Eagledad

Well Beav, you have proven to have the patience of a Scoutmaster. But then some of us already knew that. Barry

I've never been accused as a speeder, but it was known that if I pulled the Troop trailer, it would get to camp first. But there was the time coming home from a Troop Skiing weekend in New Mexico. We were just outside of Cimarron NM when we saw a huge heard of elk. I just happen to be going down hill while the New Mexico Highway Patrol was going up. Cimarron is home to Philmont and probably one of the few places where the highway patrol are not impressed by a carload of Boy Scout uniforms. That was the most elk I've ever seen. That is my story and I'm sticking to it. Barry

You cant know how much I enjoy reading your post. I think your last post was Random thoughts by Eamonn, which I really enjoy because there is a friendly warmth in your words. I know that you are an admirer of the NSP and the First Class program. I am not. But Im beginning to see that are differences are only perspectives of our experiences. I have experience in the NSP, aged based patrols and the mixed age patrols. I feel you started with one approach and stayed with it because of its success. That being said, I think my approach to scouting has always been to use the best approach to reach the goal. In other words, I wanted a Boy Run program that naturally matured with the least intervention from the adults. I used the NSP when it was best for that goal and I used aged based patrols when they served best. So, lets look at your writing from a different angle. Instead of looking at NSP, aged based, mixed age and so on, lets look at it from what we are trying to achieve. In this case, I see the discussion of older scouts feeling fulfillment from the program, and the younger scouts learning skills. I gather from you that older scouts are pulled between the boredom of teaching and the fun of adventure. >>If we agree that older Scouts should not be the guys who are responsible for teaching the little guys, we need to have a knowledgeable adult help them out.

>>Some troops have gone with Patrols with mixed age groups, where the older Scout is the Patrol Leader?? (I don't know how this works if the older Scouts are always the PL's?) and I can see that the older Scout will teach the younger Scout. But if our expectation of our older Scouts is just teaching younger Scouts, I think it is never going to work.

Hi All Our Troop presents each Eagle with a patch (bought by the SM) as soon as the packet is returned from National. Some of our scouts have waited as long as nine months for their COH, so this is a way of recognizing them immediately. Its up to the scout if he wants to put the patch on his uniform or wait until the COH. Most scouts say the instant recognition at the troop meeting is more emotional than the COH. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

Happy Scouting All First I have to say anarchist wrote a great post. I agree with all of it except for the fumes part. Just like a great program that attracts scout 10 to 14 years old, your program can be fun and attractive for the older scouts as well. We just have to be very open minded and think way out of the box. I very much agree with letting the older scouts complete their own program while starting a new program with the younger scouts. My observations are the same as anarchist, the older scouts (15 and older) just dont want change, especially when some of the adults still support their program. And maybe we shouldnt expect them to just completely change their habits and expectations that have been given to them for the last three or four years. >>One of the reasons that I am a true believer of NSPs, regular, and "experienced" or venture patrols is because it helps to avoid the type of incident shown in the previous posts.>If the PLC decides that during patrol corners, one patrol plays football and one learns lashings - no problem.

Yes, I think you are talking about the Baden Powell Scouts. I know a SM on another Scouting forum who is the SM of a Troop and you're right OGE, they try and stick very close to BP teachings. Barry

Hi All >>Something isn't working in my pack/district/council. So, let's hear from you!

Happy Scouting All >>A few sessions with one or more older scouts who take several minutes to emphasize the importance of miding ones own belongings and request the scout do better in the future will do more than years of an adult doing the same.

What a great subject. I like the Northern Tier idea but what makes that difficult, not impossible, is the max limit of eight man crews. However, one of our Philmont crews, which can be much larger, invited another local troop and they had a blast. Between that and taking two dads who had never camped with thier sons before, this crew had a wonderful experience. Our Troop has planned and organized a few Troop-o-ees. Same as a camporee except it is one troop inviting a few other troops to compete for a fun filled weekend. We did a night time Trooporee theme, also a lot of fun. I found this experience advanced the maturity of our boy run program more than any other troop activity. We invited Troops from Texas, Kansas and other Oklahoma Councils. The other troops had so much fun that they went and planned their own Trooporees, of which we were invited. This is a really good subject, I hope folks learn more from it. Barry

