Eagledad

>>When you talk to your Council's Scouting for Food organizer, you might want to ask him to remind Units to attach a note to each bag with their unit # and of course a word of thanks for donating food.

Im one of those who staffed to plant seeds. I think this is one of the best youth programs a boy can take, so I felt the best way to help get more boys into scouting was to train more adults in such a way that they love scouting as much as I do. You are only one person, but what you do at Wood Badge or any course will have an effect on hundreds of our sons. If you dont staff, nothing may be lost, but you wont have a chance to have a positive effect either. I love this scouting stuff Barry

Sounds like your in a really good troop Beav. Have a great day. Barry

>>It is announced that Mr or Mrs So and So will be teaching the Personal Management MB on X night over the next X weeks if anyone wants to sign up. They are always done outside of troop meetings and it is up to the boy to decide to sign up.

I like the sound of your program Seattle, it's a down to earth fun kind of program. You know I was thinking about our troop, just because a troop doesn't do MBs doesn't mean it shouldn't do a couple MBs a month. We tried to sponser to MBs a month in our Troop. An adult would announce to the scouts that he was leading a MB class. He would give them his/her name and a number so anyone interested could call. He then would talk with the scouts and arrange a schedule. Worked pretty well and the troop sponsors at least 24 badges a year. Barry

>>I have a real issue with my son's Troop in that they do MB's at one meeting a month. This is 100% arranged by an adlt leader. The adult's decide which MB's are going to be offered and an adult calls up a councilor (all inhouse Troop councilors) and sets up the classes.

>>One meeting and 2 weekends won't take that much away, and if it comes down to making a choice between working on a ticket item and doing something that will benefit the troop, I'll choose the troop without regrets, and I'll still have the advantage of the course experience.

>>It is amusing to see summer camps offering camping as one of their mb's how do they cram 20 nights into 1 week.

>>Darn! Lost another recruit! Enjoy!

Its fine; scouting is a program for individual growth, so there is nothing wrong with self-motivated fast tracking. My experience is these guys usually slow down a little as they get more involved with the other cool stuff the program offers like leadership, troop business, OA, and so on. Watch to make sure they dont burn themselves out to where they hate the thought of advancement. On the other side, also insure they are learning the values that come from advancement as well like patience, follow-through, good planning techniques, communication, documents management and other life skills not coming to mind at this moment. Barry

Either this is a fairly new rule or we just didn't know it because a couple of our crews in the past have had single person tents. I do agree that single tents do add weight and is a good reason to reconsider if you can. The bear and log suggestion is interesting, I always thought dirty scouts smelled like grub worms, now I have support. And, I guess that answers the question of what a bear does with logs in the woods. Beary

>>Further, around here at least, WB is still marketed primarily to troop and crew leaders, with minimal effort to reach out to cub leaders. No wonder they're not signing up in droves.

Complete the course now and your Council has one more resource for staff on their next course. Barry

>>Summer camp partials can be annoying. We tell the Scouts they must try to finish their summer camp partials by the next summer camp or they must try to complete them their. We've had pretty good success this way.

Thanks for the clarification. JLT has been used, in our council anyway, as a generic term for teaching junior leadership. I was the Council Chairman of Junior leadership Training (JLT) responsible for all junior leadership training in the council. Considering half our districts have their own courses that ranged from Brown Sea, Pine Tree, DJLT, and so on, along with units calling their courses anything from JLD to UJLT, it can get mighty interesting trying to force one name on all that training. We use JLT because it would otherwise be impossible to have a reasonable discussion in different units and districts. We even included Den Chief training under the classification of JLT. JLT for us is not just two course is by National; it is part of a leadership method. Of what I understand, calling it TLT allows National some room to create National issued district level course in the future if they decide to do so. DYLT? Now Im sure you can tell Im not a one size fits all kind of guy. Most Council JLT Chairman arent because of the verity of needs of 650 different troops in a dozen different districts. I look forward to Nationals Unit level JLT training, call it what you want. But I would never limit a unit to just that course. Barry

>>Anyone know of any other AV items that could be useful?

>>In a sense I suppose that we would be using the SPL & PL handbooks as our sylabus. Does anyone know why the BSA has removed most information about how a troop runs in the handbook?

