What to Know Before You Start a Scout Troop
25 Tips for Sentinel Leaders
Your child simply said the words "I want to join scouts," and earlier you lot know information technology, you've been asked to have the reigns and be the lookout man leader. Welcome to the club! Here are 25 tips to go y'all on your way to becoming a successful scout leader.
Condign a Great Leader
Scouting 101 – Worried you don't know a thing about scouting? Go a little training under your belt. Take advantage of training that is offered. Both Girl and Boy Scouts offer diverse preparation opportunities for new (and veteran) leaders.
Get to know your scouts – Everything you do during your term equally a scout leader revolves around the kiddos, and then get to know them. Practise you take an athletic group or more academic? Are they service-minded or more into camping? Ready for a hands-on projection or more interested in observing? Knowing the personality of the grouping volition help you programme activities to improve serve them.
Go to know the parents – Do the parents of your scouts accept a special skill that would exist valuable to share? Perhaps someone works at an interesting place that would be a great field trip. The better you go to know your parents, the more you will learn near hidden talents and resources available to you.
Class a commission – Your forcefulness lies in enlisting the help of others. By forming a commission you will know who your core group of parent volunteers are and be able to reach out to them apace and easily for help throughout the year.
Location, location, location – Where you determine to hold your meetings can brand or intermission the group. Information technology must be convenient for scouts' parents, weather proof, big enough for the kids to run around and preferably somewhere with bathrooms. Ideas include school, church, rec center, guild firm, etc. Fifty-fifty your own home, if yous are so brave.
Organization
Goals – Afterward getting to know your scouts, set goals for the twelvemonth to assist define your scouting purpose. Decide what badges yous want to help your scouts earn and what field trips yous want to take. Then you will have an easier time planning events for the year.
Put information technology on the calendar – Put all of your meetings and as many of your field trips every bit you tin can on the calendar upwards front at the beginning of the year, so you won't have take polls well-nigh which dates are better for people. People volition programme ahead and omnipresence volition exist better overall.
Plan your meetings – Don't wait until the last infinitesimal. Plan your meetings in advance. Endeavor to think in chunks of ii or three meetings at a time, that fashion yous tin have connecting themes if y'all similar.
Coordinate your coming together volunteers with an online sign upward.SAMPLE
Plan B – No affair how much you plan, make sure you lot ever have a plan B. Kids not earthworks the activeness yous planned? Have a back upwardly ready and waiting. Snack mom forgot the snack? Always have extra snacks on paw (just in case!).
Fun, Funner, Funnest – Organize your meetings so that the nigh fun action is still to come up. Start with scout business, then move on to your planned action (fun), next a game (more fun) and finally snacks (virtually fun). This way your scouts always have something to wait forwards to.
High-Tech Scouting
Assemble your groupies – Nowadays everyone is on Facebook, correct? And then have your watch planning to the people. Organize a closed Facebook Group and invite all of the parents to bring together. Here you tin share information nigh upcoming meetings, fundraisers and general group details.
Digital docs – Minimize waste and proceed important docs at your fingertips with Google Docs. By using Google Docs you can go along roosters up to date and accessible from a smart phone on the get. Bonus, never forget your meeting notes at dwelling house, using Google Docs allows you to pull them upwards anywhere.
Sign 'em up – Lose the old-school clipboard sign-upwards sheet. SignUpGenius is the new style to organize your volunteers. Your volunteers volition appreciate being able to sign up when it's convenient. Bonus, SignUpGenius will send reminders and then you don't have to.
Organize your adjacent scouting consequence with an online sign upwardly.SAMPLE
Put a pin in it – Remember the days of pulling ideas out of magazines and trying to keep them organized for "someday?" Instead of scouring costly magazines for project ideas, just search Pinterest. You will observe more ideas than you tin can employ, and you can organize them all in one digital space.
Share the moment – Parents are a sucker for pictures of their kiddos. Photo sharing sites make it a cakewalk to share pictures. Take it a step further and create an online photobook so parents tin order a re-create of your masterpiece.
Super Star Fundraising
Delegate – Don't try to do it all. Delegate anything and everything y'all tin to that awesome commission you created at the beginning of the year.
Recall outside the cookie box – Traditional picket fundraisers are a tradition because they work, just sometimes that's not plenty. Demand to heighten just a chip more than in a hurry? Try a carwash or walk-a-thon. Don't be afraid to try something new.
Continue tabs on volunteers – Can't retrieve who is supposed to take over at the cookie berth? With the use of an online sign upwardly you can admission your sign upward anywhere and know who's supposed to be where and when. When volunteers sign upward, you lot can even request they include a phone number and then y'all have the data at your fingertips if you need it.
Reach for the stars – Why are you lot fundraising? Before yous begin whatsoever fundraiser, explicate to everyone what you are hoping to accomplish. Exercise you lot need $100 for a camping ground trip or $i,000 to visit the Capitol? Tell them, show them, and anybody will be more successful.
Praise & Reward – By rewarding scouts at achievable levels, you will encourage them to sell, sell, sell. Start with small goals and build to the big rewards. If everyone sells 10 boxes of cookies or 10 popcorn tins, you could take an water ice cream social at your next meeting. Cost = $15, benefit = huge.
Organize all of your cookie booth sales with an online sign up.SAMPLE
Keeping it fresh
Scout another troop/pack – Feel like your meetings are the "aforementioned old, same sometime"? Reach out to another local scout leader and see if you lot can sit in on one of their meetings for inspiration.
Brainstorm – Remember that committee you created? If you are feeling in a estrus, accomplish out and brainstorm ideas to mix things up. Recall it is for their kids and they want to help!
Mix information technology up – Goose egg changes the mood like a change in scenery. If you ever meet at the school, get outside and try meeting in the park. Hey, if the new location doesn't piece of work, it will make you capeesh the quondam 1 even more.
Review goals & accomplishments – Await dorsum at the goals you set for your troop or pack and check off your accomplishments. A review might even spark an idea based on what you lot have left to achieve.
Relax and have fun – Call back scouting is not meant to be stressful. Bask the gamble with the group you accept come up to know and appreciate.
Happy scouting!
Jennifer Burg is a flip-flop wearing, Gator-loving, picture-taking, deal-hunting Florida gal. Equally an overachieving mom of two crawly daughters, making to-do lists helps her remain calm and (somewhat) organized. When she'southward not planning events and political party sign-ups, you tin can find her blogging at world wide web.TheSuburbanMom.com.
Source: https://www.signupgenius.com/groups/25-tips-for-scout-leaders.cfm
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