Stosh

Our "policy" is that anyone wishing to take on a position of responsiblity (PL) needs to recruit their patrol. This means that Scout A wants to be a PL and he goes back and recruits a Webelos den coming in to be his patrol. Or an existing patrol can as a group go and recruit one or two Webelos to come and join their patrol to fill their numbers up to 8, or, or, or whatever the boys wish to design their patrols. If the boys make the selections, they have ownership in the decision and are more apt to follow through with their choices. If the older boys don't want a bunch of new scouts they can choose not to recruit any. Maybe the will recruit from a patrol whose membership has dropped below the minimum 6 to come into their patrol and they thus move towards a more Venture patrol style. Again, it's their choice. Maybe one or two of their members dropped out to be PL of new boys coming in. They realign according to their own decisions. The only "rule" is that a patrol needs at least 6 members and cannot be more than 8. This "rule" was decided on by the boys themselves. Adults are not involved in this process. Stosh Forgot to add: If a Webelos den of at least 6 come into the troop and want to form a patrol of their own and elect their own PL they can do that too. If they do that I will SUGGEST, and only suggest, that they pick out an older scout to help them out as a TG if they choose this route. Stosh(This message has been edited by jblake47)

SM conference time. One-on-one with the boy with a long discussion on leadership choices and what scouting example he is setting for the younger boys. If he agrees it is a breach of scouting norms, what is his punishment to be?, Who should be notified?, etc. The boy is involved in this process and he takes ownership and responsibility for his involvement in the situation. If parents are to be notified, who's responsible for telling them, the boy? SM? Police? The boy has made choices to get himself into trouble, he needs the opportunity to make choices on getting out as well. If he doesn't care, then the discussion on his future in scouting is covered, especially in light of his not caring about the program in the first place and what the next step is in terminating his career in scouting and how that is to be worked out with parents, etc. Again, who's responsible for what in the process. Too often adults come down with both feet on the boy without giving them a chance to express their values, concerns, etc. This is especially important in the boys that are acting up, bullying, and other disruptive behavior. Alcohol/pot at the event? We review the drug and alcohol abuse requirements and why they haven't had an impact on the boy. Again, an opportunity for the boy to accept responsibility is taken into account and used to resolve the problem. Too often it is a temptation to simply take the authoritarian position of a parent/teacher/pastor/police and jump all over their case. However, I have had quite a few boys turn themselves around if given an opportunity to do so. Listening works wonders and basically disarms the boy from any and all excuses. When they get into trouble they expect an adult to yell at them, but when they don't, they don't know what to do. At that point it's time to start focusing their attention on resolution to the problem and THEY are going to do to fix things. I then support the boy in the appropriate course of action to resolve the problem. You have to tell your parents what you did? Would you prefer I tell them? Do you want me present when you tell them? Do you want to be there when I tell them? If the boy has to make the choice, it's more effective than blowing it off as I'm in trouble and some adult's going to be yelling. Stosh

I have gotten them (BSA uniform pants) for $5 off of E-bay. Stosh

I've been able to get a full BSA uniform off of E-Bay for less than $20. That's about the same price as a good hockey stick or soccer ball. My troop is full uniform only. No one has complained and no one is not without at least one full unform. Universal scouting, Council Strip and numerals and that's all that's required. Stosh

I make the necker itself to any size I wish and then have them embroidered with the troop name/number, etc. Stosh

For those who lose their slides, think outside the box! Looking at old pics of BP, he has his slide vertical and not horizontal. Tuck each side into each side of the slide (i.e. top one side, bottom the other), pull both ends to slide it up and tie off ends with a square knot. I'll guarantee no scout will ever lose his slide with this method. Stosh

Rules are only used to promote and enforce intolerance. By the time one has to resort to rules/by-laws, etc., they are already in deep do-do. Like Mafaking, me and the boys would be figuring out how to get on the roof other than the window. It's called leadership problem solving. Stosh

My older scouts have a problem coming up in a couple of weeks. They want to attend a Council event and assist in the running of a Cub Spookaree. Unfortunately no adults can attend full time and maybe only one at a time. The PL is contacting the SE to whether or not they can come and help without adults. It would include both Fri and Sat night sleepovers. The event is being held at the Council Camp. Adults will be available to get the boys out there and back with no problem. As SM, I have no problem with the boys doing this and they are the ones working on the details and plans for the event. It should be interesting to see how it plays out. Stosh

I guess in all the years I have been involved with youth work I've never had any major disciple problems. I usually can foresee much of the problems and focus on "heading them off at the pass". When that doesn't work they get the, "It's too bad you have decided not to continue in Scouting" SM conference and that ends the problem. One has to focus on the kids that wish to make something of themselves and not try to save every bad apple that comes down the pike. That may sound harsh, but one cannot save someone who doesn't want to be saved. The quicker one recognizes this, the happier and healthier the organization will be. Stosh

