PLC that doesn't want to work

[SMT376Richmond KY]

I'm looking for ideas to get the boys to take a more active role in the Troop. The Troop is now a year old (all were 11 when started) and we have been guiding them to boy lead. They have had PLC and leaders and JLT however, at the PLC they sit and look at each other. The only discusions that occur happen when I (SM) bring something up. How do you get a group on young Scouts to run it themselves?

[AnneinMpls]

Greetings!

Two key ideas I try to use:

progression - give them something to cut their teeth on - present choices that offer real differences of pros and cons so that there's something worth discussing and their decision will demonstrably affect the outcome.

 

 

trust the process - acknowledge even the barest hint of a programming idea that comes straight from a kid's mouth without undue judgments as to the idea's worthiness (barring unsafe and unethical activity!), and point them in the direction of how to pull it off effectively.

 

On the other hand, try to avoid the mistake I'm prone to making in letting things stall out because I'm too hands off in waiting for them to generate the program! They need some real tastes of what's available and they need to know that they are real possibilities. Maybe invite another troop's plc to come in to present how they pulled off a high adventure experience.

 

I find maintaining the momentum to be the really difficult part during a troop's startup phase.

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

[Eagledad]

Wonderful Day all

 

You are asking a question about the boys, but really what you want is how do the adults change their coaching and mentoring so the scouts grow with more confidence and independence in scout run.

 

90% of the scouts that come to JLTC have never used an agenda for most of their meetings. I don't know if this is part of your problem, but we teach in JLTC that the key to every good meeting starts with making an agenda. By the time our scouts leave the course, they have each personally filled out over two dozen agendas. They tell us later that they don't know how they ran meetings without one. This is the first lesson I gave to all my SPLs.

 

In your case, get an SPL Handbook and use the agenda in it. Eventually the scouts will get use to the format. I encourage the Patrol leaders to use an agenda for Patrol Corners that is basically the same as the SPL's. The idea behind that is the PLs learn from the role model.

 

Also, you are at a difficult age. 11-year-old scouts can be as boy run as the 15 year olds, but not with as much responsibility. Give them only what their maturity and experience can handle. Then fill in the rest with the adults. This is risky because the adults tend to hold and not give up responsibility, but in a young boy run program, the trick for the adults is to provide that help under the leadership of the SPL. That forces the adults to keep backing off as the scouts gain in maturity and experience. That will happen very fast at about the 13 to 14 year age, so wait for it and be prepared to get out of their way because at age 14, these guys will leave you in the dust.

 

You can judge how much responsibility they can handle by watching their perspective of the program. If at some point the scouts aren't enjoying the program because of too much responsibility, then it is time to aid the situation. But it is important for adults to find the scouts limits by pushing it. It is better to go a little to far and learn the limit than not going far enough and ending up afraid to let the scouts learn from their experience. Boys are very strong and will do fine so long as they can trust that screwing up is OK because the adults want you to learn from the experience. Look at every struggle as an opportunity to for positive growth.

 

I hope this helps. You have a difficult task ahead, but a very rewarding one. Just remember, in a truly boy run program, the adults have to learn more faster than scouts so that they don't get in scouts way.

 

I love this scouting stuff.

 

Barry

 

 

 

[Eamonn]

The PLC may be the first time that anyone has ever asked these Lads what they think.

You might want to meet with your SPL and plan the Agenda. Have him pass out the Agenda a week or so before the meeting to the Patrol Leaders, allow the patrols to discuss it at their Patrol Meeting. That way the Patrol Leader will be representing his patrol.

You might want to do more at your PLC then just sit and discuss things. You could with the SPL teach the Patrol Leaders a new skill which they could then pass on to the patrol members. You could as a PLC make a chariot, go over the Japanese and Square lashings. Then have Patrol Chariot Races at the next troop meeting. At the business end of the PLC make plans for a pioneering weekend.

