The Boy Scouts of America has a vision to be the foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training in the country. To support that vision, a Youth Leadership Training Continuum has been developed. It currently consists or three courses that work together to develop leadership in scouts.

The material in these courses is taken from the very best leadership courses available in many settings, even corporate executive training.

The courses are:

• TLT - Troop Leadership Training should be conducted by every boy scout troop with each change in troop leadership. This three-hour course is led by the SPL and Scoutmaster to train every youth leader. The three main sections focus on troop organization, methods of leading and teaching, and specific leadership position responsibilities.
• NYLT - National Youth Leadership Training is a week-long camp offered by each council to further build on the concepts introduced in TLT by simulating a month in the life of a troop. Participants learn about team development, leadership skills toolbox, and application of skills back in their home troop.
• NAYLE - National Advanced Youth Leadership Experience provides practical application of NYLT skills in a wilderness setting at Philmont. It includes COPE, GPS, WFA, LNT - got that? :-)

If you've used the 'old' JLT troop training program that was a complete course, the new TLT is just a couple page outline with very little direction. It is up to the SPL and Scoutmaster to make up and present the training they feel is important. TLT is specifically intended to quickly tell new youth leaders what they need to do and its success relies on the SPL having NYLT experience. If you have an opportunity to acquire an old JLT program, I recommend you get it so you can have more ideas available.
Since our troop does TLT twice a year and have been doing it forever, it goes smoothly and gets the new leaders ready for their jobs.

The NYLT course in our council is great according to the 6 scouts that have attended from our troop - 2 each summer. The troop pays for their camp in exchange for their commitment to use their new skills to guide the troop. The expanded understanding of EDGE, EAR, SMART, SSC, and Be-Know-Do is helping to bring the troop to a higher plateau of overall skills and leadership.

I don't have experience with NAYLE, but there is a web site with more info.

Hey, don't worry about all those TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) I tossed around. I'll be blogging about them over the next few days.

Scout On
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