Eagledad

That is not really the purpose of Scoutmaster Approved Leadership Project. That should be saved for something out of the ordinary and special. I used it once to create a leadership project for a severally mental retarded scout that did not have the skills to lead in a normal troop program. Leadership is managing a team for working together toward a agreed objective. Theoretically that kind of leadership requires development and experience. In fact, I believe scouts shouldn't even be a Patrol Leader until age 14 because they lack the instinctive motivation to learn from the experience. But, scouting has changed over the years and most troop don't have the older scouts to be patrol leaders. Anyway, your responsibility for developing leadership skills is finding opportunities for scouts to practice, mentor, and learn from those skills. That's easier if you follow the Patrol Hierarchy. New scouts can learn the skills of organization and communication in the simple task of the Grub Master and Cheer Master. As the scout matures in those tasks, he can continue his growth in the experience of Quarter Master where they are responsible for equipment and the leading the patrol members in the transportation of the equipment to and from the patrol camping site. That can as simple or as complicated as you want. Or Troop Quarter Master has the keys to the gear storage and the trailer. NOBODY uses those keys without the Quartermaster's knowing and permission. But, even at the Patrol level, the Quarter Master should have advanced expectations from previous responsibilities. The next level of responsibilities, are the expectations of running the Patrol. True, the Patrol leader is the leader, but APL should be doing the grunt work. If the other positions in the Patrol are designed correctly, the APL isn't doing anything new. But, they are now doing a lot more of it with higher expectations. Patrol Leadership should be a reward for the hard work of being a APL. Patrol leaders in our troop spend A LOT more time at PLC meetings, training and planning the troop programs, so they aren't as involved at the patrol level as the APL. The PL has to rely on the hard working APL for the program to perform successfully. They should be a close team, almost best friends. The Patrol Leader is a mentor to the APL and the APL should view it that way, just like the other Patrol Members view the APL as their mentor. The objective of Patrol Method is the practice of skills to gain confidence. If the patrol is functioning correctly, the APL is reaching a level of maturity where the challenge of tasks are more demanding and complicated because that is how they get to be adults. You might be having compassion for the APL because you are new to that level of jump in maturity. But I assure they can handle it. OR, maybe you are comparing the APL task against and the other task of the Cheer, Grub, and Quarter Master duties and don't feel they aren't balanced. But, that is a red flag to you that your expectations for those other responsibilities aren't mature enough to develop growth required for the APL responsibilities. We all struggle with balancing growth with responsibilities. Like the scouts, we have to initiate, observe and correct our responsibilities of developing the program as we grow. If we are to keep up with the scouts, we adults have to learn more faster to keep the program fun and interesting. Hope this helps. . Barry

I mean no disrespect to any of the other posters. I admire them for their volunteer time and effort . We each have our talents, which should be applied where you can have the most impact with the least resistance or frustration. There is a great reward watching groups of scouts go through the program. For many, that same reward can be achieved at the district or council levels if their personal strengths can contribute to the whole of scouting in those areas. When I was staff at Woodbadge, I had the pleasure of coaching participants toward finding a vision of their future in the BSA. Many of them come to WB not knowing what they really want to do. Some aren't into camping or working with scouts personally as others are. Or, they want to assist at the unit level, but have the training and expertise needed at the district or council level. By asking a few questions of what attracts them to the scouting program, many quickly finds where their talents would give the program the most impact. And once they start developing goals toward the needs that fit them best, they are excited to get back to the program. Barry

Cool Troop. A lot different than my scouting experiences, but each adult has their own style. I don't think a Scouting FORUM can talk too much about scouting though. Barry

Yes, my experience is that Scouters welcome youth that want to be scouts. But while scouts had it's own complexity, the issue at the time was admitting adults. Barry

Call council and ask them if they know of any Bakers around that you can borrow. I haven’t seen any Baker tents in a long time. Barry

