Plummer gets patrol foxtrotting toward completed tickets

Nicole Plummer sharpens her flag-folding skills
as part of the troop guide exhibits at the start
of the course's Day 1 activities.

After the Fox Patrol's rendition of "What the Fox Say?" during the course, perhaps dance analogies aren't the best for our Foxes, but Nicole Plummer's completed ticket has her among the first of the Fox Patrol's members dancing toward receiving their Wood Badge beads. Nicole, who when she began her ticket was an assistant scoutmaster in Ft. Benning's Troop 27, sees her role as "teaching, coaching, and mentoring boys in Scout skills and leadership to become self-reliant, skilled, and compassionate young years. I provide a safe environment for boys to grow and explore their world."

In fulfilling that role, Nicole's ticket items support her vision of guiding as many boys as are interested on their path to become an Eagle Scout; helping them learn life skills and gain the knowledge they need to be successful in life, as well as grow in confidence and self-reliance; and turning them into self-reliant, skilled young men who know how to lead others with compassion and understanding:

• Goal 1: establish a new-Scout patrol and develop a First Class-in-12-months program for the troop
• Goal 2: establish a troop library and merit badge pamphlet exchange program
• Goal 3: lead a troop outing to the Andersonville National Civil War Historic Site and help Scouts learn more about the treatment of POWs in different wars
• Goal 4: enhance troop operations by updating and sharing with Scouts and their families a troop policies document, and develop a system for better troop communications between Scouts and with leaders
• Group 5: create a patrol book to be used by all patrols to help patrol leaders with leading their patrols and patrol members

"I think my most-challenging ticket was establishing a First Class-in-12-months program," Nicole noted. "Finding the right older Scouts to take charge of the program as troop guides can be a challenge, and balancing the needs of the individual Scouts within the program requires constant fine-tuning and adjusting of the program."

While at the Andersonville National Historic Site,

the troop conducted a flag-lowering ceremony

and held a crossover ceremony for a Webelos

at the park’s Star Fort.

She said the troop's Andersonville Historic Site campout was her most-rewarding ticket item.

"The boys learned quite a bit and enjoyed exploring the park, though the historic trail needs more time than the four hours the website suggested in order to fully take in and digest all it offers," she indicated. "For a service project, we repaired and built prisoner shelters and, after a short introduction and history lesson from the park ranger, the Scouts enthusiastically went to work and would have happily spent all day improving the prison site."

Nicole's success didn't come without the need to reconsider and revise one of her ticket items along the way. The revision resulted in part from a change in her troop role, which necessitated her stepping into the position of Troop 27's scoutmaster.

"Originally, one of my ticket items was to restart the troop’s knotmaster program. But after taking over as scoutmaster, I realized the troop was not ready to add this program to its schedule and found it more important to update the troop’s operating procedures and ensure everybody was fully aware of how the troop should be run," she said. "I think this was a very good decision and we can always add a knotmaster program at a later time. As a matter of fact, the PLC just decided to add a weekly instructor-run “skill of the week" revolving around basic Scout skills and knots."

Nicole joins five other course participants to date who plan to receive their beads at the council's Jan. 3 Wood Badge Reunion, including : the  Beaver Patrol's Joel Moore; Bobwhite Patrol's Toni Sue Bobyarchick; Bear Patrol's James Ormsby; Eagle Patrol's Jeff Ayers; and the Buffalo Patrol's Terry Booton.