Stosh

First of all, welcome to the forum! Secondly, I believe what you are doing is correct and ethical. We do not pay anything without a receipt. You have been given a responsibility to handle the Chartering Organization's (CO) money (not the troop's) in a proper manner. What you do may have an affect on the non-profit status of the CO. I would simply hand over the books to someone else and volunteer for a less controversial position on the committee. At least if something comes of this, your name will be the one who chose not to be involved. Remember, you are a volunteer. They cannot force you to do something you're uncomfortable with. A polite, "Here's the ledger, here's the checkbook. Thanks for the opportunity to do that for a while, but I would prefer something else at this point."

Every year the patrol has to teach the new scouts T-FC. I would assume during that time, the older scouts are not anticipating the next step in their development. The focus of the patrol is constantly T-FC. One would think that would get rather old the third or fourth time around. That would put the boys at say about 14 or 15 years of age. And surprisingly that's about the same time the older boys are getting bored and dropping out until they come back and push for Eagle after a 2 -3 year hiatus. I guess I would prefer my older boys to be setting their sights on something a bit more challenging and leave the Instruction of the new scouts to someone who is given that responsibility, i.e. the Troop Instructors. That pretty much leaves the older boys more opportunity to move beyond the annual rehash of T-FC skill review/instruction. At any given time, how many boys are in need of a POR for advancement? Probably quite a few. Leave the 12-14 year olds to handle the new boys and give the older boys something of a challenge that will hold their interest in scouting. It makes it a bit more difficult to maintain patrol unity if the older boys are leaving after 3-4 years anyway because By the time a boy is 14 he's half way through his Scouting career. What if the second half looks like it's going to be the same as the first. Does any one ever do an exit interview with these boys or once they quit one just forgets about them? My 13-14 year old scouts are the ones who are teaching the new boys. The material is still fresh and they need the POR credit for their Star Life and Eagle requirements. Once they turn 15, those patrols are opened up for a more age appropriate role in scouting. Is it any wonder the Venturing is so popular, but it's for the boys who have basically given up on Eagle and are just out looking for the next adventure. How would I know this? I've more years as a Crew Adviser than as a SM. They really don't want to be hanging around Junior High aged youth anymore. I believe the 14 year minimum age for Venturing coincides rather well with, say, maybe, freshman year of high school? I can at least speak from my own personal perspective on tihis. When I was in high school, I for one didn't want to hang out with 6th graders.

@@DuctTape Okay, we'll take your example for a spin. Age mix is of no consequence. A mixed patrol for me is kind of a perpetual NSP because some of the boys are always quite green. Patrol A's member gets flagged out to be the Troop QM. He steps out of his role as QM for his patrol and is now TROOP QM. He is a member of the Leadership Corp and falls in with that "patrol". First of all his job is pretty much management in nature. Get the right equipment to the right patrols at the right time. Pretty much laid out for him. But if one is going to expect some leadership out of him, he has to "take care of his boys!" So who now are "his boys"? Yep the patrol QM's. They may or may not know the new ropes for the new Troop QM. His system is not going to be the same as the previous QM. So the Troop QM immediately starts working with his patrol QM's to make sure things are running smoothly. The NSP QM is way in over his head. Who's going to teach him the ropes? His PL who may not know much about how the new Troop QM wants to operate or the Troop QM himself. For me it's a no-brainer. The Troop QM takes care of his boys and supports, leads, helps the patrol QM's be successful. Along with advancement the NSP QM has his patrol job, the Instructor works with him on his advancement skills and the QM works with him on his QM job for the patrol. Now you have a number of different older boys doing the "teaching" of the younger boys all of which theoretically have the expertise to do so. Of course the TG is behind the scenes making sure all these connections are being met. How is this a problem? And I gave a full explanation without ever mentioning an adult in the process because they aren't needed. Now, one also has a Troop Scribe working with the patrol Scribes, the SPL working with the PL and APL's. This could get really complicated if the only one doing the training for the patrol was the PL, and training doesn't even have to be part of his job description, that's what the Leadership Corp group is for. Everyone wants older boys to teach and lead the younger boys? For me, this is how it works and one does not need to break up friendships to accomplish it. For 6 months someone might need to step out of his patrol to take on a Troop position, but he's right back into his patrol when it's done. Age based or mixed, makes no difference, but as has been commented on by others, boys naturally want to be with their friends and this system will accommodate that.

