Eagledad

>>Now, there are compassionate reasons for both, eh?

>>You may be too far down this trail for this to be a practical suggestion, but maybe it goes in the Lessons Learned file.

We asked an adult to leave almost exactly the way Beaverha suggested. Our CO didn't care to participate, but they supported what ever we decided on the matter. I highly recommend a trusted District representative be there with you. In our case we had a good UC, but that is rare. Check you District Unit Commish if you don't have a good UC. These are tough decisions for volunteers because we dont like conflict. But as Beaverha implied, this is what you need to do so that your program gets back to normal and so that you dont loose a good SM. barry

We do a pancake breakfast fishing morning. The folks who aren't that interested in fishing enjoy pancakes, bacon, juice and coffee. If you need help there, get a few adults from a nearby troop to help do the cooking. Every year we watch boys fish for their first. Even better, we get to watch boys fish for their first time with their parents. Let me know if you need a few bucks donated. Barry

>>I'm very much in favor of adults limiting themselves to the same budget guidelines and same equipment constraints as the rest of the troop. That doesn't mean that the adults can't eat well, though.

Our troop request the patrols do at least two patrol campouts a year. They could do more if they wanted. I think the backpacking theme is really cool. Barry

Sadly Eamonn, we arent allowed to express our feelings anymore on these things for fear of being judged politically out of step. I remember when I was 16 and listening to rock and roll on the radio in my car. Between songs, the DJ came on a poured out soul from finding out about the boy who had been stabbed to death in a local Oklahoma City High School. Most folks were hurt or saddened by the event. It wasnt a common event and the city was in shock. Yes, it did happen at a basically black school, but it still was a shock that nobody could explain. Believe it or not, I havent been keeping track of the Trayvon Martin tragedy. Ive been pretty busy and stayed away from the news. Oh I hear few tidbits here and there because news is in everything, even the scouting forum. But the tidbits are more about how a couple is in fear of their life from some famous black person (I dont remember who) tweeting to get revenge at their address or how both the democrats and republicans are politizing the news to their advantage. Ive never tweeted in my life, so I dont really understand that news and as far a demos and repubs in D.C., Im taking a break from that news. I havent even read your thread until this morning and the first thing I read is Lisabobs account of the tragedy. I havent heard much, but I didnt hear it her way, so my first response is Of course she sees it that way, she is a liberal. I admit that I was ashamed of myself once I thought that and regretted even getting into the thread. My apologies Lisabob. As bad as I feel about the tragedy, Im angrier at my response. I sure I didnt need to start my day that way.. I was having a discussion with my mom last night and we somehow got on to how politics has so permeated our culture that nobody is safe to think out loud anymore because somebody will be offended, even if what we said was just grieving out loud. Politics has become such a part of our culture that even third graders are taught in school about different acceptable lifestyles. Our kids have become pawns for long term poltical goals. I confessed to mom that my grandkids will never know the innocence of growing up that I was fortunate to experience. My mother didnt know how to respond. So I wonder, can we not have a discussion of a tragedy without somehow taking sides like the stabbing that shook Oklahoma City when I was 16? You know I dont think we can. I read your first post on this subject Eamonn and I see your anguish. I think we all agree, I think. Sadly, the general mood of the county doesnt allow us to express ourselves right now. The ambitious political agendas have polluted our souls and there isnt enough room in us to mourn. I've had enough of this subject. Barry

>>So if we use the statistics for flyin' airplanes, it's us old folks we should be worried about, eh? The 16 year olds do fine.

Oh boy, the memories of having been there and done that. The situation you have is that you no longer have the troop that you had before the new scouts arrived. You have a whole new program and you need to look at it that way. You have six months to get your new guys up to speed. Your patrols cant handle all the new scouts because that demands all the patrols time. Your older scouts, I know they aren't much older, but they will burn out fast. Here is what we did the second time this happened, learning from the first time failure. We divided up the new scouts into three small patrols and attached two troop guides to them. We wanted two just in case one got sick or something. We then assigned another scout to be the ASPL in charge of working with the Troop Guides. His jobs were to work with the SM in developing training and activities schedule for the troop guides. And to fill in as a troop guide if needed. Turned out to be a great job actually. OK, got all that so far? THEN we assigned a Patrol to each NS Patrol to be the big brother patrol for the new scouts. In this way, we could still have each existing patrol camp away from the other existing patrols, but still have the a new scout patrol camp next to them to watch and learn from their big brother patrol members. Does that make sense. The NS Patrol stood in formation next to their Big Brother patrol at meetings, and stayed near them with all the activities so that they had older scout mentors to learn from, but it still gave the older scouts enough room to breath. Now, as you can see, everything about this approach is trying to keep the boy run concept working while still managing the huge influx of green horns. HOWEVER, this is still a lot of work for the adults. They need to watch and take up slack where the other scouts are burning out. New scouts are the most undisciplined boys in scouting. They are like herding cats and young boys without the experience of being parents need some interference. I say this with caution because the adults need to stand back as much as possible. But your situation risk loosing new scouts from the lack of fun and older scouts from the burnout. We used the big brother and NS Patrol method for six months, them we merged the new scouts into the patrols. It takes about six months for new scouts to learn the program. If you still have the scout after six months, you will have them for a few years. Dont keep them in new scout patrols longer than six months. You and your PLC might need to consider rebuilding the patrols to mix everyone evenly. Normally I dont like rebuilding patrols, but this is the one instance I think it acceptable. ALSO, work with the new parents. Be up front with the challenges and ask them to help you where ever you can. If they understand the chaellenges, then they will be more understanding of the chaos they see. The adults must appear that they have a plan. The PLC needs to see the adults working as a team with the PLC to help this work. Trust me, after a couple meeting with the new scouts, they will be open to team work with adults. But, keep the scouts incharge. Don't let the adults walk over them because the scouts will let it happen. Does this help? Does it make sense? It did work for us when our troop of 20 scouts received 28 new scouts. You must have a good program to draw that kind of new class. Get past summer camp and its down hill from there. Barry

