February 7, 2022

This Monday

Date: Monday, February 7, 2022 Location: 7011 S Ballpark Drive Franklin, WI 53132

Cost: $20 by 1/31/2022 Walkin’s are an option only if the Rock has more tickets to sell, the building has been open for those who would like to just wait onsite to pick up scout.

Program: Join us for 2 hours of tubing. If you can sit, you can tube like a pro—it’s that easy! Simply ride the conveyor lift to the top, then, slide down one of the many chutes for hours of fun! Sounds simple enough that an Assistant Scoutmaster can do this! We will be tubing for 2 hours from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Bring the family! Please dress for the weather! See the fact sheet for details.

Waiver: https://shop.rocksnowpark.com/forms. Please use the group code Troop 161. This will group our waivers. ALL TUBERS MUST FILL OUT A WAIVER, ONLINE PREFERED.

Meeting: 6:00 PM at the Rock parking lot. Return: The Scouts should be picked up by 8:00 PM.

Summer Camp

We have selected a NEW SUMMER CAMP for this summer, we had it down to Tasomas and Long Lake, but Camp Long Lake has better dates available so we will be attending there THIS SUMMER. We have reserved the week of July 10-16, 2022 for camp, so mark your calendars for this date and be sure not to miss it. Adults, don’t forget to get vacation time set. ALL, don’t forget to get a physical scheduled so you have a current medical form for summer camp.

Troop Youth Leadership

The Scoutmaster staff has been reviewing the current youth leadership for some time along with the current Troop membership. As the Troop has gotten smaller we felt it was time to re-examine the current structure of patrols and then a senior leadership group called Leadership Corps. Typically the Patrol Leaders and the Leadership Corps would make up what we called the PLC (Patrol Leaders Council) This group typically would organize Troop meeting programs every week but with the lower number of scouts, we have only TWO patrol leaders and ONE leadership Corps member, making it a team of three that were doing all the meetings. This put a lot of stress on those three scouts as they ran meetings as it takes some planning ahead of time for them to put on a good meeting and for us as a team to review it. After the Scoutmaster staff sat down with each of our older scouts, it was determined that we were putting more on the youth than they could balance with School and other things that we felt it was time to expand that pool of eligible leaders to have fun meetings while maintaining the two patrol structure of the Troop. Moving a few more scouts into a Leadership Corp would cause the Troop to go to one younger scout patrol, and an older scout patrol (Leadership Corps) and we all agreed would be better to have a mix so that younger scouts could learn from the older scouts in the patrol setting. What we are going to do is we will discontinue the Leadership Corps as we know it now, and we are going to use the Troop Guide Program. A Troop Guide is an older scout (typically First Class or above) who still is part of the patrol but has additional responsibilities, in our case, they will be used to run the troop meeting program so we can increase the pool of scouts who will help run meetings doing fewer but better quality meetings. All Troop Guides will be part of the PLC. We will run Patrol Leader elections for both patrols along with an election for Senior Patrol Leader of the Troop at the end of February or early March. Those who would like to be eligible should complete a leadership form. The Senior Patrol Leader will coordinate with the Troop guides and work under the direction of the Scoutmaster Staff. Troop Guides will be members of the traditional Patrols. Our ultimate goal here is to IMPROVE our Troop meetings, make it more manageable for the scouts to assemble a good meeting giving them more lead time between meeting assignments, and give the adult staff more time to work with each Troop Guide to coach them. We are going to try this method and evaluate it on an ongoing basis to improve it. Another way to improve Troop meetings is to get input from you as scouts and parents what you would like to see, be sure to share your ideas with the older scouts and Scoutmaster staff. Secondly, if you have anyone who can assist in a program or maybe even a tour or guest speaker, let us know we are open to ideas. One of the advantages of the longer lead time for meetings is it gives a better chance to invite in guests. Hope this clears some things up, but this is a process in motion, so if you need anything that needs to be addressed, please let us know. We look forward to the opportunities this offers to our older scouts to learn to be leaders sooner and create a better quality program for all.

Committee meeting

Committee meeting is this Wednesday at CBTL at 6:30 PM, any adults are welcome to attend, we are always looking for new adults to help out. We have some positions to fill and could use your help.

I think that is enough for this week, see you at the Tubing hill on Monday.

Thanks

Mr. F.