Yours in Scouting (YiS)

The Leominster shooting sports was canceled last week has been rescheduled to tomorrow (December 12). Unfortunately, I cannot attend but I am sure you will have a great time hosted by Mr. O’Leary of Troop 11 who is also the President of the Sportsman Association. Make sure you follow “friendly and courteous” points of the Scout Law while guests of the association.

Congratulations to elected Senior Patrol Leader Christian and the newly elected Patrol Leaders. Henry and Freddy are the ASPL’s for the Troop. The scouts call these positions of responsibilities (POR) because leadership is about fulfilling your responsibilities. This entails attending every event during your term, preparing for and conducting PLC’s, and then following through on the work for the Troop to make these events well organized and meaningful. This also means being early, staying late, and making sure the Troop functions well. This is never an easy task. Many of you are doing all this now and it should be an easy transition. I will look for time in January to host some leadership training as we embark on the next term.

The meetings at Emerson have been going well. Scouts are outside, socially distanced, and all wearing masks. As we move forward into January and February we will be mixing up our schedule so that we can have Saturday meetings. Next week is a good example. There is no Tuesday meeting but on Saturday, December 19, 2020, we will meet at 0900-11:30 at Camp Acton so that we can work on scouts skills. As always, bring your book and be prepared for the weather. These outdoor Saturday meetings will be very helpful at working on advancements. We have not discussed this, but we may change times for these so that we can also cover some cooking requirements. We will need to first plan those events.
We appreciate everyone's flexibility on the scheduling and being open to new opportunities as our normal meetings at the Scout House are not possible. I would expect that to continue through the first half of 2021. We can use this opportunity to try new formats for meetings.

I’ve heard from some scouts during scoutmaster conferences that the Saturday meetings mixed with Tuesdays and PLC’s via zoom are working well. So no meeting Tuesday and we will meet on next Saturday, Dec 19. Please let your patrol leader or ASPL/SPL know if you cannot attend.