Troop 50's leadership team will meet TU 3/17 at 445PM. Here is the initial call for the meeting and the resulting dialogue. It's exciting stuff!

From Scoutmast Edward Brouwer:
Let’s all meet at the new Roasting Coffee place at 4:45 for a leadership ,meeting—finished within an hour. The agenda will be discussion of program strengths and areas for improvement with a goal to have a plan to solve them. We will also look at our financial situation, our equipment needs, summer camp expectations, and schedule for the remainder of the year.

From parent Michael Sonnenberg:
It might move things along by all of us e-mailing some of the talking points in a more fleshed out manner i.e. strengths, improvements, equipment needs, camp expectations, schedule for year
Just an idea...

From parent Marshall Angle:
Strengths: active adult leadership that promotes high adventure and travel opportunities for boys. Commitment to Advancement.

To Improve: continue planning weekly meetings that increasingly promote boy leadership and active engagement with scout skills. Continue teaching guys how to efficiently plan and implement their meeting agendas. Streamline announcements; optimize time spent doing things (this is not to say that we don’t already conduct such meetings—it is to say, though, that the path we are on is a good one and that we should continue in that direction with continued emphases placed on boy leadership and active application of skills).

I like the leadership meetings in which we devote at least some time for planning and scheduling. Long-term scheduling is good, but I think it also helps to devote time to short-term agenda preparation (e.g., opening & closing ceremonies, patrol activities, and troop activities for the next month). Even if this does not happen at our next leadership meeting, such planning, it seems to me, helps us accomplish our goals of nurturing boy leadership. Over the next few months, I would like for the Beavers to spend Patrol time focusing on Orienteering/ Hiking; Knife and Ax skills; Lashing/ Pioneering; and First Aid. It would be cool if we could gain use of a pool—there are some swimming requirements for those ranks as well.

For Advancement, ranks beyond Tenderfoot require service projects-so that might be on our agenda.

I hope we might spend some time this spring at the land that has been offered for scouts’ use. Perhaps have a Pioneering weekend in which we clear space for use but also learn lashing and camp skills that will help the Beavers reach Second and First Class ranks. Such work could also be applied to Pioneering merit badge for the Hawks. Perhaps we could also make an Orienteering course for the guys on the site? There were three scouts who have earned a partial for Orienteering.

And finally from Edward Brouwer again:
Marshall I like your thinking on this. I agree that a weekend on the land would be amazing AND you could probably knock out a lot of the ax/knife skills, lashing etc that weekend as we clear the land and create campsites.

Thanks for this flow of conversation in anticipation of our meeting next Tuesday

It promises to be a great meeting. We hope all the parents can attend!