Eamonn

[OneHour]

SM needs to work with the SPL before the PLC on the agenda (and the topics of discussion). What will also help that we found out is that the SM needs to be removed from the "circle." When an adult is in the PLC circle, the boys will have the natural tendency to focus on the adult. That's what happened to us before. Now we have the adult(s) (yes this is something else that we need to reduce ... the number of adults in attendance) sit in the back of the boys and raise our hands to be recognized as everyone else. Work and rehearse with the SPL the points to cover as well as give him (if he is new or has not done it before) an example of the planning that the meeting should gear toward before the PLC.

 

At the PLC, the adult can act as a facilitator in terms of reeling them back into the decision at hand if they start to head off into a tangent and not making the decision for them. Sit on your hands if needed but don't interfere. Suggest something only if they are at a deadlock, ran out of ideas, or if it has some safety issues with it and keep it as a suggestion. Some of our adults were surprised that they didn't take the adults advices. I promptly reminded the adults that this is their choice.

 

Finally, the feedback session with SPL is very important. This is when you get the SPL reflects on how the meeting went and have him work out what he should do the next time. I guess that it will take a long time to get it right. We are still working on our PLC and still struggling to get the boys to be independent in terms of taking ownership of the meeting. We have recently have to reset because we just have a new SPL. There is a good Topic that Bob White posed last year that gave a PLC scenario and ask what we (SM) would do. Search for it.

 

1Hour(This message has been edited by OneHour)

[Bob White]

One Hour makes an excellent point. The meeting's success begins a few days before the meeting when the agenda is made. for something to happen, you must plan for something to happen. To plant the seed for decision making use "choices". Would you rather go rappelling this month or canoing? Slowly increase the number of choices and allow them to add a choice. Then let them use more of their own ideas to choose from, after they get into the habit of talking about what they want to do.

[Scoutmaster Ron]

What would everyone's opinion on having the leaders conduct a mock PLC as an example . I would imagine this would work better with start up troops than existing ones.

[Eamonn]

Some wise person said Plan your work and work your plan.

Most of us who have been around a while have had to deal with the "Deer in The Headlights Syndrome"

Planning starts with the Annual Plan. There are lots of material and things to draw from to make this meeting work. Look inside this months Scouting Magazine.

One of my favorite bits in the Disney Jungle Book is where the vultures who sound like they come from Liverpool are on the tree and one says"What shall we do? the other says "I don't know." The next says "What do you want to do?" The first says "I don't know" The next says "What shall we do?"

This is just what an unplaned meeting sounds like.

[EagleInKY]

Hey fellow Kentuckian. I know we've chatted several times, since we're in a similar spot. Our troop started last year as well. Seven 11 year olds and two 13 year olds (new scouts who had dropped out after earning their AOL).

 

We've been building a boy-led program and it's really starting to take off. It took us 8 months to get the PLC working, but it's still far from perfect. I still lead much of the meeting, but have given decision making on all things over to them. Sometimes they end up flipping a coin, but it's all part of their learning process. Every meeting, I give more and more responsibility to them.

 

What is really helping is meeting with the leaders (PL/SPL) one-on-one to help them plan and gain the confidence they need. I help them lay out agendas, plans, etc. It's a little heavy-handed, but they learn more about planning in this manner. The scouts don't realize this, they just see their SPL or PL seems to know what he's doing, and thus gain more confidence in him.

 

Just keep working up that ladder, one step at a time. You'll get there.

[ScouterPaul]

OneHour and Bob White are correct - it starts with the SPL (I would even throw in the ASPL). It even gets more basic than that - it starts with the PL ans APL. You must work one on one and help guide them through the process. Remember baby steps. I use a roadmap analogy with new youth leaders - I place a map of the U.S. on a table and ask the boy if he could go anywhere he wanted where would he go. Sometimes its Florida, Alaska ect. I then have them show me the route they would take. The boy usually traces an interstate or 2 until he gets there. I ask him what he just did. I generally get a blank look. I then tell him he just made a plan and then lead into a discussion concerning planning the Patrol or PLC meetings.

[Fat Old Guy]

In the last issue of Scouting there was a comment that it takes boys four times as long to plan an event as it does adults.

 

That makes sense. We have a lifetime of experience that has given us an idea of what is possible, what is impossible and what needs to happen. Many, if not most, 12 year olds don't even know what is out there to begin to have an idea of what it is that they might want to do.

