Spring 2015 BSLST

We've tried the new BSLST curriculum for our first time.

•  2015 Spring BSLST Course Page

A couple observations for those who want to try it.

1. The timing is critical.
The older course could be timed to about +/- 5 minutes. The new one needs to be followed to the minute. Don't try to put activities into the breaks. You'll need that time. We (I, the course director) made that mistake in our planning.
2. It works.
The topics we covered made sense. It was coherent and the trainees were able to learn a lot. It's not deep, but it gets them started. It is critical to integrate some of the activities from the syllabus into the course.
3. It doesn't work completely
There are still questions that come up that are committee-like. Also there aren't good opportunities for skill instruction. Even example games are hard to integrate.
4. Integration with IOLS (ITOLS) is going to be "interesting."
We've been working on what parts of the preparation for IOLS should be included. It almost certainly won't work to just have our students arrive on Friday night or Saturday morning. We tried moving some of the IOLS lecture bits to an organizational meeting and that seemed to work.

Spring SLT and ITOLS

We're going to join forces with soapstone ridge district for spring training. The SLT course will be at DATE charter school located at 1492 Kelton Drive, Stone Mountain 30083 on Saturday March 7th from 9-1 or so. It will be part of their district merit badge university.  ITOLS will be the next weekend (March 14) at Bert Adams.

We're going to use the new syllabus for SLT. It has good and bad features with respect to the older one.

Good features include:

1. Increased emphasis on the patrol method and letting the scouts run their troop.
2. Understanding that a scout "master" is a scout teacher and not an adult scout 'boss'.
3. Decreased emphasis on the paperwork and committee aspects of a troop.
4. 4.5-5 hours long course.
5. Directions on where to find help.

Bad features include:

1. Essentially no skills teaching. 
2. EDGE is gone.
3. Less time practicing as patrols - poorly coupled to ITOLS.

On average it's a big improvement. However, it means that skills - both the technical skills like knots and personal skills like the EDGE method - will have to be learned elsewhere.

This year we'll have an extra hour of course for those who are going to also attend ITOLS, to help them get organized and understand the basic skills. Since we teach ITOLS by simulating a troop with patrols and inter-patrol competitions, this will be a necessary bridge. There is a revised ITOLS (IOLS) curriculum coming out, and we'll have to see what that brings when it does.