Date: Fri, 8 Sep 1995 10:49:42 CDT
From: "Settummanque, the blackeagle" <waltoml@WKUVX1.WKU.EDU>
Subject: Roundtable Meetings
The questions were "How does the information flow works from National to the units through the Roundtable meetings" and "What do you do at your Roundtable meetings to get/keep those "experienced Scouters" coming since they are "experienced" and not "new"?
During Roundtable meetings, time should be set aside for your District professional/professional team to share with those in attendance new National policies and how your local Council will be interpreting those policies. They should be prepared not only to explain the new policy or rule, but also to share with you how the Council views the policy in light of existing programming, what it means to "Joe or Jane Scouter" and what it means to the youth members in your District. In this light, your District professional/professional team is "speaking for the Council Scout Executive" and therefore for the Boy Scouts of America. View this time as not a time for him or her to "wax poetic" on how well his boss sees the District nor how we need to do more to raise money or to get kids. View this time (and it should be SHORT and TO THE POINT) as his or her time to express what "National's thinking" with all of you.
If this time is NOT being used in that kind of framework, and is instead being used to either berate volunteers into "doing more", or spent presenting awards, a talk between the Roundtable Commissioner (whom should be presenting those awards -- it is HIS OR HER MEETING!), the District Commissioner or ADC in charge of Roundtables (this is the alternate person to present those awards during the meeting) and the District Executive or Executive team in order to get this resolved. This is NOT the "DE's Roundtable"...it is the District Roundtable, hosted by the District Roundtable Commissioner(s) and their staffs.
Likewise, your District Commissioner should be emphasising that the Roundtable, like this forum, is a period set aside for EXCHANGING as well as GETTING AND GIVING INFORMATION. This is what brings folks back to Roundtables, like which what brings you back to Scouts-L each and every day (besides the fact that if you don't read the stuff here, you'll really miss something GREAT!). I've found that if you set aside some period of time in which Scouters can just SIT AND TALK with each other, during the meeting, this helps a LOT more than even the best of programs. Scouters, like people everywhere, want to spend time in just comparing program, in talking about great places to camp or hike or fish...or the reverse, places to avoid, places that charge above a "normal amount". If you listen carefully to what happens "as the participants gather", not only are they gathering paper products (handouts), but they are talking about upcoming programs, problems that they have and how others have worked with them.
If you look at your Roundtable meeting as a "monthly conference on Scouting", this will give you a clue as to how the topic areas should be handled and how much time should be allocated to the various areas of the meeting.
I keep "harping" on this, but everyone in the USA should go on any given month to one of the four (yeah, four) monthly Roundtable meetings in the George Washington District in the National Capitol Area Council. The Roundtable meeting is held at a middle school, and starts promptly at 7pm. There's an agenda with all of the handouts provided to as many people as the "handout person" made copies for (and attendance is high, about 500 Cub and Boy Scouters COMBINED, along with "straphangers" like myself and others). The meeting starts with a bang, "announcements" are short, sweet and emphasise information that Scouters NEED to take back with them. Longer things that needed to be explained are explained on paper, and contained within the Agenda "book" that each person received when they signed-in. Other matters, like SME/FOS, charter renewals, summer/day camp registration and fee payments, and the like are ALL handled OUTSIDE the main room (the cafeteria), as well as the coffee and donut area (this allows those that want to exchange information to do so WITHOUT conflicting with the main meeting). The program for the evening is challenging and varied, are topics of ADULT interest (even though there's a lot of youth members in attendance), and are NOT always "Boy Scouting related" (for instance, one month's Roundtable included a frank discussion on the topic of sexual harassment and how it related to the-then newness of having women serve as Scoutmasters. They brought in two personnel professionals that facilitated the discussion and while they had to be coached as to "Boy Scouting terminology", the discussion was great and different than "let's tie three new knots this month".
There are separate breakouts for Cub, Scout, and Varsity Scouters and for those Exploring leaders that want to attend instead of attending the Leader's Exchange meetings done on a quarterly basis by the Division's Exploring team.
The District Executive has the last ten minutes of the meeting, and if his ten is not used, then the meeting closes that much earlier. Each month, they have to literally "throw the Scouters out" of the building because while there's a HOUR left over for Scouters to talk with each other after the meeting, you can STILL find Scouters standing or leaning in the hallways or near the doorways, talking and sharing information with each other.
I came back from every meeting with so much information about what the BSA is doing, how the NCAC is handling it and how I can make my unit the best units in the District, that I literally had to sit and reflect when I got in the door!!
*That's* a Roundtable meeting!!! *hehehehee*
The keys are to keep it focused, keep the distractions to a minimum, and vary the program so that those attending each month are surprised. Kinda like here, gang. By keeping it focused, keeping distractions to a minimum, and varying the "content" so that people will continue to come back and say "HEY! That's neat!! Let me turn on my printer!", people come back to this list, the "Roundtable meeting that NEVER ends!"
Settummanque!
--
Settummanque, the blackeagle... (MAJ) Mike L. Walton
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 1995 02:15:15 -0600
From: "Settummanque the blackeagle (Mike Walton)"
Subject: Re: Help with Round Table
DeLane wrote about the lack of attendance at Roundtables:
>The problems is two fold. First, we are located in a
>rural area and our district is wide spread. Currently it is a 45 minute to
>hour drive to attend meetings. Now this may not seem to be much to some but
>it can be for us due to weather and babysitting.
Not if you vary the location of the Roundtable between all parts of your District.
>From personal experience as a Paraprofessional in two rural Districts, there's a lot to be said for moving the monthly Roundtable meetings around between communities.
