Eagledad

If the scouts weren't using XYZ, then the adults already took the 1st and 2nd adult run step in the program the scouts are using. And if the program is running smoothly, why would the adults force XYZ? You complain of catching flack for promoting stosh scouts over the Boy Scouts. But that isn't true, the flack is the result of belittling adults who use the BSA program. You once admitted coming around that different adults use different styles that fit best for their personality. But you still insult those same adults to defend stosh scouts. As I said, if you were really that confident in stosh scouts, then why the condescending tone? What do you care if we use SPLs? In the big picture, how a scout gets picked for a POR or the hierarchy of the leadership structure is trivial compared to the much bigger goal of scouts practicing the character habit of taking care of your boys. If the first year scout buys into the importance of taking care of your boys attitude, then the senior scouts are certainly showing it in all their actions. Everything else is just small potatoes. Barry

Why would the boys think the SPL is not necessary when their handbooks explain the SPLs responsibilties in the process. They wouldn't unless someone outside the process convinced them. Which shows why a patrol not using BSA guidelines is more adult run. And it is not fair for the boys who thought they were joining the Boy Scouts to get pulled into the adults vision of scouting. Boys typically leave these programs because they are frustrated from not being allowed to make their own independent decisions. Manipulating the scouts' decisions is a risk for all of us and we have done it to some degree, but giving the scouts a basic set of published guidelines to use minimizes that risk and leaves the adults to focus on growth of character, fitness and citizenship learned from using the oath and law. In other words, adults leave the process of the patrol method up to the scouts and focus more on encouraging "taking care of your boys". Barry

This straw man ignores the primary foundational call for a scouts duty of helping others by living the Scout Law; or as some say "take care of your boys". It doesn't matter what patrol process the patrol members use, independent decisions in the process is always challenging. If the scouts are given the freedom to make independent decisions and guided to use the scout oath and law in their decisions, the one constant that keeps them coming back is the the satisfaction from helping others (taking care of your boys). Not whether the SPL gets a vote or note.

Please help me here stosh, since the SPL and PL handbooks guide the scouts in a process for picking their PORs, the Scouts require "zero" help, guidance or intervention from the adults. Your style, while it also works, requires quite a bit of adult coaching because it is a process unfamiliar to the scouts. I'm familiar with the stosh scouts leaders selection process and I have no trouble with it, but the troops that I watched use it took some time helping the scouts understand it because it is a totally new idea. Once the scouts get used to the stosh scout process, neither system requires adults and the scouts do nicely all by themselves with both systems. Really stosh, just give them the books and leave them alone. You will see that they will do nicely by themselves. And you can drink more coffee with the ASMs. Barry

If one were confident in their advice, there would be no need for a condescending tone. Scouting is about developing character and integrity. If the Scoutmaster is accomplishing that goal, it doesn't matter how a scout becomes the leader because all the members in the process know and understand the expectations. If the scouts use the BSA manuals for their patrol method, they have all the guidelines needed for placing scouts into PORs without any adult guidance. Barry

That is an even more interesting, the IOLS syllabus is, or was, a two day course requiring several instructors. I can see the Council struggling with that. Insuring that each unit instructor is delivering the material properly would take some thought. While I still would consider the idea, I can certainly understand the reluctance from those who are responsible for training quality. Barry

Have you actually heard this being proposed at a district or council level. To be fair, district and council get a lot of blame for things they never heard. You present a good idea, but has that idea actually been seriously proposed. You know, IOLS instructors (I was one) have personal lives also. Training a different troop each weekend is not really good for family time either. I like the idea, just need to figure out how to give it a try. My experience is Council it open to new ideas, but rarely do new ideas go very far because they have unforeseen challenges of their own. Barry

We arrange CPR and Safety Afloat refresher training at our district adult leadership training weekends three times a year. Barry

So with that in mind, what I advised troops to do is sit down and identify (with your SPL) key problems with the leadership and management of the patrols. Then, pick the three worst problems. Only three because the troop is fairly new in this business of stepping past the bounds of the BSA material. So start slow and see what kind of impact you can have on the three problem areas. Be creative in your training, but the best rule of thumb for any kind of training is "Less is more" and "make it fun". A couple of other points I like to explain to troop leaders is that scouts should learn "Everything" by watching the other scouts. The perfect troop program is the one without any training because the scouts learn it all in the activities of the program. That should be the goal. Of course there are no perfect troops, so some training is required to grow toward that perfect troop. The other point is that generalized training has a low effect rate of growth because the participants aren't struggling or suffering enough to be motivated to learn. But spot training (training to fix specific problems) is very effective because there is high motivation to make their life easier. So if you can get your program moving toward learning from doing and observing and then only fixing the hot areas with spot training, you will find that the scouts will grow to take the initiative for fixing their problems with quick creative spot training. They will learn to measure their performance and apply any help where needed. Measuring and improving their performance will become second nature. It takes a little while to get there, but trust me that it works. We set a goal for the normal activities in the troop to be the main teachers. And where performance was sub par, we applied some training that usually only takes a few minutes. That is why our troop qot away from the grand two and three day JLT type of trainings and move to quick one training sessions intended for specific areas of need. Hope this wasn't confusing. Barry

