Eagledad

We backpack in most of our gear every campout and do a serious backpack weekend two or three times a year, so we find the scouts don't really need tune-up hikes other than for getting use to a new crew. The adults on the other hand tend to need the hike to get waken up to the physical and mental stress of a longer distance hike has on their older bodies. It reminds them to what a week on the trail will feel like. They tend to get a lot more serious about their equipment after tune-up hikes. I used the hikes to guide the adults as to how boy run works so that they don't try to take over the crew. I don't know why adults feel they must have majority control of the crews. It's never a problem on the patrol hikes, but high adventure crews really struggle with it. Strangely, Boundary Waters is the worst problem with new adults because they just don't see how canoeing all day can be all the strenuous. What's a rod anyway? I have lots of adult stories. Barry

I think you stated it well Brew, our troop while I was SM typically had about 65% partiicipation during most activities because of sports and band. But we had a reputation for accepting other outside activities and were a popular troop as a result. I remember a 100% attendence during January and summer when there were no sports. It was normal for band and football players to show up to campouts on saturday mornings. After their season was over, they were full time scouts again. It worked well for us. Barry

We have few LDS units in our district and you just described exactly their situation. Also frustrating is that the District can't help the adult membership problem much because the church controls that function. I did get to train their SMs and enjoyed that, but they always seem to feel the stress of managing a program that few adults seem to want. Barry

Actually I have seen Boards deny Eagles for not demonstrating scout spirit. But National rarely supports that reasoning. You can make a personal statement though. Barry

We had a pack in our district that decided to quit recruiting Tigers as an attempt to fix their burned out leader problem and they had the same number of scouts 5 years later without a Tiger program. Nationally there is some concern that the new membership requirements will hurt recruitment. If that turns out to be the case, there is little you can do about. Likely you will get a good crop of Wolves next year. Barry

I lived through a lot of presidental terms and I'm pretty up to speed to what's really going on in Washington now. My biggest concern for our countrie's future is that the next generation will believe that Obama's behavior is presidental. I've worked for the government for many years and I've never read such a immature letter like the one Obama sent me yesterday. No way would a responsible media ever let any president ever get away with it. I am really concerned for the country my kids are being stuck with. Barry

The youth can seek another unit until National takes him off the row. I've never seen it get that far because either another unit is willing to take the kid or his reputation is bad enough that he can't find another unit. I have seen this scenario lay out more often with adult leaders than scouts. Barry

Yes, I like that. Nothing worse that seeing a problem and doing nothing. Some kinid of change will give a new perspetive. And it might be fun for the boys as well. Barry

Brewman, I'm am not in the least critical of your program and I don't think I've said anything of the sort. We've all been where your are at, so to be critical would be hypocritcal. I spent a lot of years working and guiding other adults with programs and I guess I'm just in my asking rhetorical questions mode to help direct thoughts in a certain direction. I learned it working with a 1000 scouts. Maybe it's a habit I need to change. I have no doubt you are doing the best you can and we are very thankful. As to the question, I have found that more often than not, adults tend get lost in the chaos when they don't know where they are going. All I was trying to do was maybe help you find a little light in the darkness. Barry

Looking at it from this point in time, what life lesson do you think the boys will take from this experience? What life lesson would you like for them to take from this experience? Barry

Great question Paul, the aim of character is one of my favorite discussions. Ignoring of course adult role modeling being a critical part of the aim (can't have a half uniformed adult asking a scout why isn't in full uniform), character development is getting the scouts to evaluate their "decisions" with the traits of the law and oath. Scouts make hundreds of decisions during scout activities, so we adults have a lot of opportunities. And most of the time adults don't have to say very much because the answers are obvious. Is a scout wearing flip flops in camp when the policy is no opened toed shoes? What about cussing? Even talking while someone else has the floor is obvious in it's right or wrong. A simple question of which law is being challenged is all a person needs to ask then move on without waiting for the answer. What I learned working with many hundreds of youth is getting them to develop habits of making right decisions on small stuff has a direct relationship on making right decisions on the hard stuff. Something as simple as brushing ones teeth every morning because mom ask you to. I tell the scouts often that developing good decision habits take practice, but they start with the smallest decisions. The uniform policy is easy in our troop because we use direction from the Scout Handbook. That way their is no confusion from one scout's opinion to the next as well as no confusion with adult opinions. So the choice of an adult or scout making a right or wrong decision is obvious and starts at the beginning while getting dressed. the key to the Aim of Character development is getting the scout to challenge himself to change. Motivate him to want to make right decisions. Get him in the practice of asking himself if he made the right choices. As I said, scouts make hundreds of choices a day in the scouting activities, so they have a lot of opportunities to practice. But without a doubt "leadership responsibility" pulls on charter decision making the most. We humans tend to make our worst decisions under stress and nothing in the scout program is more stressful than the true responsibility of leading others. Especially servant leadership. Servant leadership forces us to choose between them or me. Are the choices I am making to benefit me, or those for whom I am responsible? The oath and law are very clearly servant actions, so next to the Bible, I can think of no better guides for character development. The key for adults is to point out wrong decisions, not bad decision makers. Don't react emotionally or be lecturas. Don't yell, be calm, pointed and nonjudgemental or emotional. If you cant do that, either ask another adult to handle it or wait until your anger passes and you can talk in a quiet tone. Sorry this is long, the editor is a challenge. Barry

