IrrationalGoat

Regarding specific advice and needing more details, here is an overview of how my troop is structured and what meetings look like. Every six months we elect a new ASPL, and the current ASPL moves up to SPL. At the new SPL's first PLC (we have a PLC at the first meeting of every month, every scout is expected to attend and as a group we plan out the meetings and outings for that month) they appoint scouts of their choice to the following positions: Quartermaster, Scribe, Historian, Game Master, Troop Guide, Chaplain Aide, and Webmaster. Next, as a group, we plan a monthly theme for each of the six months of the SPLs term. Examples of things we have done include - Merit Badges (anything from First Aid to Personal Fitness, usually Eagle-required and something that one of our adult leaders is a counselor for. We usually would take a whole month to do a merit badge (3-4 meetings, depending on the month.) Ideally each scout completes the merit badge.) Rank Advancement and Merit Badge work time - sometimes we set aside a whole month for rank advancement, often having group lessons and sign-offs as well as individual worktime. Aquatics - usually done in the summer, we would meet at a local lake to swim for a meeting, maybe meet at our local aquatic center for a meeting, maybe go canoeing or kayaking at another local lake for a meeting. Outdoors - we would usually go to a park near our meeting location, likely would have a swimming meeting of some sort. Again, usually done during the summer (I think the low point of our troop was when January rolled around and the month's theme had been planned as outdoor things - the only problem? It got dark well before out evening meetings, so there was no real way to do anything outdoors during a weekly meeting 😂😂😂) Go-kart Building - we once built a go-kart (push powered) as a troop one month, that was lots of fun. Everyone brought some scraps and by the end of the month we managed to have something resembling a go-kart. Ok, so that is what the beginning of a new SPLs term looks like. In my troop, terms last for six months. Here is what our standard month looks like - First meeting of the month - PLC. We have no flag ceremonies at PLC meetings, and we end the meeting when the whole month is planned (usually 30-50 minutes in). We take the monthly theme that we planned at the SPLs first meeting, and plan what we will do at each meeting a how it relates to the theme. For example, if the theme is Citizenship in the Community merit badge, we would plan two or three meetings to go over requirements and fill out worksheets as a group, and then perhaps we would choose one meeting to go to a City Hall meeting (one of the requirements for Citizenship in the Community. We usually also plan one outing. Examples include: snowshoeing at our local mountain in the winter, going on a day hike or biking trip, going on an overnight camping trip. We try to do one or more snow related outings in the winter and from March-November we usually try to do one camping trip or hike per month. Now that I have explained how we plan our months here is an overview of a standard meeting - Flag Ceremony, with Scout Oath and Law recited, followed by announcements - 5 - 10 minutes Go to table and begin working on whatever we have planned. If we are doing a merit badge we will have the counselor teach the group and try to get through requirements in a timely and reasonable manner. 50 - 70 minutes We usually do a game toward the end of the meeting 10 - 15 minutes Closing flag ceremony and announcements - 5 minutes Here is how we plan a camping trip - During the PLC, we will bring up what we want to do for an outing that month. We will decide what weekends are available and whether or not we want to do a day hike, backpacking trip, or camping trip. Then we will decide where we want to go. We will then decide when we want to meet to carpool to our campsite or trailhead (usually on Saturday) and then when we will get back (usually on Sunday). We would then usually split into two "cooking patrols" of about 3-5 scouts each. Each cooking patrol would have one person (rotating scouts each time) who planned all the meals for their cooking patrol for that camping trip. They would usually fit their menu around a requirement they were trying to meet. Then, the leader of the cooking patrol would divide up the food items to bring between the other members of the cooking patrol, to avoid having one person buy everything a collect money from the other members (this didn't always end with everyone happy, to put it one way). So, the day of the campout rolls around, we all meet in the designated meeting location and carpool to the campsite (usually at 1 pm ish). We would then unpack and set up tents and set up the camp in general (cooking stoves, garbage bags, coolers, watercoolers, etc.) Once everything was all set up we would usually do an activity together, often a preplanned hike or canoeing trip or somethings. Then, we would usually have maybe an hour of free time to play games or work on rank advancement with leaders individually (following youth protection rules). We might have group rank advancement for an hour or so. Then we would usually start to think about dinner. For dinner, each patrol would prepare, cook, and eat, whatever they planned. Adults brought their own food (my dad would often bring a steak and grill it up in front of everyone else who brought a Mountain house meal or ramen noodles or something 😂😂😂). The two cooking patrols would cook the meals separately and only cook for the members in their patrol, but the two coking patrols would almost always eat together and share laughs and jokes. Then, we would usually play a game after dinner (often German spotlight or some other kind of in-the-dark tag game). After that, we would often have a campfire and a cracker barrel as a troop (when I say troop, keep in mind I'm referring to less than a dozen scouts). We would tell stories, make jokes, and eventually head to our tents to go to bed (scouts would choose who they slept with on their own, we usually had brothers/friends sleep in the same tent and usually had 3-5 tents. Occasionally we would pull out the "Taj Mahal", a 12 or so person tent our troop owns, and all the scouts would sleep in that tent. Scouts and adults never slept in the same tent, except rarely if it was father/son or something like that (the adults would usually find a way to sleep in their minivans or SUVs though). The next morning, we would wake up, usually at separate times but around 6-9 in the morning. Someone would start a fire and slowly more and more people would get up. The leaders of the cooking patrol would start breakfast whenever they decided, often having to go wake the members of their cooking patrols to help them out. We would then have breakfast, in the same structure