Of course the Instructors tend to be older boys. They are working on their Star/Life/Eagle POR's. If they are to be functional, they need to be actually doing something, like instructing the younger boys. As part of the Leadership Corps group, they aren't necessarily a member of a patrol, but focus their attention on helping the younger boys up to FC and the older boys with specialty instruction like backpacking, hiking, planning, Dutch Oven cooking, and skills beyond the T-FC requirements. Yep, I said they should be keeping a log of leadership, but if they need a POR for advancement, they had better be functional and not just wear the patch and sit on their behinds waiting for 6 month to pass.. If the adults are doing the training, then they are basically are stealing opportunities to lead and advance from the boys. If one has promoted that ALL the older boys are to be teaching the younger boys at every opportunity, then they have basically negated the reason for even having an Instructor POR at all. If the PL's run around ant tell the boys when to get up, when to go to bed, when the flags are, etc. then there's no need for a Bugler, either. It's kind alike the SPL runs the troop, okay, then there's no need for a PL either. I think they have these designations for a reason, a lot of people don't understand them and it creates a lot of bad situations as a result of it. Maybe if adults really knew what these POR's were meant to be there would be far less reason to discuss all the problems they are having on the forums. I'm a firm believer that a lot of the problems we face as adult leaders today is of our own creation.

This is why I don't promote, nor encourage my boys to go to these events. There's just too much adult abuse going on with them.

This whole idea of the older boys teaching the younger boys is really an adult-led proposition. We have an INSTRUCTOR POR that is expected to be teaching the younger boys on a regular, functional basis. Why are ALL the other boys doing it other than some adult insist they do? The Leadership Corp of troop officers have it covered. Let the patrols just do their thing and when needed they'll speak up. NSP PL: "Hey, Instructor John, my boys need to get the low-down on 2nd Class advancement requirements. Can I pencil you in for one of our meetings, lets say, 2 weeks from now." Instructory John. "Sure,, I'll be ready." And lo and behold, Instructor John gets real credit for this Instructor POR and the boys in the NSP get their instruction from an older boys. The system is really quite good if the adults don't get in the way. How many units out there really have functional Instructors? Oh? the older patrol members are supposed to be doing that? Great, now along with Bugler we have 2 useless POR's.

Sounds like a better system than what we have now where the boys expect to finish on the same day. Here's my take, however, on the long run. I'm thinking it's great to introduce the material to the boys at the event, but how many of the boys are going to do a followup and thus leave a ton of partials on the books. Our boys and their parents are into the Sesame Street version of everything. If it takes more than 5 seconds, it's too long and I want instant gratification for any and all effort no mater how little. Are these counselors being drawn from a district or a council? How far will the boys have to travel afterwards for the followup sessions? This too could be a problem even for some more dedicated boys. Then there's scheduling, 2+ boys/2-deep issues all the way around. It would be interesting to try it a few times and get feedback before institutionalizing it.

It was aimed at a few of the comments about having records expunged, modified, etc. The whole aim of the background check process is to see what is in a person's past. If one has paid their debt to society for a wrong-doing, shouldn't that be sufficient, otherwise are we not running counter to the Law of the Land which states the punishment should fit the crime? Well, if one's past haunts them for the rest of their lives through background checks, then everything from DWI to murder and rape are life sentences. They don't care about traffic infractions as much as other issues. Anything dealing with sex is an automatic life-time, no questions asked, sentence. Traffic ticket? Well that probably got lost along the way many moons ago. Well, the sexual tendencies of a person are one thing, but the speeding and disregard for the traffic laws is quite another. Who do you want driving your kid around the country? Background checks thus become more political than practical, and open the door for all kinds of vigilantism on the part of those "interpreting" the results. Good luck with the fairness of all that.

Just because one has paid their debt to society doesn't mean they aren't going to pay for the rest of their lives too. There are self proclaimed vigilantes out there that will make sure that the past will never be just the past.-

When we went we had 3 people and 4 duffles for each canoe. The person in the middle leaned against 2 duffles and put his feet up on the other two and went to sleep for most of the day.

Ahhh, yep, same guy. This is government double speak for let's make it so convoluted no one really knows and then the weatherman can't be held accountable for being wrong 100% of the time and still keep his job. 40% chance of rain is a combination of probability given the present weather conditions AND location, not area. A 40% chance of rain means that in any given area of the area forecast, the probability of it raining is 40%.

My Lodge has three legs and no feet. @@moosetracker Where do you get the ones with feet?

Totally agree on the storm spotter training. Excellent stuff, I recommend for everyone, especially for guys like my former SM.

Reminds me on top of Mt. Baldy. (cue up the music) Saw a storm approaching and everyone started down the hill quickly. But our SM didn't have all the pictures he wanted yet. Well, as ASM I announced, I was heading down NOW. About half the boys decided to over ride the SM and go with me. We made it to the tree line and I told the boys to dump the packs, spread out among the trees and get unto lighting posture. They did. About 10 minutes later the SM came waltzing down madder than a whole hive of disturbed bees. He was in the process of giving me a tirade about not sticking together in bad weather when a lightning strike hit a dead tree about 20' behind him. I'm surprised the group around him didn't get residual from it, but it hadn't rained enough to wet the ground. I jumped up told the boys to pick up their gear and head down as fast as they can while the clouds were recharging. I looked at the SM and quietly said, "I think we're done here." and booked it off down the trail. This time the whole group went with me. I never want to get that close ever again.