I find myself looking back a lot in this discussion. My Dad and uncle were heavily in scouting before and during WWII. I was a scout during and after the Vietnam War. My sons were scouts during the Gulf wars. Only once through all my many many discussions on the subject of scouting did the idea of Scouting being a para-military organization ever come up, and that was with a liberal friend who was inquiring of my SM expectations of him if he volunteered as an ASM. He was never a scout as a youth, so he had no idea what to expect, but wearing the uniform was a concern. We generally tented together, so I got to listen to him reflect on his scouting experiences the next three years as a scout leader. He found the goals of the program were noble and was very proud to wear the BSA uniform during that experience. I haven't a clue where the para-military thing came from. Not a clue. However, I was also quite offended by the racist comment of killing brown people home and abroad. It seems to me, the wrong people are trying to fix the problem. Barry

LOL, I guess not. Barry

So, you are trying to look smarter by scrapling with words, shesh, some of us just want to get scouting back on the tracks. Here, maybe we can get the real important subject going again, Mrjeff you are the smartest person on the forum. Can we move on now? Barry

We had it when I was a scout and after my involvement of working with the maturities of youth, I believe there should be and age limit of 14. There is even and biological reason for it; 14 is the the average age when puberty changes the maturity of at least the male brain from the instinct of learning to survive to the instinct to protect and provide. Based from my experience, I believe strongly that scouts aren't ready for the real responsibilities of leadership or role modeling adult maturity until 14 years old, give or take. In fact, we didn't allow scouts to participate in NYLT until 14 because of that reasoning. There are exceptions of course for exceptional scouts, but they had to apply and prove their maturity. If we really want OA to get back it's Noble reputation back, we have to start by only accepting qualified scouts of maturity. Barry

I believe with all my heart the Law and Oath encapsulate everything to be the best kind of person the world needs. I also believe that self righteousness blocks the path to that idealistic mark. My experience is that people spend too much time trying to be the smartest person in the room instead of modeling the virtuous tone of humble patience. Seems the culture doesn't have the humility for scouting anymore. Barry

I gotta say this is one of the more bigoted and ignorant post I've read here in a while. Too much misunderstanding to even start bring balance, but in context of morality and character, just because the culture accepts bad behavior doesn't mean it isn't bad for the culture. Barry

I used to tell Webelos leaders that if games was half their meeting, they will have no problem with scout attendance. While I was SM, I would visit my younger sons Bear meetings just to watch. The leader was like me in that he wasn't good at details. Details like advancement. So, the first half of his meeting was doing some scout stuff, then the rest was basket ball, baseball, or whatever he could think of for that meeting. The games usually involved the boys getting sweaty, Those scout couldn't wait to got to his next meetings. I took over his scouts as their webelos leader and I kept basically the same pattern. Fun scouting stuff followed by games. If the fun scouting stuff turned out boring (not me), the game always save the day. Dkurtenbach is right, at least for the Cub Scouts. I've been preaching for years that Cub Scouts is way way to complicated and actually driving families away from scouting before they even get to the Troops. Troops are different problem of adults interfering with the intended program. Barry

That is interesting. Our troop in the 70s had the 14 year old restriction and limited to two scouts per year. I remember that these guys were typically friendly to all scouts and were well skilled in outdoor skills. The Ordeal back then required the scout to sleep by himself in the wood overnight in total silence. That alone requires a maturity of someone of great confidence. And I will say, someone special. I would agree that that kind of person would be an older scout. But, I had one scout in my troop who was a natural leader and a skilled woodsmen at the age of 12. He was just a neat guy who naturally made everyone like themselves and loved scouting. Ironically, the one part of scouting he hated was advancement. The only reason he earned first class (at the encouragement of his patrol) was so he could be eligible to run for SPL. He was the scout who taught me to take out restrictions and let skills and character direct a scout's path. Barry

Before NYLT was JLTC (Junior Leadership Training Conference). Our troop started doing our own version for the PLC and the council liked it so much that they asked us to do trial versions at the counsel level. We used the Patrol Leaders Handbook and SPL Handbook for skills guides. You can do one yourself, just identify what skills you want the scouts to learn, then find fun ways to teach them. Do the course over a weekend of camping, backpacking, canoeing, or biking. Or all four. It should be something different from a typical camp out and some special. Movies and pizza would not be out of order. The key is don’t waist time teaching what a senior scouts already know, teach what they need to lead others so that they grow in their leadership experience themselves. Barry