First, the unit "hosting" the Roundtable meeting "buys-in" on doing a good job, and although there's a Roundtable Staff and Commissioner, the "hosting unit" is responsible for the program.
Next, the Roundtable meeting is in a different community each month. It gives those unit leaders living in the "big city" of the District some idea of what has to be done in a large part to "deliver the promise" in smaller areas. Also, it allows for a more specific sharing of information, resources and people between both "big city" and "small town" units.
Next, allow for "just talking" between everyone in attendance. People come to the Roundtable to share information about what they are doing and problems in doing what they are doing. If you allow them the ability to share privately as well as publicly, the number of people attending will rise, just from sheer "Well, how about if I meet you at that Roundtable meeting place....we can talk about then. Besides, I need to pick up a new Scoutmaster's Handbook."
Which leads me to having a small stash of generic Scouting literature available, and what I did (and most executives will do this for you if you ask nicely and if you have a good rapport with him or her) is to take orders on the "hard-to-get stuff". Because I had a "account" (all executives and those national and regional volunteers do) with the Supply Division, it's not too hard for me to call them up, request a booklet or item, and have them to charge it to my account (which comes out of my check the next month). It beats everything out of driving three to five hours to the Council office, only to find out that someone beat you to the last copy of the "Advancement Guidelines: Council and District Procedures" booklet you've heard about on Scouts-L that you should get a copy of, but ordering it from that toll-free number sounds so, well, impersonal.
That small stash of generic literature also helps those "visitors" to your Roundtable, because they too, will be able to purchase it (cha ching!), use some of the information, and *get this* become INTERESTED in serving as a leader!
Finally, if you "play your cards right", the Roundtable meeting can be an additional resource for OTHERS in your District. While yes, the Roundtable meetings are OPTIONAL meetings for our Cub Scouting, Boy Scouting and Exploring leaders, there's nothing that says that you HAVE to cater just to OUR folk. The most successful rural Roundtables, including our own, have been those that have topics which would appeal to the childcare providers (like a discussion on basic first aid for leaders, which is different from a standard Red Cross or Heart Association full-blown course), to crafts people (like the time we invited a man that made beautiful chairs from different woods...not only did he explain what it was he was doing, but he also explained the different kinds of woods, what works well with what, and during the evening, they gave away one of his chairs to a participant. You'd better believe the NEXT time they had a Roundtable there, that it was a full house!!), to the time we had one of those TV "backroads" reporters come tell us all how's the best way to get our "stories" on the local TV station or on the radio.
>Second, we have a very
>good round table staff, but for the most part what is covered at the
>meetings can be found in the BSA manuals and resource material provided for
>each month. The staff does a excellent job but we need something to help
>entice others to come to the meetings. We currently draw about 12-20
>leaders each meeting out of a possible 200(rough estimate). The same people
>show up most of the time.
See, just like here, DeLane, you have to not only vary the "information" with the "entertainment" and "resource information". That's what brings people here, and that's what brings people to attend Roundtable. When they KNOW it's full of things that they can take home with them, not "propaganda from the Council (or from National)" (or when the amount is lower then the overall worth), people will drive from OTHER districts to come to your Roundtables --if the CONTENT is high.
Make it worth their drive 90 or 120 minutes (in one District where I'd worked, the average driving distance was two hours to the Roundtable site...the District was very rural, with lots of winding roads and lots of hazards in the way!!).
In the winter time, compromise for all by holding the meeting earlier in the day or perhaps on a weekend which other events are being held at a central location just for the safety aspect. In one of the Districts where I served, we held Roundtable in January, February and March on the first Saturday and if possible, tied it in with a Council or District event, so that for the two hours in the morning, we definitely had a captive audience.
Scouters are interested in a lot of different things. Make the Roundtable meeting a meeting in which you can get resource material, talk with I had many times wished that Scouts-L existed when I was working. I would take many of the issues that we've talked about here, made copies for each participant, and during each Roundtable, just TALK about what others here are talking about. I would assure you that our meetings would get very livid ("Tell that guy that he doesn't know what he's talkin' about! I've been a Scoutmaster for TEN YEARS and I've never heard of such mess!", to ways that things discussed here can be implemented ("I've got an idea: Let's see if we can ask our Scouts if there's a way that they can all wear their uniforms on say, Fridays of each week"). When you bring things from a wider perspective down to the level of the leader "on the line", you have a better chance of further motivating and energising them (the true purpose of the Roundtable meeting) to doing a better job.
This isn't accomplished by monthly rehashes of what the national literature says or what the Council's getting ready to do. It's accomplished by meeting the needs of the group and keeping the group together to get the job done.
Rural areas in our Councils are tough to do Roundtables in, I admit it. In one District, I was lucky to get 30 Scouters to attend from the 112 that we had registered there. It's a matter of priorities in many cases, and as Jack wrote, we (the BSA) kinda shot ourselves in the feet (but we had to) when we deleted the "requirement for Roundtable participation" from our training award standards.
But, if you make that meeting attractive to those inside - and outside - the Scouting program, you will get more consistent attendance, more positive attitudes about attending and most of all, more attendance. Make it fit THEIR needs, not the needs of the Roundtable Staff or Commissioner.
Settummanque!
(MAJ) Mike L. Walton (Settummanque, the blackeagle)
also via Blackeagle Services 502.826.7046 or 800.816.6746 /BlkEagleS@AOL.COM (Email) mwalton@alpha.comsource.net/kyblkeagle@aol.com/mikewalton@gnn.com "Ask about Geoworks, Leaders' Online & visiting your place to talk Scouting!!"