Eagledad

Hi All Every SM will eventually have to deal with a scout, or scouts playing with fire, or knives or swinging a stave. I will start by saying we pretty much handled these situations the way EagleInKy explained in his post. Man that guy has been in a groove lately. Anyway I dont see discipline as the issue unless you knew the scout acted to spite the rules. Its an accountability of actions issue. In fact, as you practice more of this Scouting Stuff, you will realize most of what adults do is hold scouts accountable to their actions so they develop the habit of choosing right over choosing wrong. This is important because you want to create an environment where all the scouts hold each other accountable. Whenever a scout was caught doing something like this, I tended to get the scout to think of a way to teach the whole troop or at least the PLC about the dangers and safety of his actions. You are then turning his negative action into positive action. You dont have to yell or get angry. In a quiet tone you ask him to admit the harm of his actions so that you know that he knew better. Sometimes they dont. Then guide him to do an action of accountability so they understand that there are reprocussions to all actions. Our PLC got in the habit of making the scouts write letters to their parents and Patrols. Also you want to encourage all the scouts to police themselves. You will always have that one kid who likes to experiment with fire, but its the other scouts who you trust to stop him. In fact, if I caught a scout doing something wrong while other scouts around did nothing to stop him, usually the other scouts were first to clearly feel my disappointment before I worked with the offending scout. It takes a little while before scouts realize that you want them to take responsibility to stop bad behavoir. Usually they are waiting for the adult. Good discussion. Barry

>>Does he believe, in his heart, that he has performed his best in the various aspects of scouting

>>American society has over-emphasized self esteem at the expense of self motiviation. The question for BSA is: should it change how merit badges are incorporated into the program?

>>The success of the merit badge program is entirely dependent on the quality of the counselors.

Hi All >>A list of counselors was posted, with the MBs they were counseling, and the scouts (not the parents) had to call the counselor to sign up.

I don't understand how your program works, but could you instead plan the same patrol activities as required in the badges without making it a badge activity. Then the scouts could sign off the requirements if the choose. This is how I did my Webelos program. My scouts were getting pins like crazy and most of the time they didn't even know how they earned them. Barry

Hi All We have eight very nice patrol boxes that we quit using about seven years ago. It's funny, the adults had them made with love and care. Seven years ago we decided I wanted to move to a backpacking troop because that forces more personal responsibility on scouts. The PLC and adult decided to experiment and ask the patrols to not use patrol boxes every other campout. After the first campout without the boxes, the patrols siad good by to the boxes and never looked back. Our patrols put all their patrol gear in a milk crate. That includes a two burner backpacking stove, lightweight rainfly, cooking gear, rope and I can't remember the rest. I agree light weight gear does have a cost, so over a couple of years we slowly switched stoves and rainflys as fund raisers helped us make the switch. It's the same gear we use on our high adventure treks like Philmont and Northern Frontier. As for the patrol boxes, we gave four away to help a new troop, and the patrols can use the other four anytime the want, which they never have. Our guys say the milk crates are much simpler. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

Hi All >>I don't like this arrangement but it is the way it is at the District Level.

Happy Scouting All Everyone is giving great advice. I only want to add one quiet unassuming demand that works quite well for both the parents and their son in this age group; "Please go sit with your parents the rest of the meeting". Everyone gets the point and the behavoir will change after the first couple of incidents if you hold your ground. Barry