After two years of struggling on my own, gathering adults and boys and getting the unit off the ground, we still haven't had contact with our DE. We picked up our rechartering packet from the council office. We don't recharter at the same time as all the rest. We have yet to have a third party UC assigned to us. I am a UC and my ASM is the DC, so we have it covered, but had we not been commissioner overloaded by chance, I don't know what the district would have done. I did have a conversation with the SE and he said he would initially charter us with less than 5 boys so we wouldn't have to wait a second year to get on the books. Fortunately we were able to pull together 7 for chartering. If I wasn't an experienced unit builder, I would have had a real struggle with this whole thing.

The forms/calendars/etc. I have created for the boys are Excel Spreadsheets that they can readily modify. If they put their patrol ID in a certain cell, it populates the form with all the boys from that patrol, etcl They pick a menu item ID, it populates a shopping menu, etc. I just keep adding to the forms as I have time. I used to do that sort of thing for work, now I do it for fun. For all the boys that don't have Microsoft Excel, Open Office Calc works just as well, and that's free software that will work for any computer or smartphone.. Basically the boys put in the patrol ID, the menu ID and the number of boys going and it produces a shopping list for that meal.

My wife is a master gardener and forester by training. To the left of my computer are hundreds of books on plant and animal identification. She has books that look up by Latin names, by common names, by color, by flower, by leaves and by fruit. The best book she ever bought and my favorite is WEEDS OF THE NORTHERN U.S. AND CANADA, by France Royer and Richard Dickinson. Seriously??? a 434 page book on weeds? It's really a neat book.

@@Eagle94-A1 I've had that happen before too where the TG gets elected as PL. After all they kinda work a bit like a DC, but no DL to direct them, more leadership going on with the TG. If they hit it off, no problem the boys can pick any other boy in the troop to be their PL and the PL can pick anyone they want for their APL. Only once did I have a TG turn down the PL position and not go with the NSP. He told them his work was very important for the next group of Webelos boys coming in and suggested someone else they could ask. This boy was one of my Eagle Scouts. The new boys agreed and took him up on his suggested scout who did a nice job for them.

Worse case scenario, get the boys to do 95% of the work like they are supposed to and one can delay that SM burn-out for years. It's called Creative Incompetence (Peter Principle) and the boys (knowing full well what I'm up to) always seem to step up and help their SM get through a problem. A lot of the times, the boys appreciate them getting asked to step up instead of taking on another ASM. When they didn't like the summer camp they were attending, I could have assigned an ASM to look at some alternatives, but asked the boys instead. Been going there ever since. They done good. The boys associate with adults, meaning they are learning to be their peers. Some of my older scouts over the years have done more in the troop than most ASM's. All I had to do is ask. My ASM asked me a month ago about our rechartering. I looked at her and said, "Oh, is that due again?" She smiled and said she'd take care of it. We both know she does paperwork better than I do. In all my years as a SM I have never had more than 1 ASM even though we have gotten up to 20+ boys. If I need a second for 2-deep because my ASM can't make it. I turn to the committee, then the parents, if I can't get a second, I notify the boys the activity is cancelled. Well, Lo and Behold!! the boys went home and usually one or two of the adults come back and have changed their minds. It works kinda nice.

I'm kinda half way on this. I attend RT and am a UC of which I faithfully check on them every couple of months. They run pretty smoothly so it's more of a show and maybe learn something about how they are doing things. My DE does email info on a pretty regular basis so I don't have to keep checking websites, etc. My UC? I don't think I have one. I take my training on-line and I don't teach anything either. I could take it or leave it as far as what benefit I get from all this activity. It wouldn't take much to tip me to @ 's point of view

@ I don't do the bells thingy, but I do carry a 9 mm and second clip (Iillegal, but I'll be alive to tell it in court), pepper spray and sing. As I mentioned in an earlier post, most people we meet along the trails look at me rather strangely because I'm singing, but when I tell them I sing to warn the bears I'm coming, they tend to sing too.

We span Wisconsin and Minnesota. There's no way the Vikings and Packers are going to see eye to eye so our council is Gateway Area.

@@Eagle94-A1 Soon after the NSP gets oriented to the scouting routine and has maybe Scout and TF under their belts, the SPL and TG do the GBB patrol training with the boys. The quicker they get into that, the quicker their PL/APL combo can take the reins and the TG can step back in a more supportive role like GBB suggests the SM does. The training is rather simple and the SPL/TG combo usually do a pretty nice job of holding the course.

@ Is this a long standing tradition in your troop or do the boys have a choice when the come into the troop? Not to make waves, just curious. How then does that work out with HA and older boy opportunities that wouldn't be available for the whole patrol to attend intact?