as dinner, and then usually play a game (frisbee, tag, capture the flag, etc.) for an hour or two afterwards. Then we would start to pack up and and have lunch, and would carpool back to the meeting spot after lunch (usually 1-2 pm). From there, everyone would head home, with a full belly, a fun experience, and hopefully a few new requirements under their belt. and that's a successful outing. Our meeting attendance is usually about 80-90% for most scouts, as we have gotten bigger, some scouts attendance is more like 30% or 50%, but most scouts and adults have good attendance. So that is our troop essentially functions. The thing is, we do all of the planning and activities as a group. Which, as I said, isn't really a problem when we had about 6-10 boys in the troop at any given time. Now we have over a dozen scouts, so I suppose my question is, what would forming two patrols look like. It will likely end up being a girls patrol and boys patrol (seeing as that is how the whole of the organization requires it to be). What will having two SPLs look like? Will the boys and girls patrols do all the PLCs together and have all the same monthly themes? Or will they do PLCs separately and have their own monthly themes? If they do plan meetings and have PLCs together and have the same monthly themes, will they do the same activities together? Because that is basically how our troop functions right now, we have grown a lot and haven't changed our structure in accordance with the new growth. Will we go on the same camping trips? Or separate ones? If we do go to the same camping trip, will we eat together and sit around the same fire and play games together or will we try to be as separate as possible? I will likely end up talking to my SM and some of the adults leaders about what the best course of action is, I am mostly looking for ideas and trying to get a better understanding here. Thanks for all the replies, unfortunately I don't have the time to give a good reply to every comment, but I really appreciate it.

I am a 16 year-old Life Scout, working on my Eagle, and I am currently the Senior Patrol Leader for my troop. About 10 or so years ago my troop was quite large, with about 5 or 6 active patrols at all times. I was a Cub Scout at this time. Then, a whole bunch of drama happened and most of the families left the troop, diminishing the size. About 5 years later, when I became old enough to be a Boy Scout, I joined the troop. I had done Cub Scouts but not Webelos, my parents pulled me and my brother out of scouting for a few years to focus on our youth group, and partly because my dad was frustrated that he couldn't bring my sisters on outings and to meetings. Anyway, So I joined and I don't remember all the details, but I remember that there was no real "Patrol System", because there were only enough scouts for one patrol. In all my years as a scout, my troop has only had one patrol, which was every boy in the troop. We tried to recruit more member but had a very hard time, more than half of the few recruits we had dropped out after a few months (partly due to COVID and having to meet on Zoom). There was a time when there were only THREE active scouts in our troop (I always jokingly called us the first triumvirate). I was certain that our troop would not be able to recharter at the start of the next year (we had barely squeaked by at the beginning of that year). Then, girls were allowed to join. One of the adults in our troop (our only council member) had a granddaughter-in-law (11 years old) who joined. She started bringing her friends and they started bringing theirs, and now the troop has about a dozen younger scouts in it. When I was elected ASPL, the troop had three active scouts. Now, six months later, I'm SPL and the troop has over a dozen young scouts in it. Its been a handful to manage, and I am constantly stressed about planning meetings and outings. To be quite honest, I miss the days were I was younger scouts and could just sit back and relax and go with the flow during meetings. Now, I rarely look forward to meetings, I usually get quite stressed about them, and Wednesday is my new favorite day, because its the day after our weekly Tuesday meetings. I miss being able to enjoy myself at meetings, now I'm constantly trying to move things along and lead the group in our activities. I'm not really considering dropping out; I'm quite close to my Eagle Scout, and one of my older brothers is an Eagle Scout and troop Alumni so I want to live up to that. The troop has been doing well, all things considered, parents are quite active and involved, our troop has always been very youth-led. Two of our new scouts have earned the Scout Rank and many more are on track to. We are planning summer camp for this summer, and we have merit badges scheduled to be learned. Most of the younger scouts have a great attendance record However, as we've been growing, I have noticed that with about a dozen scouts at every meeting, each scout is getting less participation time and seems less engaged. I often see scouts daydreaming or half-falling asleep during meetings (especially PLCs). I think that implementing the Patrol Method is integral to seeing the troop succeed, but I have no idea how to do that! My whole time as a scout my troop has only had one patrol, and I really don't know how to organize and lead the troop into the Patrol Method. How do I implement something that I am not even familiar with and that I don't know how it works? A few leaders have been talking about it, but nothing has really come of that yet, and there is disagreement in the troop in whether we should have a boys patrol and a girls patrol (which would give us two good sized patrols) or two patrols with boys and girls in each. I'm basically asking for help with how I can go about learning about patrols and how they work, implementing patrols, what having two patrols would look like for meetings and outing (are they always doing two separate things? are they planning their own meetings and outings, or is that done all together?) Having a girls troop and boys troop complicates things greatly; our two troops meet at the same place and do everything together, we are basically one big boys and girls troop that do everything together yet are separated by the organizations policies and rules. I don't think we can technically form patrols with both boys and girls in them, but that's what some of the adults in my troop want to do, and I must say that separating them by sex doesn't seem like it would be good for troop morale and spirit, many of the girls and boys are good friends, separating them could damage the troop. I am very confused and intimidated and I am taking everything with scouts one step at a time, just trying to plan and get through the month, implementing patrols seems like a huge undertaking.