Hi All You will have a great time, I really enjoy the Northern Tier. I'm not sure I can point out advantages or disadvantages, but instead differences. With an outfitter, you won't get a guide, unless you pay a lot. If you have never been before, you may want one just to get a feel for how to portage and navigate. If someone in your Troop has this experience already, I don't think you need to worry about a guide. Mosquitoes are a good question, but you will always have them to some degree. So I think the better focus are the mayflies. Ideally the fishing is a lot better before they hatch, which I think is mid July. Someone will have to verify that. But fishing went almost to nothing after they hatched. Other suggestions are get the lightest canoes possible. The Kevlars are around 38lbs and well worth it. I think the BSA camp also provides them now. Take good tested rain gear, not ponchos. It can make the difference between a great trip and a bad one. Consolidate tents as much as possible. Many of the campsites are very small, at least on the Canadian side. Before you go on your trip, practice canoeing, loading and unloading the canoes, entering and exiting the canoes and picking them up and carrying them. It is likely that your crew will portage three or four times on your first day. That will be a very long day if your crew is learning the techniques for the first time. Just picking up a canoe takes practice. So plan two or three trips to a local lake and have and experienced person teach everyone the proper techniques and protocols in the Northern Tier. Protocol is important because you are likely to meet other crews on your first day as other crews are entering and exiting the lakes. So if you dont know what you are doing, it will be a very testing day on patience. On our last trip, our crew ran into a Troop of Girls Scouts wearing only bikinis on the first portage. Our crew had plenty of practice, yet for some reason that portage still didnt go very well for either crews. Those scouts still talk (brag) about that portage. Barry

>>Without a doubt, SPL is the hardest role. Is ASPL as hard as SPL.

Great Monday All >>I also like to let the Scout holding the particular position to tailor the position responsibility to his strong suits.

Great Friday All Boy, there are some really good replies. I agree EagleInKy, this is a symptom of other problems problems. I found two life skills the scouts seem to have a really hard time mastering, communication and delegating. I once had a mom so frustrated by the boys method of communicating that she wanted to take it completely over. I asked her at what point in her sons life she felt it was OK for him to learn communcition. She siad when she was good and ready. She left the troop committee three months later. Do to the internet and cell phones, I find our youth today have terrible communication skills. We actually had a communication course in our JLT just to teach how to talk to folks on the other end of a phone. Our guys are required to call MB Counselers and we could see they needed a starting place. Boy run is frustrating and requires a lot of patience. But it does work. Great subject. Barry

Very cool! I love this scouting stuff.

Good Point. My best friend was the SM in our troop before me. One campout my son forgot the stove in his patrol. I thought we adults felt the weekend was a real success for them because they ended up cooking over the fire all weekend and had a blast. The other patrols actually envied them. Sunday night our families met at the church Youth Christmas Play. When my friend's wife sat down next to us, she greeted us by saying "So your son pulled a really jackass move this weekend". That really hurt our family and I always remembered that. I tried and hope that I didn't say anything like that to my family. But it is hard to talk about some scouts behavoirs in positive terms. Barry

Good Point. My best friends was the SM in our troop before me. One campout my son forgot the stove in his patrol. I thought we adults felt the weekend was a real success for them because they ended up cooking over the fire all weekend and had a blast. The other patrols actually envied them. Sunday night our families met at the church Youth Christmas Play. When my friends wife

Great Subject KS Our family really enjoys dinnertime because we get to sit and talk about everything. It's not unusual for us to sit at the table for over an hour. That being said, with four of our family registered to the troop, scouting was not allowed at the table. Barry

Hello All We were doing this when I was SM with the new parents. We observed that most of the problems and complaints that came from the new scouts was mostly due to the parents misunderstandings with the program. So we asked the parents, or at least a parent of each new scout to participate in the three training sessions followed with at least two months of observering the program with the New Scout ASM. The ASM would take the parents to different parts of the program like the PLC meeting, patrol corners, planning meetings, SM conferences, BORs and what ever was going on during the meetings that would help the parents understand the program. The SM would sit down with the parents for a few minutes while the scouts were playing games to answer any questions the parent had. This seemed to help us a lot in solving misunderstandings the parents had about the program. I can also say that the questions help me as a SM get better at explaining the values of the Methods toward the Aims, and what exactly we mean by the Aims. Works very well. Barry

>>It will be interesting to see if Bush really does all that much on those issues or if (as I predict) he will focus on issues near and dear to the old-line Republicans, like taxes.

>>Those 10 boys can work themselves to death in an effort to better the program, but the other 20 are going to stand as an impediment to progress at every turn.

>>You cant be the best show in town without commitment. Youll never become the best show in town without demanding commitment. And thats just something we dont do.

>>The difference in our posts is that Barry thinks he has changed from the scouting program and I am saying that what he did was change closer to the scouting program and that is why it is working better.

Good Oklahoma Morning All >>What disturbs me is that, in the situation you refer to, what the unit was doing originially wasn't anything like the BSA program and they thought it was. So they changed it to work better.

I've seen Councils that gave out special Council shoulder patches for Troops that did extra requirements added to the Quality Unit award. Barry