Interesting discussion. Our scouts are responsible for taking care of paper work and getting it to council. They are responsible telling the SM the date they set their BOR. We did not realize how challeging that was until we had a 16 year old transfer who only needed 6 badges to finish. He showed up one meeting with his dad to ask why the scouts were responsible for paperwork and taking care of BOR instead of the adults like his previous troop. No one had ever asked that before, so I was caught off guard. But I simply said we expect our Eagles to act like adults. That was a satisfactory answer for dad, so we help the scout get started and he did fine. I'm not sure if that was the reason, but the scout told us later that he was glad he got the Eagle in our troop instead of his previous one. That scout was a local hero a year later when revived an infant found at the bottom of a pool. My thoughts on Eagle coaches is district should train unit leaders the process the district and council expects. The biggest problems I've seen with eagle applications in our district is the confusion (ignorance) of unit leaders with district and council Eagle committees. Its ok to point the scouts in a direction and wait for questions, but when the coach becomes a crutch, they went to far. Barry

SMs actually have full control of all the processes in the program, including the MB program. A big problem for troops is councils and districts short cut the process to make it easier to run large groups of scouts through the system. They don't require a scout to ask the SM for a blue card, call a counselor to set up meetings and get personal information that is required for the blue card. They shorten the process so that a scout just shows up for class and will likely walk out with most requirements completed without even opening the book. Like scouts learning from older scout role models, unit leaders learn habits (good and BAD) from district and council activities modeled in front of them. If unit leaders don't read the manuals (90% don't), they never know they are doing it wrong. Units can modify the process for summer camps and MB Fairs to make the scouts follow the BSA guidelines. The adults can and should audit the counselors as scouts progress with the badges. Educate your scouts why you require them to use the proper procedures and you will find them doing the quality control for you. Our scouts got to where they didnt waste their time at our district MB fairs because the counseling was so bad. You can change the system, our troop did. First start by doing your own counselor training. Real training that teaches the BSA published guidelines for the scouts, unit adult leaders, and counselors. Then figure out how to use those guidelines even when they aren't required like summer camps. The thing is there aren't really any bad guys here, it's just bad habits that were developed slowly over time. Long story short, our troop eventually was recognized for our quality program and was asked to do MB Counselor training for the whole district. District eventually took over the training using our syllabus. That happened over several years, but it started by one troop deciding to buck the system and follow BSA policies and guidelines. You see, scouts and adults want to do things right, they just need to know what right is. Brett, this may be a good place for you to step in and make a difference. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

Wait a minute DWise, you called me a liar for the same mistake. Oh well, I guess there is no morality against hypocricy for atheist.

Sounds good, while a vision is typically a ultimate unreachable goal, you have a good grasp of your situation. We have all been where you are at and the only other advise I can add that we learned through our humilty is for the adults to learn from the performance and not be afraid to change. Typically change is usually going to a more simple (less complicated) direction. I like to tell leaders of new troops that we tried 6 different First Year Scout program models before we found one that fit (worked) in our boy run model. I look forward to hearing how your program progresses, please keep us informed so we can learn along with you. Barry

Good for you guys, a step in any direction is step in learning. May I say though, if you and the SM don't have a plan, idea, vision, anything to hold the program in a fixed direction of growth, you will end up exactly the same way you have been going. Its easy for many of us to say let the boys decide, but the reality is every successful boy run program has some kind of process from the adults that keeps the program pointed to a vision. There are as many processes as their are units because to some degree, processes are a function of the troop personalities. Does your adults have a vision that helps them focus their efforts? What do you want your scouts to take with them when they leave the troop? Barry

There is a myth a lot of adults hold to that Boy Scouts is the boys program; it is not. Boy Scouts is an adult program designed to develop boys into men who make ethical decisions. What are the expectations of your adults for your troop? That being said, I know how hard it is to change a culture, but the adults have to decide if they are satisfied with the status quo. My son and his wife are both high school teachers in to different high risk schools, but with basically the same student demographic. Ninety Seven percent of last years graduating class of one school went on to college. The other school had far less than 50 percent. When I asked him what was different between the two schools, he said "expectation". Your troop can do better if the adults want it. Barry

Thoughts! I can't really add more than what's already been said; but Scouts, like adults, have to set priorities and make choices. If our troop consistantly suffered the losses on campouts that you describe, we would be asking ourselves what we are doing wrong. We also don't encourage ad hoc patrols. Barry

Why can't your SPL do both BD, a couple of my better SPLs were also in ROTC.

