Stosh

How long were the phases? with that many phases it would seem that the boys would be missing summer camp and high adventure with whole week dedicated to this training. How was the cost of the course figured in. Can we get a bit more detail of the logistics of the process?

@Hedgehog @blw2 Totally agree with the two of you. If it needs plugging in, it shouldn't be part of the training. PowerPoint presentations send the message that the instructor is too lazy to actually lead by example. The #1 reason why I don't attend U of Scouting first weekend in November? It's because the season is quickly coming to an end and I'm out getting my last few good days in before the snows fall. If one has to plug it in, it has no place in any scouting program. Show me a scouter who uses PowerPoint to teach the square knot and I'll show you a guy that has Velcro closures on his sneakers....

A new Crew involves the infusion of membership registrations and money. The Derby track doesn't. Once you get that straight in your head, life gets easier......

@@JoeBob This is normal. Kids (and/or adults) go off for training. Come back all fired up. Nobody listens and smiles nicely and lets it go i in one ear and out the other. The new trainee gets tired of talking about all the neat things they learned and life goes back to normal. Nothing changes. Time and money is basically wasted. I have seen this pattern over and over and over again.

In our council the word got out the reason the axes were removed from woods tools at summer camp is because of the number of adults that hurt themselves with them.

We may dicker the fine points, but both you and I are still staunchly pro-boy with the organization. If National tosses out your ideas, then what in the world are they putting in it's place?

Yes, because since we here on this forum all agree on the definition of "boy run", everyone else should at least agree on how to run a simple week long course. @@Eagledad Well, kinda.... I never use the term boy "run".... If we are all pushing for youth involvement (I'll compromise here) why is the YOUTH training program run/led by adults? As poorly run as it is in some councils, how much worse could it be if the program was run by experienced youth? Everyone's pushing the idea of older boys teaching younger boys and the epitome program of BSA for such leadership emphasized training is run by the adults?

Not laughing at all, I find it rather a not laughing matter that there can be such differences in a standardized program and BSA has no checks and balances to insure a quality program for the boys. Add to that the myriad of personal interpretation and one can have two entirely different programs running side by side using the same syllabus. We have the staff focused approach very well entrenched in our council, you maybe correct in this as the culprit for our boys preferring to avoid NYLT altogether.

For some scouts, yes, others, no. I have had plenty of scouts that have commented the activities were boring. When asked what they were going to do about it to make it more fun, some did nothing, others rolled up their sleeves and got to work. Every boy is different. Sure, I could have gotten on the case of the do nothing scouts, but as a boy-led program the hidden beauty of the whole thing is peer pressure is a far better motivator than some adult yelling at a kid. Once they draw the naysayer into the planning process, things tend to get back to normal.

Using for-profit business metrics to measure a not-for-profit business is kinda misleading. We're dealing with two different issues here. The for-profit business is a bullet focused operation. It survives for only one purpose, to produce a profit. One can quantify whether or not the effort is on target or not. The not-for-profit business is not focused on one particular goal (profit) but uses a shotgun approach to the mission it is trying to fulfill. There is no specific target to aim toward and measure against. Al such program metrics do is subjectively determine absolutely nothing. The new DE is tasked with finding a new district commissioner. He knows no one. So he starts asking around, gets a name from one person, another name from another person and a third name from yet another person. Calls the first person, "Wanna be the DC?" "Nope." Calls the second person, "Wanna be the DC?" "Sure, why not." He doesn't bother to call the third person. Well it doesn't work out that person really screws things up with the Commissioner corps for the district (the planned metrics were never met, not even close).. Who's fault is it? Yep the DE's. The "metrics" of a DE's performance are really the metrics of hundreds of volunteers out there instead that the DE has no control over in the first place. It's a job destined for failure and the DE has very little he/she can do about it. If I were a DE and someone moved to some sort of metric type program for the office, My desk would be cleared by the end of the day. Been there, done that. Leave before the career goes down the toilet because the only reason the metrics are mentioned is because someone thinks that's where the results of your work are headed anyway.

Working for non-profits are hard to do. As I mentioned the impetus of the endeavor is the mission, not the profit. Somehow that gets translated into some sort of accomplishing this without concern for the $$. Well, a guy's gotta eat, people! I took a class 35 years ago from a church administrator that indicated that 100 years prior to that the average minister, left seminary, served a parish for 45 years, retired and burned out and went fishing.... At that point the expectation level of the pastor had less than 100 major categories to fulfill. Fast forward to 35 years ago, the new formula had changed and the average pastor would burn out 2-3 times before retiring. The rate of pastoral loss continues to decline. Why? The number of expectations had increased well over 500%. Well, I lasted about 15 years and said, enough's enough. Went to work for the for-profit sector, never looked back. Most of the DE's in our council do not move up to bigger/better jobs in Scouting, they leave the program at a rate of about 4 to 1. The reason why? Just listen to the comments on the forum. The increase in expectations of these people continues to grow at a rather alarming rate. As the old adage says, "These are very responsible people working for the council. If something goes wrong, they're responsible." Unfortunately in today's world that's no longer a joke.

@@NJCubScouter is correct that the Eagle rank is a done deal long before the ceremony, but the traditional illusion of it happening at the ECOH is still kinda nice to maintain. Otherwise, just start out with the cake and Koolaid and avoid the pageantry altogether. I vote for the pageantry....

In theory, one program, yes, in practice? That's up for debate. Why would some council's boys think it's great and another council's boys avoid it as worthless? I was just trying to figure out how one standardized program could vary so much around the country. I'm thinking from the WB discussion that happens there as well. Then one would start to become suspicious about all the other "standardized" training out there that BSA has provided and why it varies so much in practice.