>>Sure Barry... I've heard that one before. Now we know the truth. Kudo is your alternate personality... :-) It's nice knowing both of you!

That did the trick, thanks Michelle. I wasn't clicking "Edit your Profile" the second time. OK, looks like we are back in business. Have a great scouting week everyone. Barry

Thanks Beav, I did try that and as you saw, I couldn't find anyplace to change the email address anywhere. Barry

Hi All I can't seem to find the information anywhere else, so I will ask here. I have a new email address, but how do I change that with Scouter.com without creating a new username and password? Thanks in advance for any an all help.

Whoops, In my hurry in the last post, I forgot to delete Kudo and sigh off with Barry. I Love this scouting stuff. Barry

>>I don't understand the meaning of that sentence, but I would point out that the big advantage of "Intensive Training in the Green Bar Patrol" is that the Scoutmaster himself trains his Patrol Leaders. >Where exactly does the BSA teach Patrol Leaders how to actually run a Patrol? And more importantly, where exactly does the BSA actually teach Scoutmasters how to teach a Patrol Leader how to actually run a Patrol?>I suspect that when most of us talk about "The Patrol Method," we are really talking about running Troop meetings, and that we mentally discount anything that would not be as equally useful to all Junior Leaders (an ASPL, for instance) as being too "Position specific," and not abstract enough.>The BSA thus sacrifices the Patrol Method to the efficiency of the "Leadership Development" Method in Junior Leader Training, in the same way that most summer camps sacrifice the Patrol Method (in the form of Patrol cooking) to the efficiency of the "Advancement Method" (making sure that the Patrol Method does not get in the way earning lots of Merit Badges at summer camp).

Hi All After reading Kudus vision of a Council level JLT, I must ask; do we need a SM anymore? I think it is important that we understand who we are training and what they should already know when they come to the course and what do we want council to really teach. We ran into this very problem a few years ago in our council and we came up with two decisions for our JLTC course at the time; 1. JLTC was a course for senior scouts, so we assume that scouts already knew their basic scout skills and Patrol Method. 2. This was a course to teach advanced leadership skills to the troop senior leadership. We again assume they already experienced basic leadership practices like leading a patrol and attended PLC meetings. Our goal was teaching how to run better meetings, writing and using agendas, and learning additional leadership skills. All of this was based from the SPL and PL Handbooks. Even more interesting as we worked to improve JLTC performance and reputation, we polled SMs in the Council and found that most didnt even listen to their scouts after they came back from the course. So the skills and information the scouts took away from the course wasnt getting down into the Troops. Its not that the SMs were evil of even negligent, they just didnt know what Council was teaching, so they didn't know how to support the scouts with their new skills. Im not sure the NYLT has approached that problem even now. After reading this thread, I feel the real problem isnt providing a course to teach Scouts skills, Patrol Method or Leadership to the scouts, but we instead need a course that teaches Scoutmasters that they are supposed to teach Scout Skills, Patrol Method and Leadership to the scouts. Some how SM SPecific isn't working. Our Council tried to attack this problem by requiring at least one adult for every Troop represented at JLTC attend a half day course that highlighted the Scoutmasters responsibilities of teaching Patrol Method, scout skills and leadership that is presented in the Patrol Leaders hand book, SPL handbook and Scout Handbook along with the advanced skills taught at the course. We then had these leaders sit down with their scouts for an hour and review what the scouts had learned that week and the goals they wrote for the troop using their new skills. This was an attempt to get the adults engaged to what the course was teaching and also a stepping off point for the adult leader and scout to work together in using the new skills. Comments were very positive about this approach and some Scoutmasters felt made a big difference in their program. I do like the looks of NYLT so far and I hope it helps a lot of boys become better leaders. I know National worked hard this time to build a high performing course. Thanks for all you have done to help Dan. Good discussion. Have a great week. I love this Scouting stuff. Barry

>>Troops generally have these adult squabbles when there's no shared "vision".Find a different program whose "vision" matches yours, and whose style is a good fit for your son. Or go to a current troop "suspending disbelief" and agreeing to be supportive even when you disagree. If you can't do either, then start one... but know that starting a troop is the equivalent of starting a small business.