We typically would do outdoor meetings when the weather allowed. While the adults usually stayed in another room, outdoors gave us more room to give the scouts space from the adults. This is a nice unforeseen benefit. Still, the adults need to use some initiative to give the scouts as much separation as possible for the positive results of using Patrol Method. I think both the adults and scout will find using the outdoors is a lot easier for using space without pushing the limits of policies. The PLC can add verity to their program by meeting other places like a nearby park or school football field, depending on the meeting agenda and theme. Not only our troop met at other places, so did my Webelos. If the weather was nice, we tried to meet outside and often at another location. Barry

More likely Philmont was just stuck waiting for the state to make decisions on public openings and has ran out of time to have the camp ready. Barry

The next few weeks will be interesting. Our area (probably state) is almost back to normal. Little League Baseball at the nearby park is in full swing and businesses are almost back to normal. I don't know what Council is doing yet, but I can't see why meetings would be discouraged. Barry

Sorry. Wife also calls me on my expectation of reading my mind.

No need to delete. The references could be useful in the future. Barry

You are missing the point. There is no silver bullet for the BSA. Barry

I saw another anti-tobacco commercial last night. The anti tobacco lobby in the 70's and 80's made a lot of lawyers very rich by getting huge awards from the tobacco companies. As a result of that effort, smoking today in the USA is deemed so unacceptable (evil?), smokers are viewed as a lower class or damaged in character. So, why is there still so much anti-tobacco marketing? Barry

Yes, but it always was in the context of a SM, or role model. Boys were getting together and having fun long before Badon Powell started the program. The problem was the kind of fun they were having was not developing a better person. In fact, their fun was developing the wrong kind of character. BP started a program where the activities developed growth. The difference between the UK and the BSA was the BSA got more specific on the vision. But, not out of context with Badon Powell. BDs comments to Scoutmasters were always directed to giving scouts responsibility for making personal decisions that would develop growth in character and actions towards others. The reason, the only reason that Scouting exist today is because of the oath and law corner stone principles that hold the vision together. Without the Oath and Law, scouting would have fallen apart years ago because all games must have purpose if they are to survive the judge of time. Vision is an anchor that maintains success. The Oath and Law are the principles of the vision. If you want to discuss how scouting today has lost the soul of outdoors program, you will get lots of thumbs up. But to suggest the program isn't more than kids going camping, well I disagree. Barry

Sorry, I disagree. Scouting started as an adult program to develop growth in youth through the method of outdoors. The Vision and Mission support the goal. You may not like it because you want to be just for kids, but that is the reality. Barry

Units don't necessarily recharter at the same time. Because units use to recharter when they were created, that was their recharter date. Very very confusing. I've seen the districts organize the same month for rechartering, but I don't think National has. Of course, I've been out if that part of scouting for a while. . Barry

Looking back, our troop was successful on this part and I will give credit to "(Eagle is not supposed to be 'got', it is supposed to be earned)". Our program focused on the scout journey because we learned that each scout's individual vision is each scouts individual vision. And as a result, our program developed a reputation for boy run, fun, and adventure. Our troop averaged a new Eagle every 2.5 month at the average age of 16. That was the result of a fun program of adventure with a focus on Patrol Method, Not a focus on Eagle. The Eagle was just a by product of having fun. Usually 90% of our older scouts attended summer camp until they aged out. I used summer camp as point because older scouts don't in general like to repeat summer camp over and over. And, I know that "aged out" could suggest not continuing into to adult leadership, but it was a term of bragging for us because 95% of our Eagles were active youth in our troop until age 18. I think the BSA can try and make a go of it as some kind of outdoors program. But what made scouting a noble program was it's values (character). I don't feel the present management doesn't has the will to include values as even an equal benefit to outdoors, much less as the main objective. I heard the BSA Mission and Vision were recently changed. I will have to check that out. Still, I think there is some debate of what drove the long success of the program, values or adventure. For our program Values drove us to build a program of adventure that all the scouts would not only enjoy participating, but but growing as well. Barry