OK, I stepped way out of bounds. I got the CC from your first post I guess. As for the rest, I dont understand we got to a verdict from the NJ Supreme Court, or whatever. Your last few posts also confused me. It sounds like you want the adults to be included with the scouts, provided all is fair, but have justified in your mind good arguments against it. Is that right? I have watched too many programs cut themselves short from the fears of what could happen. I know of several Cub Packs that dont do any kind of competitions like Pinewood Derby or games because they fear boys will get hurt. I know of a Troop that allows only a maximum of two scouts per car during travel because they fear wrecks that that would kill all riders. This troop averages 40 scouts a campout. What is interesting is that you guys werent breaking any rules or policy that I can see. Everything that has followed was caused by the fear of one adult with authority. OK, I can understand how emotions can get the better of us making our minds run wild even visualizing rulings from the Supreme Court. Im just suggesting keeping things in context. This is just a simple Boy Scout troop playing a simple game of football. I am sure everyone involve are good decent folks. I wonder, if it were you asking the Troop to stop football because you were afraid the apparent violence of the game could influence boys in the wrong way, would the troop have reacted the same? Scouting is hard enough as it is without adding our own fears. I would suggest an effort to keep this simple. Use the official guidelines recommended from training and try to not read too much more into those guidelines than intended. Then suggest the adults, as a group, make a decision taking the monkey off the CCs back. I think that is important because the adults need to function from one general idea as a team. Maybe you have that now, I cant tell from your post. But what I gathered from you at first was there was an overreaction by one or two members of your troop from a complex interpretation of the guidelines. Do you still feel that is the situation? As for the Scouts, well you are who you are, fears and all. They need to understand that they are suppose to work within the limits of the Scout Law, Scout Oath and the adults wisdom. What the scouts have going for them is Wisdom can change as the adults learn and grow. Sorry I stepped in this, too much time on my hands I guess. I will sit back and watch for the conclusion. Hey have a great Christmas week. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

Hi All My opinion is your CC is the main problem. What is the DE going to do? The White Stag paragraph is intended to protect the adult incase physical contact has some appearance of being inappropriate. Football has certain boundaries where contact is appropriate, even in touch football. But even with that, who cares! Because using White Stag to enforce a BSA policy is a stretch and not official. Your unit adults need to use and interpret the G2SS because that is what the BSA expects you to use. I love the White Stag program but the program is being used out of context here with your Troop. Most leaders have never even heard of White Stag. Personally I would tell the DE, and the Council if you like, that your unit has lost some trust in this DE and you will look at future interpretations from him with some skepticism. DE s arent always right and they dont always represent the Council or BSA in the best manner. Our District has encouraged the council to move more than one DE on to the next District. Your CC is the person who needs to be convinced. Then you guys can get back to the fun of this Scouting Stuff. Have a great day. Barry

Hi Laurie What you are actually talking about is the best suggestion for breaking pack tradition. The only policy the BSA suggests is to recognize each scout as soon as possible. I've always thought it a little funny that we point that policy out on one hand and then hold back AOLs until all the scouts have earned the badge or until a month of year traditionally done by the pack. I had several scouts earn their AOL several months before they left the pack. I would first for just a moment, ignore polices and traditions and ask yourself as the CM what is best here for the scout? Then how do you achieve that? I understand Scoutnuts statement to not let any scout leave without recognition and he is right most of the time. But many times those kinds of suggestions are made from what adults want, not what the scouts wants or is the right for him. Give the scout, your son, what will give him the most honor in his eyes, and use the pack as the tool to honor him that way. Our pack went the way of EagleinKy in general, but I got really good at creating good ceremonies on the fly when these kinds of things just happen. Tell your son we send our congratulations. I highly suggest that if your pack has a tradition of holding scouts upside down while you present them with the AOL and a symbolic arrow, just keep it to yourself. It will never fly here. Good luck to you in your scouting future because I know you love this scouting stuff. Barry

Hi Eagleinky Actually now its two hours followed by a lock in for only the PLC. The first hour is spent giving a quick explanation of the Troop leadership chart staring from the Chartering Representative all the way down to the Patrol positions. The SPL explains and discusses the expectations of each PLC leadership position and finishes with his set of goals for the troop. The SM usually spends just a few minutes talking about Aims and Methods making sure that both the adults and scouts understand that the adults responsibility are the aims, the scouts are responsible for the methods. Each scout spends the second hour with his advisor who is usually an adult but sometimes an older scout. Together they discuss their personal ideas for the position and set goals for the next six months. There is usually some training in that hour to help the scout get started. When our Troop was young, we followed the second hour with a PLC meeting to help the new guys get a feel for the meeting. But our Troop has a PLC meeting every week now and most or our PLC has experience in the meeting. We have always followed that JLT with pizza and PLC Lock in. Believe it or not, the lock in is a great team bonding experience. Some times leaders in the PLC need further training like the Quartermasters, ASPLs and Patrol leaders. So they wouldset up another training time in the future While I was SM, many of the PLC had been to six or seven of these JLTs, so you can understand the importance of a quick two hours that gets to the point. The very experienced scouts only want to hear what they need for their job. Usually they do most of the training in the first hour. Hope that helps. Barry

>>I have read this article with great interest and I am somewhat perplexed and amazed that anyone can argue that BSA should not be allowed in a "public" school without first attacking the government itself.

