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Our stake had a teacher training organized by our Stake Primary Presidency and Stake President (pretty sure it was organized by that organization because the Stake Primary President spoke first and her team provided refreshments.) The R.S., Y.W., and Primary leadership was invited (with special emphasis on including the Activity Day leaders and Choristers). I have been the defacto Girls Activity Day leader or co-leader in my branch for about 9 months now, and finally officially got called to the post yesterday.
Our Stake President spent 45 minutes speaking – but he was mostly a good speaker.
Key Points:- Repentance is a process of change – changing hearts, minds, and actions overtime to be better and to do better.
- He invited us to look to our homes first to find areas to be better and do better and then look to our calling.
- In each of our callings, we need to meet them where they are at and connect with them.
After his remarks, we broke into groups organized by auxiliary and then by calling (loosely – We had Primary Presidency members in the chorister and Activity Day groups). We even had a male Activity Day leader there in our predominantly female group.
I wanted to share this because I found it inspiring (in fact, it was more inspiring then church the following day).
I like that focus a lot. I have said for a long time that we don’t “honor” all parents much in how we work with youth – especially inactive parents.
Amy, DW and I were Bear den cub scout leaders and are now activity days leaders for the boys. We basically are doing the same boy/cub scouts things but without merit badges or advancements. I am really curious what ideas might have been discussed to “We need to include the parents in our processes. While he did not say this, I think that he meant connecting with them and treating them as stakeholders to carry on dialogs”.
I wonder if that means to ask the parents what type of goals the boys may have set and how that we can help the boys to implement and achieve those goals. At our first meeting, we did ask the boys for ideas for future meetings and then we categorized those ideas by the four different goal categories. We send out monthly emails to the parents with the schedule (we only meet every other week). We also have a facebook page that we could use to ask for input from the parents.
Please share anything that is working well for you in your area.
He left it pretty wide-open overall. He did mention that having conversations with the parents (in general) what their child(ren) are working on, any concerns/suggestions the parents have (my impression was gentle solicitation of information from parents in an active format) – his focus was suggesting that the dialog happens so that each leader is aware of what is important for the leader to know from the perspective of the parent(s)). I think that I will request by email to set up 5-10 minute appointment chats with a parental unit from each of the families informally after an activity each time going forward to get parent feedback. I am purposefully planning not to ask about specific goals, because if I need to know those goals, the girls can tell me.
I got authorization to plan to take the girls to a Farmer’s Market come spring as one of our activities. I am thinking that I will make an active effort to request that each girl bring one of their parents as a shared event – Mother/Daughter or Father/Daughter date like. I am hopeful that I will be able to find an activity in our schedule that I can request that each girl bring the other parent (all the girls have 2 parents in their homes).
For my girls, I am getting the sense that most of the parents are more hands-off (which is fine). They want to be able to drop their girls off for good experiences. We got our list of activities for the year mostly sorted out, and are coordinating with the other programs in areas of activity overlap. In addition, my girls are willing to co-teach specific topics that were listed in our activities, so I am working on implementing that.
Technically, my daughter is the first who insisted on co-teaching one of our nights, so I am fielding off arguments with her regarding what we can have the girls do in terms of on-site activities and what we are going to present. However, I have completed dialogs with the other girls on specific activities they want to co-teach, and am setting up mechanisms for working with them to build an environment that they can succeed in teaching in.
Thank you! I appreciate the clarification!
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