Our troop meetings are boring and not very productive

[cackle881]

In order for a meeting to be productive, I think that it needs to be oriented towards a goal. Whether it be a merit badge advancement, a pioneering project, or planning for a campout, as long as the boys have a goal they will have that sense of purpose. We used to use the Woods Wisdom manuals (not sure what the name was changed to) and those work well, but they are a little overly structured and that takes some of the fun out of the meeting. What we did like, though, was the sequential progression towards a weekend event and we used a lot of that to make the meetings productive and fun.

 

We also found that delegating tasks out to the patrols made things go well when we broke into patrol time. One patrol would organize the gear list, another would finalize the schedule for the weekend, and another (usually the younger boys) would plan the menu. This worked out really well!