Even the cat?

Yes, I agree on the written communication issue. Most here will agree that I struggle with my application of words. So much so that I've been called a lier and intentionally using bad grammer to make a point between the lines. LOL I can't seem to make a point directly, much less between the lines. Another example is your whole 4th paragraph describes me word for word "I guess I'm a bit more push the envelop type person....", and I question why you don't see that. Oh well, we move on. Something I've come to understand through many rather humbling experiences is that adults set their program style, not the program structure. It is said that SMs determine the size of their troop by their personalities, not by what they ideally desire. Don't you think a successful truly boy run program would be desired by most boys and the program would naturally grow? Then how could one assume a troop of 50 scouts is less boy run? Using a Kuduism: 300 ft is 300 ft no matter the size of the troop. I believe that in most cases a SM will have about the same level of success with any program structure because their vision and personality are the main drivers of a program performance, not the structure. Certainly a SM with a direct coaching style is going to drive a different style program, but not nessessarily better or worse. If the SPL doesn't fit well in the SM's plan, then it behooves the SM to not use one. But we shouldn't assume all SMs use the SPL the same way. In its simplicity, scouts' responsiblities along with all the Methods are only tools for the Scoutmaster to use for the greater vision. Since we each have different visions and personalities, we each use our tools differently. I like this forum because of it's unlimited resources for ideas to help make our job easier. All of us have our opinions as to why some ideas and experiences are better than others. But I'm not so sure any suggestion is bad. I'm going way to long. Sorry folks. Barry

When you start inferring that other BSA program styles are the basic causes of problems, you are going to get resistance, especially when the examples are not typical of the BSA scouting program. Lets use your suggestion from the other thread to assume other posters here don't have enough experience to know different. Instead of suggesting that scouts don' t need training, a better discussion would be how to get scouts prepared enough to have a positive experience without "over training" them. That is actually a pretty difficult task for the new SM of a new troop. I'm confident that you and I have two different styles to achieving that gaol, but I'm also confident our two different styles are equally successful. Actually I think we are probably very much the same, but we let the clutter get in the way. As you said, lets everyone here give an example of their successful experience and go from there. Barry

I agree Personal Growth isn't a written requirement, but neither is weekly meetings. However, Citizen, Character, and Fitness are general aims that should be applied to all scouting activities. And your point about a clueless group is right on as well, that is why I suggest doing some research. The difference between weekly classes and working independently on the MB is the difference of using the Advancement Method as the end goal instead of the 3 Aims. That is the big picture and it is a hard one to grasp all at once.

I understand what you are saying about training, but one adult's training is another adult's coaching. Can you imagine the chaos a new SM with a brand new troop is going to deal with if all he said on their first campout was just "Take Care of Your Boys"? You kind left out the "and then" part. Train them, Trust them, Let them go. Pretty simple really. As for all that other stuff you said to justify your every scout having a job comment: What Troop Are You Talking About? Those are visions of your fears, not tyical real life situations. Quit making stuff up. I know you have been trained, but it wouldn't hurt for even the smartest SM in the room to review PL, SPL or SM Handbook once in a while. Barry

Cnew2, if you are thinking about approaching the troop about this, do a little research and have facts and a plan ready to present. I agree with Brewmeister, it's hard to switch horse in mid stream. LOL You need to sell on the advantages of what Scouter99 calls the "personal growth" part of the process. Identify the advantages of growth form the process. You also can learn how other troops run a successful MB program without it being part of the weekly meeting. Build a couple of simple plans that ween the troop away from weekly meetings and into a program where the scouts have most of the control of how they perform in the process. I will say that from our experience, it only took only three MBs for the scouts to learn the habits of the process. Our troop goes something like this: 1. Get the MB Counselor list, 2. Pick a MB, find a partner to do it with and get a MB Card, 3. Call the Counselor to set up a date to meet and get counselor personal information to fill out the MB Card. 4. Get SM signature on MB card. After that, it's none of the troops business what the scout does until he completes all the requirements. Now of course there are different ways doing this, we had scouts call and ask the counselor to meet 30 minutes before a troop meeting, especially when the scout was alone. Sometimes it is best to work as a group, like the model rockets MB. But once everyone understand the premise of intent of the process, the counselor and scout can work out the process to completing the badge and getting them most growth at the same time. Good luck. Barry