A discussion on the Roundtable program and why you should come on down.
Show Notes:
- Roundtable tips (USSSP)
Transcript:
Roundtable is designed to be a monthly meeting where leaders get together and exchange ideas, learn a few things and find out what is going on outside their unit within their district.
But roundtable can be much more.
Roundtable is an opportunity to meet people with the common understanding of scouting.
But let me back up and explain how Roundtable works for folks who have never been to one. Hopefully by the end of this video you’ll be open if not eager to try one out.
Roundtable in my council and district is once per month for about an hour and a half. The Rough Rider District in Theodore Roosevelt Council holds their Roundtable on Wednesday evenings, beginning at 7:30pm.
After a few minutes of chit chat between people you get to know from scouting events we start with our opening, followed by announcements.
As our Boy Scout Roundtable commissioner, I run this part of the meeting and try and keep it short, and lively. Here you find out about upcoming district events like camping trips, movie nights or trainings.
After the announcement sessions we break up into two area, the cub scout leaders and boy scout leaders. But if you are more interested in a topic that is not your area, you are more than welcome to join the other area.
Prior to starting there are snack, coffee and a bit of fellowship. It’s a great opportunity to have a conversation with a unit commissioner, your district executive, or just other like minded leaders.
Your first roundtable may seem a bit daunting. Everyone seems to know each other, and admittedly, they seem like little clicks that you may not be a part of. This is not the reality though. Everyone that comes to a roundtable from the presenters to the district employees to the other leaders are friendly, and love the opportunity to converse with new folks.
Just by coming down you become part of our larger community.
Now I mention leaders coming down to Roundtable, I use that term generically, as anyone with an interest in scouting is welcome to attend. Even if you are a parent of a scout, and just want to find out what’s going on, the doors are open.
Once the announcements and coffee are done we move into more of a training mode.
One of my mantras with running roundtable is that I don’t want to waste your time, and as such the program is scheduled and time boxes. I have 3 sessions. The first is a skills section, that is set for about 20 minutes. This ususally is set for a topic where I have some one with a particular skill to present. One month it was knots, another it was cold weather camping, and another it was Outdoor Ethics.
The point of this part is to give you some actionable skills you can take back to your unit.
The next part, which is about 10 minutes, is the tips and tricks section. I try and make this one of the more fun areas. One month we talked about scouting toys, another woodbadge critters, and one month we spent it on how to make coffee in the woods.
This is geared more towards you and the lifestyle of scouting.
The third area, which takes about 5 minutes, is a leadership minute, this picks a topic for a short discussion.
This is all usually followed with a little camaraderie to end the evening.
In total it breaks down to about 20 minutes of announcements, 10-15 minutes of fellowship and about 40 minutes of program.
All in all it it is designed to support your scouting efforts, and it can be a lot of fun.
Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with all the hope we can all learn together.
I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was a view into Roundtable.