Not so much as leadership training, but before the G2SS restriction, we took the patrols to play indoor laser tag. Participants are divided into groups and then compete to win by tagging each other out until the last man standing. Each competition last about five minutes, but it is a fast furious five minutes. I have never witness a faster or better team building activity. Patrols of Scouts who barely knew each other at the beginning were full functional patrols an hour later. To win each group must come together as a team almost instantly. The leaders pop out quickly because there is no time for shyness. To win, a team member ask for ideas and pulls together a plan in a matter of 30 seconds that every member agrees and follows. It was truly amazing to watch. I found this activity to be the best team building activity I have ever useen. I learned that finding activities which appeal to boys and are of a competitive nature build teams the fastest. The more intense the activity, the faster it pulls the team together. In a larger picture, "time" serves the same purpose at a troop level. Agendas or schedules with incentives to stay on schedule is another great tool to force groups of boys into functional teams. Barry

Good job. We have done something like this and found as did you that scouts love solving problems. The more you can get the problems scouting oriented, the better. I remember one of our adults had a couple older scout handbooks with the Semaphore Flag signal translation. He handed the books to the patrols with a couple of flags and gave them a couple messages. He separated them by a couple hundred yards and told them they couldn't have lunch until each Patrol learn the message of the other patrol. He didn't give any other instructions. The scouts had so much fun figuring it out and sending messages that they asked for another message instead of eating lunch. Many of us old timers remember that most of the skills competitions at Camporees where problem solving events that required using scouts skills to complete. For example: The patrol leader is told that they just walk on a 50 ft. diameter pond with someone struggling to swim in the middle. Each scout in the patrol has an eight foot rope; how will they save the struggling swimmer? They have one minute to save the swimmer. Of course the proper knots tied correctly gets a lot of points, but the patrol has to get the rope to the swimmer as well. There is only one way it can be done in one minute. In fact as I think about it, we injected a lot of our old scouting ideas into training sessions. Our scouts found that they loved Chariot Racing. Anyone remember Chariot Racing? Well done MattR. This goes back though that an inexperienced troop that has never done training before can't just go out and try these ideas. It takes the adults some time to understand what training does for scouts and how to inject creativity into the training once they do figure it out. The BSA course is a good place to start. Barry

Some of the responses remind me why we moved away from the BSA training course. I'm not complaining about the course because it helped get us started when we were kind of clueless about junior leadership training. But we found that scouts only needed the course once. After that, it was extremely boring. And we found that once our troop was maturing and had developed set routines, the course didn't really meet the needs of the scouts. So we developed two courses. One course was for scouts that had no leadership experience. It was an overnight course that gave the scouts basic skills of leading they may have not observed in their patrols. The other course was presented after each election. It is basically a couple hours of guiding scouts of their new responsibilities. As for the leadership and management skills the scouts uses, we found that the scouts had at least the raw basics already from observing their predecessors. If the scouts were struggling in specific areas, the SPL would set up quick courses for that specific to the need. A scout theoretically never has to repeat a training course until they are instructing or directing it. Barry

Back in the day when Brownsea was the course, many of scouters referred to it as JLT. So yes, some folks might think of it as JLT. Brownsea was a really good course. Barry

Yep, this is a huge problem with units when they don't have the proper examples to guide them. It can also be a problem when the Districts and Counsels set bad examples of policies and activities. Our troop does adult and scout training different than an another troop, much less the District and Council. I learned quickly as a volunteer for District and Council that I couldn't go around teaching our specific Troop courses as the general District or Council courses because most units are not like ours in the details, especially the newer units with adults who don't have a lot of experience. BSA published courses are the best starting places for troops looking to start youth leadership training. Then they can modify the syllabus or even start their own style of training once they understand the objectives and specific requirements for their program. Barry

In the last year, I bought about $100 worth of popcorn from the Boy Scouts and $100 of cookies from the Girl Scouts. I give the popcorn back to the scouts so they could double their sales, although this year I heard they donated it to the Military Service Men and Women. Pretty cool really. I give away just about all our cookies to our adult kids. OK, my wife hides one box of Thin Mints in the freezer. I admit that I wouldn't be as likely to spend as much money on the Girl Scouts if the little girls weren't so darn cute. Kind of the same reason Cubs can sell a lot more Popcorn in person than the Boy Scouts. Same goes with Scouting for food, the Cubs are just better. We have not seen Campfire around here in a while, are they still selling candy? That candy is sooooo good, we give it tour kids of course, but one box is always sacrificed to the freezer god. By the way, unless things have changed, the BSA units got 40% profit while the Girl Scout units got somewhere around 10%. Barry