 

Of course, they could just be a bunch of slugs like our Venture Patrol. "Hey guys, there's a great opportunity to going sailing over spring break." "Nah . . ." "Hey guys, an outfitter contacted me and wants some Scouts to take a FREE raft trip to check out his new rafting gear." "Nah . . ." "Hey guys, the Swedish Bikini Team is looking for escorts for their stay in town." "Nah . . ." It is truly sad. They just sit around and complain about having nothing to do.

 

 

[Proud Eagle]

FOG,

 

Try this- let them know that the way to volunteer to be in charge of planning next months patrol activity is to be the next person to complain about not having anything to do. Then they will start complaining about how unfair you are or some such thing. Its kind of like when someone complains about a headache and you offer to take their mind off it by kicking them in the shins or some such thing. (not that a good Scout would ever do something like that...)

 

 

[timberscout]

I am a SM of a troop much like yours that started a year ago with 7 (11 year olds) and have had a hard time of keeping them focused and on task in both the PLC and Patrol meetings. I tend to remind them of all the resources they have form there scout handbook to resource giudes to adults they can ask questions of and then ask one or two open ended questions for them to discuss, such as what requirments do most of you need to work on?, what do you want to do? I then return to the shadows and observe with only an occational word "Focus".

[Bob White]

Great tips timberscout!

[Eamonn]

Just to make life even more difficult I think that there are different types and different parts of a PLC meeting.

At summer camp, we held daily meetings. These were normally very short and looked over how things were going and what was happening the next day. This kept everyone on the same page and prevented small problems from growing.

After a troop meeting,we would spent a couple of minutes reviewing that meeting. My role as SM was to ask "How did you think it went?" Offer words of encouragement and pats on the back. The SPL would quickly run over who was doing what at the next meeting and make changes if need be.

The PLC was in two parts, the first was looking at the theme and activities that we would be covering. We would try out some of these new ideas, games or presentations. The second part was the business meeting.

I seen the fist part as my preparing the PL's. This was the "Train Them" part. If the SPL was well versed in whatever he would be the "Presenter" If it was something that we had never done or an area that we were weak in. I would present. Most times I would do my best to let the SPL and the SPL cover the stuff that they were comfortable with.

Take pioneering. All the PL's should know how to tie all the basic knots. The SPL and the ASPL would run through these with the PL's and make sure that everyone was comfortable with this. If one or two of the PL's needed a little help, they would do this. Most of the PL's should have no problem with basic lashings. Either the SPL or ASPL would run through these.

If as part of troop night program we were going to make a rope ladder I might step in and go over marlinespike hitch. If we were covering pulling power I might step in and go over the Harvester's Hitch (Rope Tackle).

Having planted the seeds I found that the business meeting went a lot easier. It did go a long way to keep the troop meetings moving.

The key was having a monthly theme and sticking to it.

PLC meetings were fun, fast moving and were designed to make the members feel special. Of course like any group we had soft spots. I knew that we had to move through the stages of Team Development and there were times when a new project or new idea would move us back to the first step and we would have to go over all the other steps again.

We found that a fixed Agenda did keep the meeting moving.Most times the only other adults that I needed were the Quartermaster or if the theme was something that one of the ASM's was particularly good at, we would let him sit in. One sure way to kill the meeting and get no place was to allow it to become a **** session. I did have a very good QM, who did a wonderful job with looking after the equipment. The bad thing was that he started looking upon the equipment as "His equipment". When something was lost or broken he would tend to look upon it as a hanging offense. Of course the outcome was that the Patrol Leaders stopped telling him, which led to all sorts of problems. Scouts don't like to be **** ed at.

A lot of our themes were based around District Activities. Most of these were some sort of a competition. In the early days entering the competition and winning was my goal. When the PLC said that they didn't want to enter. I had a hard time accepting it. Letting go and allowing them to run the show was hard for me. I used to resort to all sorts of things to get them to see it my way. All of which were wrong. There is no point in giving these guys the power if when they do use it, we are going to take it away.

Meetings around the Scoutmasters kitchen table can bring results, but I never seen a lot come out of them.

Eamonn