This is going to be a difficult change for you and its normal for most new adult troop leaders. The parent side of us hates the watching one in the group being left behind. As we raise our kids, we parents take up the slack of our kids weaknesses so that we dont suffer our childrens struggles. We just hate to see our kids hurt. If you really want to understand what Im talking about, consider that the one scout you are talking about is your son. What would you be inclined to do with the rest of the group so that your son isnt left outside the group? Boys learning from their experiences is the foundation of scouting. It is what make scouting so powerful, if the adults are willing. As I like to say, scouting is real life in a boys size. The troop is one of the few places left in our society today where our sons can learn from hard lessons and have fun in the experience. Real life isnt going to be so kind. But you will have to be willing to let them struggle. Easier said than done. LOL What we know in our heart but are afraid to confront is that struggle, stress and failure are where we humans learn the most and the fastest. Success strangely may feel good, but it doesnt force us to change our habits or behavior like failure, stress or struggles. The adventure of the outdoors and the the experience of leadership provide the average boy with the opportunites of growth. In your situation, the scout left behind either will be intimidated by the group leaving him behind and feel motivated to catch up, or he might be confident himself that he has plenty of time to catch up. Either of those attitudes are healthy. Where the mentor (you) come in is guiding the scout when he is confused and not sure how to handle his struggles, if he has one. You guide him to look at small steps that lead him toward bigger rewards. You want to guide him to learn habits of maturity. That is the growth you are looking for. To be a good scout leader, you need to learn how to not take each scouts failures personally. Dont get upset with Their failures, just get ready to mentor them if they come to you. This is what we do. If we do it well, then our scouts will grow to be mature moral decision makers who will lead good lives as husbands, fathers and community leaders. They will learn that serving others willingly is their greatest reward. They will learn how to confront hard work successfully and how to grow from failures. However, for you to be a good scout leader, you will have to humble yourself that you need to learn more and faster than the scouts just to keep up with them. Your adventure is just beginin. By the way, this is why I started encouraging Webelos Den leaders to award their scouts their activities pins at each Den Meeting. Then I would recognize them at the Pack Meetings in front of everyone by presenting them their cards. The boys get used to individual instant recognition and the Pack still gets to see their accomplishments at the Pack meetings. Worked very well. Barry

I brought a box of Tootsie Pops suckers on each campout and sat it in the assembly area. The SPL explained to the scouts that they could have as many as they wanted so long as they only took one at a time and a wrapper was never found on the ground. The box only stayed out about 30 minutes the first few campouts. Barry

We do what Boomer Scout suggest, payment on time and participation. And usually, someone has to bail for some reason or another. Hasn't failed yet, but I'm sure we will be in your shoes one day. Barry

>>You are on the right track wanting to interact more with the other leaders in the pack. This sounds obvious, but it actually is quite hard for us to do:

>>Do I see BSA eventually offering the Eagle Scout to a co-ed program, or fully integrating regardless of gender? I do. Eventually.

Ignore The man behind the curtain Scoutfish, "Retest" is one of scouting's silly politically correct terms to scare adults away from a learning a Scout's progress in the program. I wonder if we could call it helicopter leading. Anyway, right over left, left over right, is just a fast visual aid. Same goes for knots using the rabbit running around the tree. Study the mechanics of the knot and learn what it should look like, that way you don't care how the scout gets there. And remember it's just as important the scouts know the purpose of each knot. Personally I always start there. Barry

>>But it looks like that's OK with AHG; its site makes it fairly clear that it was started for parents. As far as I'm concerned, that's not Scouting.