That is a good answer and one I would take to the SM for a curious response. I would also be curious what has motivated that suggestion. Is there frustration or just an idea of his own. A lot times the young scout is just sounding off what the older scouts are saying. This will be something interesting for you to ponder. Barry

Before you ask how to make it happen, ask the scout what he means by boy led. You would be surprised at what boys think boy led means. Barry

The scout is not in the middle of the circle, he is an equal part of the circle. Actually a square since typically it's just the four of them. Barry

THIS IS WHY THE BSA SHOULD TAKE TIGERS OUT OF THE CUB PROGRAM! Oh wait! Wrong discussion. Sorry Barry

We had a few surprises, mostly from scouts who transferred from other troops that weren't yet familiar with the policy differences. We were doing a Star BOR for one scout who just joined our troop. It turned out that he had not yet met his leadership requirement. I can't remember how it got past the SM Conference, but we couldn't let the scout continue, so we talked a lot of how to present the situation to the scout so that it was a negative experience. Turns out he kind of saw it coming, but was too shy to say anything. All was well. Then we had a few challenges with some mentally challenged scouts. We learned to have the parents close by so we could refer to them if needed. Barry

First, lets remember the purpose of the BOR. It is a quality check on the Scoutmasters program, not the scout. If the scout appears to be unprepared, the SM should be held accountable. A good scoutmaster wants to hear the results to learn of areas that may need attention. I certainly did. Our troop has been using the guide Torchwood suggested for over 25 years. I works very well because the questions are pretty good for learning if the SM is in fact doing a good job. It also makes it easy for new board members to ask the right questions and eventually get everyone settled and comfortable enough to relax. That is when a member might ask non canned question that is more personal to the scout, like asking a question that gets the scout talking about his family or school experiences. And really folks, it's not about the questions being asked, it's how the questions are being asked. The board can take on the image of strange adults judging the scouts performance or they can be a group of adults wanting to get to know the scout better through his scouting experience using the exact same questions. Our board looks very much like stosh describes his ideal board. We use a lot of canned questions because they help the board and scouts get comfortable quickly. Adults who don't have a lot of experience and don't have a few canned questions tend to either not ask any questions, or ask inappropriate questions. Everyone of course wants the BOR experience for the Scout to be positive. But we forget that the adults should want the same experience. Nothing is more rewarding than getting to know a scout better. Our board tries to be warm, encouraging and enthusiastically curious about the scout's experiences in the troop. You know the board is doing well when the adults come out excited from the experience. That is why I like parents being part of the board. We found that our Patrol Leaders and SPL like to introduce the scouts to the board. That wasn't an adult idea, it came from the scouts. Probably an Eagle started that from his EBOR, I don't know. But the scouts sure enjoy it and I like anything that breaks the ice for the BOR candidate. Our troop has two or three BOR leaders that head the BORs. We like that because typically one of them is with troop where ever it is and can call a BOR board together anytime a scout request. The BOR leader has the canned questions and looks for two other members. They coach the board a little before the scout shows up. It works for our troop and the scouts like it. One final note, I have always felt that if the troop truly wants to learn about how well the program is doing, the board should also talk to the parents. Oh I know that is logistically challenging, but many boys aren't going to be completely open to a bunch of strange adults. The parents on the other hand might. And, it is an opportunity for the parents to say what is good about the troop. We have never tried it, but I have always wanted to try it. Barry

Training as well. 21Century, IOLS and most other courses were a result of the female leader policy change. But it had little to do with their gender, bringing females into the program more than doubled the membership without a youth scouting experience and very limited outdoors experience. The training had to change to fit the needs of the demographic membership coming into the program. Remember the tradition of holding Cubs up-side-down to pin their Bobcat badge on their shirt? That was one of the early casualties of the softer gentler scout program. I remember the female leaders on the forum in the mid 90s were passionate about that ceremony going away. G2SS calls it hazing, which was ridiculous. Barry

It may have changed now, but the reason policies with MB counselors grew more strict is because the majority of abuse complaints were from the counselor/scout meetings. Barry

This is the one policy our district does right. We train all MB Counselors in our district before the college. Makes it easy to keep the Counselor list updated. Barry

As was said, the organization has been heavily influenced for a long time by a political activism organization that is pro female and anti male. The policy is not in writing nor discussed much, but is generally understood. And originally it wasn't really a fear of abuse, but more of over emphasis of influential female role modeling for the girls that has gone out of control. I learned this through a friend who was the equivalent of our Council Executive. On the plus side (at least for some of us), the Girl Scouts organization will never agree to merge with the BSA or flex it's activism muscle at the BSA so long as the BSA stays away from adding girl members. Does anybody recall the Girls Scouts piling on the BSA during the gay controversy? Not much. To be fair, my personal experience is the Girl Scouts are accepting of limited male volunteerism at district and council level. They seem to frown on it more at the Troop level. It's a bit ironic that the BSA program lost some of it's outdoor influence by adding female Troop leaders, but the Girl Scouts are missing out on adding outdoor influence by limiting the male involvement. Crazy world. Barry