duneslider

Thanks for the feedback. A lot of these things have been bothering me for years but I wasn't really in a position I could "fix" things. I offered suggestions and even made requests but the leaders would try something once or twice and decide it wasn't working and revert back to what they wanted to do. I took charge with our last camp and tried to keep a distance from the boys as they constructed a shelter using rope and a tarp. They did a pretty good job and when done I stopped by to check it out and we had a brief discussion about some of the issues they encountered. They all expressed on the ride home the next day that the camp was fun and they had a great time making their own shelter and didn't want to use tents any more in the warmer months and would rather make their own shelter. I look forward to getting the boys involved in THEIR program. We do have some challenges with our programs that have a lot to do with the religious organization that is our charter and how they would like us to run things. I am pushing back on some of it in order to make our troop work.

I am just starting as Scoutmaster for our troop. We have a lot of issues that I won't get into now. I really want to move us into a boy led program. It has been adult led for years. Our typical weekly meetings (topic) has been picked by the boys but then the leaders do all the "lessons", frankly the boys have been bored and uninterested even though the topics have been picked by them. We are good about camping but even that is adult led and the boys seem uninterested most of the time. I think we need to be boy led and frankly I am just learning about how that all works. Now for my question. What does your weekly meeting go like? We (leaders) call the meeting to order, ask the SPL to conduct, he opens the meeting, then turns the meeting over to leader to bore them to death teaching a merit badge on XXXXX. All while the boys just want to go shoot hoops in the gym but we (leaders) force them to sit still for an hour listening to something they really don't care about, then we free them to go shoot hoops for half an hour. I was an ASM working with the 11yr scouts for a short time and have been COR for the last 4 years, eagle scout at 14. I am familiar with the program but not an expert at running one the right way. I know what needs to be done, just don't know how to do it.