Patrol Leader, shoot me a note or whatever, we want scouts to be fun regardless if it is at the meeting hall or the computer or cell phone. Unlike sporting events like soccer and things like that, that can only be done without a group, there is a lot of things that we can do as a Troop and you can do independently to get a lot of scouting as things are in the shutdown state.
Do we have some technical hurdles to get over, for sure, no questions, but once we get those behind us we and do a lot of cool things, not only at the Troop level but maybe with local troops or event statewide or even nationally or internationally
PLC, I would like you to start building on some ideas and let's get some meetings planned under these new guidelines, Let's see if we can run some meeting, even if they are not the full 90 minutes a traditional meeting might run.
What type of programs would you like to see, hit the chat for your answers, what are you doing in other places that would be interesting in Scouting. Any ideas from School?
Run the poll and see if it works, if not, do some questions related to the poll. (if the poll does not work, we will use the participant option)
Thank for listening in, now let’s open it up for discussion, comment and discussion, to avoid over talk I am going to reading through the chat window and answering questions you have, feel free to post your questions there. Parents, want to sign up for a merit badge training, feel free to post in the chat log
Please refer to the Troop Web page for ideas for Scouting at Home on the tab!
NOTE, Jaboree on the Internet is this weekend, be sure to check it out!! That link is on the above webpage