>>I imagine that after a culture is established and you have several 15-16-17 year old youth leaders demonstrating the way, JLTC probably has less of an impact

Hi All >>but allowing a few adult leaders to 'ride along' and in the process retrain them or start most of them re-thinking (at least) what the real program is all about!

>>Let me ask you, how good would a youth group have to be for you to turn a blind eye to government agencies running these youth groups if anyone could join as long as they weren't Jewish?

>>No, it wouldn't be fair to say that.

So it's fair to say you really don't have a clue about the program and how it contributes to our youth and society. If you were personally given the ability to kill the BSA completely or leave it alone as it is presently, what would choose? Barry

My apologies, I left out the question mark. That last post was a question, not a statement. So you are not presently and have not been involved in scouting since Cub Scouts 35 years ago? Barry

Hi All Great Question. I worked a little different. If the cubs are unruly to the point that I need a whistle or hold my sign up until my arm turns blue, I use that as a flag than probably it was me doing something wrong. Every time I had problems with scouts like this, I changed my program because boys hate to miss anything fun. I learned what boys liked and didnt like. I created little tricks like moving most of the announcements, that bore the daylight out of the boys, to a newsletter. I might take one announcement and entertain the boys like roll out on roller blades to announce our annual roller skating party. I did a Tool Time skit to announce the Pinewood derby, things fun or funny like that. Surely there is a ham in the pack. Right off the bat, I can say that scouts arent much into singing unless the songs are funny, fun or gross. You probably need to make Christmas Carols a little more fun someway or another. Usually scouts like to watch their parents, that is what I found helped in singing at pack meetings. I also dont like using the scout sign as a method of controlling behavior. Now I know that all of us adults put up the sign to get attention, but sometimes we hold the sign up a little longer than we should or put it up a little too often. What happens is the scouts learn to hate it and think of it as symbol of behavoir control like a paddle. That is not it's intention. Instead with cubs, I created actions where they could yell, scream, jump up and down or what ever when I gave the action. It was anything from holding my nose, throwing a neckerchief in the air or hold my arms strait out. The idea is if the arms werent strait out in the air, then they basically had to be quiet. Every 15 minutes or so as the scouts started to get a little edgy on the more boring part of the program, I put my arm up to let them vent. When I put them down, they were quiet and I could continued with the regularly scheduled program. I had 90 or more cubs, so there where times when things could get a little long. I used my sign to get their attention and that usually worked. Usually its only a couple guys who may be talking and just dont see the sign. I would then politely with a smile call their name and they would give me attention. Where this becomes important is when your son becomes a leader in the troop. If he remembers the sign being used to beat down the scouts, he will use it that way as well. I always told my SPLs that the sign is used to get attention, not punish bad behavoir. If he needs to hold the sign more than 15 seconds to get attention, then he needs to use another type leadership skill to control the group. You want you sons to learn those skills anyways because the scout sign doesnt usually work outside of scouting. Hope that helps a little. Barry

So you are not presently and have not been involved in scouting since Cub Scouts 35 years ago. Barry

So, is Merlyn a scouter or been involved in scouting? Barry

I've not heard of the camp, but it sounds like the same kind of camp as the Spanish Peaks camp and Camp Isabel where the Troops do their own cooking. That is the main difference from Camp Frank Rand which also uses the Pecos Wilderness for week long High Adventure treks. Our Troop has done Frank Rand and rated it pretty good overall.

>>The strange part is now they generated LOTS of ideas. The problem is that at least 1/2 of the ideas are not practical. At least not for us at this time (California, Colorado, Hawaii, etc.). Lots of good long term ideas, but it was hard to reel them in to think about what was practical for next year.