My gosh, does anyone here know how to relate to scouts? From Badon Powellspeaking of Scoutmasters He must have the boy spirit in him; and must be able to place himself on a right plane with his boys as a first step."" I once had an SPL who wanted a few scouts to act better during the Troop openings, so he rewarded good behavior with candy. You think Im going to throw water on my SPLs proactive effort because instant gratification rarely works in developing the character trait of respect and patience. I knew we would have discussions in the future as he tried other ideas, but I was very proud of the SPL's initiative as am I of the SPL in this discussion. The SM in this discussion is encouraging mediocrity and I think we have had enough of that kind of encouragement in todays world. >>Come on guys... we're really going to get hung up on an SPL calling his peers "guys"... sheesh!

Most Scoutmasters think of the SM Conference as one of the highest responsibilities of their Scoutmastering. The reason is the conference for most of us expresses the foundation of our purpose. We may build the program around our vision, but the SM Conference is the one time we verbally expose ourselves to the higher purpose we want all the scouts to reach. I say all that to point out that it takes a Scoutmaster a while to develop his or her own personal SM Conference style. As you shape your program around your vision for the scouts, you will develop a better understanding of what you really want to accomplish with your Scoutmaster Conferences. My vision for scouts was to develop servant leaders who use the Oath and Law to guide all their decisions. So I use the ranks as stepping stones toward that goal. The ranks up to First Class was getting the scouts in habits of setting goals, setting timelines to those goals and learning how to reach those goals in their timelines. Learning the scout skills does that very well. Of course that is a very basic look at what I was trying to do, but I wanted first class scouts who were confident to survive in the woods by themselves and who also knew how to move forward with a plan. The rest of the ranks for me were more introspective for the scouts as far as serving others through leadership and followship. Character is a big thing for me. The Eagle for me was getting the scouts to understand where they served in the big picture of life. It took me a few years to understand all that, so you have some time to develop your own vision for the scouts and understand the foundation to reaching that vision. You will hone down your conferences to where maybe, if you are lucky, the scout will seesjust a glimpse of their best possible future as you envision it and become even more motivated. Everyone here has given some great advice. You cant really go wrong when the intent of the outcome for your conference is for the scout to leave wanting to do more scouting stuff. Scouting is fun, each scout should see scouting as fun. I believe the Troop experience is the real world challenge scaled down to a boys size, so each scout should like themselves more from the growth of their personal challenges. Scouting is a life experience like no other and each scout should see themselves doing something most boys their age are missing out. No matter who they are outside the troop, each Scout should like himself when he is in the troop. The SM Conference is a great place for that to happen. Good luck and have fun. Ifs your reward for taking on the job. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

MBCs have a lot of room for how the interpret the requirements. I trained our adults and scouts to discuss the requirements together at the first visit with the counselor so both the scout and counselor were on the same page. If the scout didnt like how the counselor interpreted the requirements, then that was the time to look for another. As for the counselors, if they were reasonable with their interpretation, council ist going to say anything. Since it was my job to give scouts a list of approved counselors, I usually interviewed my scouts about their counselors. Unless they were way out there with how they worked with scouts, I gave them a lot of room. Asking for written reports is not only reasonable, I think it is preferred because it requires the scouts to practice several personal skills he will need as an adult. I know the discussion was pretty much in the atmosphere of being among family and friends, but I personally would probably have a discussion with my kids on the social etiquette of the moment. His respect for your official position and as a parent was a little out of line. Barry

My cubs spent most of the meeting jumping, cheering, yelling, singing, and laughing. After the meeting they helped the Webelos put the room back in order. It takes a little practice, but watch your meetings and when you see the scouts getting bored or not participating, change that activity to something that keeps them engaged. Your meetings will be more fun and go a lot faster. Barry

Most of the problem is solved when the scouts go door to door asking for donations. The folks dont spend the extra few seconds looking for expired food items while the scouts are waiting at the door. Collections will go up because most folks will find something in their pantry as apposed to just throwing away the bag left at their door. Going door to door is better for scouting too because the public meets the scouts face to face as does the scouts get to practice bragging about their scouting program. Our Council doesnt do SFF anymore because of city politics (nothing scouting), but when we did, I managed to change our districts policy of dropping off bags the first weekend and picking them up the next weekend to just spending one weekend (Saturday morning) going door to door requesting donations. Our district had by far the most donations and we didnt spend two weekends of everyones time doing it. Barry

You can blame Rambo for the restrictions, or perception of restrictions. Fix blade knives were a somewhat accepted, if normal piece of scout equipment before the movie. But they got much more popular and bigger after the movie. They weren't more dangerous, just more in the publics face during a time when scouting was trying to loose the military persona. So units started restricting the bigger knives, but as these things go, the restrictions got carried away and here we are. Of course as technology improved, it was found the meek lazar gun was even more dangerous than the mighty fixed blade sheath knife, but that is another story. Barry

20 adults? Wow, I'm not sure that we ever had even half that. If we had 10 adults, it was probably because we needed the drivers. No, we did not do the adult patrol. We just never worried about having too many adults because we were seperated from the scouts. Barry

>> guess if the patrols are 300 feet apart, and the adults are respectful of the patrol method and of the youth leadership, then it really doesn't matter if "too many" adults show up?

>>Can we all agree that the simple presence of an adult alters the boys behavior?