@@Krampus I guess it's my fault in assuming the NATIONAL Youth Leadership Training was standardized. I understand there will be a bit of variance with the different personalities teaching, but the whole concept of "we really like it" vs. "Avoid it like the plague" must take into account more than just personality differences. I guess I'll just have to ship my boys down to Texas.

@@qwazse And yet my boys don't have a Venturing Crew hanging around, but they are rather aggressive in talking with other scouts and leaders at camporees. We have 3 districts in our council and my current boys have been to two different districts' camporees. They are not bashful about asking what others are doing with their troops. Being a new troop and the onus of leadership is on them, they do a lot of asking how other boys are making it work in their troops. The new boys in my troop shared a site at summer camp with a troop from another council. We are planning a major outing again this summer not at a summer camp. In my other troops I have worked with, two troops have combined on certain activities because one troop "wants to learn" how to do HA for their boys. Everyone was on equal footing. From the comments above, I was left with the impression that the Crew was going to mentor, advise, and basically show up for the leadership of the troop. @@Tom D seemed to indicate that posed a rather negative reaction from the troop members and their participation dropped off when the Crew was on-hand. If the Crew was available for consultation, that would be fine, but advising, mentoring, coaching and such really usurps the leadership of the boys.

At the beginning of the ceremony the boy is Life scout. Wears the life patch. The Eagle patch is not used. Instead the Eagle medal is pinned on the flap over the Life patch. At least that's what I have observed in the ECOH's in our council.

Okay, you have a good program. Boy like it. We don't have a good program and the boys don't like it. Where is the disconnecting occurring? Why can't we have a good program, too? Where's the program validation not happening?

@@blw2 It's always easier to sink or swim with your buddies when one is on the same page as everyone else. That's how camaraderie is built. They mentor each other. Every time the group shuffles, the history starts all over from scratch. The largest ECOH I ever attended was when 6 Eagles all picked the same time and place for their ECOH.... They had been together since Tigers. and they refused to break up the group under any circumstances. SM tried it once, but changed his mind when all 6 walked out without even needing to discuss it.

Going co-ed isn't going to change adult micro-management one bit.

I'm not sure you can teach those skills -- it comes from a lifetime of learning. @@Hedgehog New leaders don't have a lifetime to pull it together. At least some training as to generally what to expect of OTHER PEOPE's experiences might be quite helpful to the newbies. Instead, as you you propose, maybe it's a waste of time and so why try. I for one really don't like going on such activities with the potential for serious problems totally unprepared. Doesn't sound very scout-like to me. Solution? Don't take the boys on high adventure, avoid the whole thing.... life is good. And I can show plenty of examples in our council of that attitude.

...or @@Hedgehog the loss of only one boy in the past 3 years is due to the fact that one's program isn't as boy-led as some others? I'm kinda wondering if the dropout ratio is proportional to the boy-led dynamics. Out of the 4 boys I lost the first year, only one was because of the boy-led issue. He left because he didn't really want to work at it and wanted older boys around to do it for him so he joined another "boy-led" troop. I put that in quotes because the only ones who think that troop is really boy-led are the adults of that troop. The other three left for reasons that had nothing to do with the structure of the program.

The quote is a bit out of context. The point I was making was even though I have all the appropriate woodsman skills of fire-building, cooking, tents, woods tools, tying knots, etc. and am quite comfortable with being in the woods as an adult, why would I think it okay to take 20 young boys of which I know very little about what they may do when they are in a strange forest environment. Having skills training is one thing, but one also needs to understand the psychological development of boys at this age as well. Having a boy do a home sickness meltdown in a council camp or State Park might require a certain level of skill but with cell bars, reinforcements can be called in quickly. On the other hand, we are talking about high adventure training. What skills are necessary when a couple of the boys have a melt down 5 days into a 9 day trek in Philmont? What sort of woods tools or knot tying skills are going to be helpful then? If one is constantly seeking greater and greater adventure for the boys, each new challenge has it's own set of unknowns that BSA isn't addressing any of this with any training for the adult leaders. All I was advocating was that they do. A few on the forum didn't think the psychological stuff was necessary. For the welfare of the boys, I do. The next chapter in the syllabus is what are the psychological dynamics of an adult melt down on a trek? That happens too. With high adventure situations we are not dealing with the Webelos III extended council camp situations here, If one has too many unknowns on some of these adventures, they will have to discourage the boys from attempting the challenges of high adventure.

Welcome to the forum, glad you decided to join up.

I worked with a DE for 2 years part time. I was responsible for the Exploring program in his district. At first I thought that being an "assistant" while going to school full time would be fairly easy. Well, it wasn't I was doing more than my 20/week and expected to do things way beyond my scope of job description. I was given credit for starting 43 different Explorer Posts. My work brought in enough scouts to cover the shortfall of scouts both in the Cub as well as Boy Scout quotas. This was the era of declining membership struggles of the mid 70's. I was also corralled into working on the council Bicentennial observances as well. Like I said, 20/week would have been a nice job, but the pressure to perform coming from above the Council kept everyone pretty busy. Fortunately for me I did have volunteers that bailed out my butt on many an occasion.

@@andysmom It may not be fact that they are not accommodating in as much as they probably don't have the skill set or temperament to deal with such situations. It does take a ton of patience and in our society today, patience is a very rare commodity. If I was approached by a parent with a special needs son and I knew I couldn't handle the situation I would be honest enough to say so up-front before any expectations were established.