Troop 53
Leadership Smart Books

Troop Junior Leader Guides

Troop 53 has developed a series of "Smart Books" designed to guide a boy leader through every phase of his job. They use the "Official" Scoutmaster Junior Leader Training Kit with video tape as a starting point and expand greatly on the individual job descriptions. We are proud to offer these resources free to the Scouting community.

We found over the years that many boy leaders were enthusiastic about their job, had gone through JLT, and had been "trained" but still didn't know how to do their job. They still had many questions about how they were supposed to do certain aspects of their job. The "Official" job description told them what to do but not how to do it. The Scoutmaster JLT course does a good job of teaching the soft skills of leadership and team building but not the nuts and bolts of how to do their job.

Several years ago, the leadership of Troop 53 had enough of the questions and insecurity and decided to do something about it (you know how it is when you get mad enough!). An ad hoc committee was set up to develop job description handbooks for each leadership position within the Troop. These Smart Books are not designed to be a substitute for a JLT course but to be a supplement to it. We cannot over-emphasize proper training! As a Scoutmaster or other adult leader you cannot just hand one of these books to your boy leaders, expect them to read it and instantly do a bang-up job!!

The original files for the Smart Books were in Microsoft Office format (i.e. Word, Excel, PowerPoint). Later, an HTML version was developed so that were not so platform and software specific. This version was available on a previous Troop 53 web site for a while. The current version, 3.0 if you will, is in PDF (Portable Document Format). There are a number of advantages to PDF:

• It is universally viewable and printable with free software
• What you see on the screen is what you get on paper
• It prints pretty much the same, no matter the platform
• One file, one book. Open the SPL book, print it, and give it to your SPL. Really, it is almost that simple.

At least one other Troop has decided that these books are well worth the "price". Check out Troop 216 from Glen Carbon, IL.