The MBC who started the MB doesn't need to be same one that writes off the partials. If the MBC doesn't want to each, I can't imagine why the boys would want him to be their counselor. If he wishes to continue just long enough to finish out the boys, he can still teach it and have a registered MBC do the sign-off. And he could have registered as a MBC and tell the Council he wouldn't be taking any new boys because of his situation. Stosh(This message has been edited by jblake47)

I solved some of the problem by priming the boys' pump. Last spring I "announced" I was heading out on an activity and the boys were invited to go along. They did nothing to get ready and I went and had a great time. I told them all about it when I got back and how much fun it was. I "reminised" a few times about it over the course of the next few weeks and then announced I had so much fun I was going to go again. This time 7 boys got their act together and went along. I didn't do anything different. Meals were planned out, budgets made, expenses calculated, etc. The boys need to get "left behind" a couple of times to convince them that the adults aren't going to do it for them. Once they figure this out, things change rather quickly. Stosh

Oops, forgot one more. Foil Dinner ingredients, but boil the potatoes and carrots separately. (No brainer, one big pot) Brown all the hamburger and onions in a DO. (dump in and stir around until onions look cooked) Take out hamburer/onions, and put equal amounts of water/flour in bottom and make a gravy rue, thinning with milk (1/2 stick butter 1/4 C flour, cook to make sure flour is cooked (little browned). Dump hamburger back in. Separate the potatoes and carrots. Mash potatoes and add butter and brown sugar to carrots. You'll never go back to foil dinners again. Stosh

1) Fall is rolling around and it can't come too soon. My favorite DO meal is the standard stew, meat, potatoes, carrots, onions and spices BUT instead of using water, use apple cider/juice. It tenderizes the meat and gives a great flavor to everything else. 2) Browned pork ribs with jar of your favorite BBQ sauce and add a can of apple pie filling. 3) 1 doz eggs, 1# O'Brian hash browns, bacon/ham/Spam/sausage, onions and 2 C. cheddar cheese. Do up the meat to brown with the chopped onions, mix in hash browns, pour dozen eggs (beaten up) over the top, last 10 minutes of a 30 minute cook sprinkle cheese on top and allow to brown. 4) 1 doz eggs, milk, butter, vanilla, cinnamon, loaf of bread. Mix/Wisk up the eggs with milk, butter, vanilla and cinnamon like you would for french toast. Tear up the loaf in a DO and pour the mixture over the top and stir it up. We do it the night before so all the mixture gets a chance to soak up in the bread. Bake the next a.m. for half an hour or until brown on top and cooked throughout and pour a little syrup over it for DO French Toast. Quick and easy for the Sunday a.m. "retreat from Moscow" following a camporee. Prep the night before, get up do the charcoal, cook for half an hour eat clean up and wipe out the DO. This can be done in about an hour while the boys tear down their tents/flies. 5) Another great pork recipe is red cabbage kraut with chunky applesauce. 6) Another great stew idea is to leave out the potatoes, make the stew, mash the potatoes after boiling separately, put on top of the stew in shepherd's pie style, brown top before serving (a little cheese goes well too to make it look really great browned). Otherwise get a tube of bisquits to put on top of the regular stew. The boys will start drooling when the cover of the DO is taken off and all they see are those browned bisquits. And for all those troops out there that rely on Dinty Moore, I don't want to hear about it! Regular stew is SOOOOOOooooo much better and with prep in the a.m. after breakfast and kept on a low heat all day (or buried under a fire kept going all day, will produce an excellent stew with little or not fuss. Anyone that eats pop-tarts, hot dogs or Rammen Noodles is totally wasting their time and that of the boys! I go fall camping just for the food! Gotta go, I'm hungry now. Stosh

I have found that if the parent that attends and drives to an event, their own son travels in the vehicle with them along with any other scouts needing a ride. At an activity, I have an extra lounge chair that is in the adult site where they are expected to visit with other adults. This segregates them from the boys. Parents do not bunk in with their sons because they camp with their patrol and adults camp with adults. This minimizes the need for YP although I encourage them to take the training on-line prior to the event. If the outing is aquatic I also request Safety Afloat and Safe Swim. I also suggest the basic leader training if they have time and it's a good recruiting tool for future registered leadership. Most if not all comply with that request, but not all do the basic leader training due to time constraints. With my Venturing crew, the CO members attend most of the events with us and so I always have a ton of "chaperones". The boys usually campaign camp (i.e. meadow crash) so there's never an issue of who's bunking with whom. In a major storm, the boys seek shelter under rain flies or empty equipment tents as needed. Only a couple of the registered leadership of the crew are fully trained. Stosh(This message has been edited by jblake47)

In my troop the only difference between an ASM and a JASM is the age. I expect them to function the same. I have an Eagle candidate right now that functions as a JASM but wears the TG patch on his shirt. Functionally he is the NSP ASM. He was held back a year in school so he'll be turning 18 midway through his junior year of high school, so when that time comes around he'll just register as an adult (follow adult G2SS requirements, get adult training, etc.) but functionally the same as he already is. Stosh

LOL! Yeah, I have my boys strap on their laptops when they go near the water! These issues that involve pushing the envelop a bit is discussed extensively with the parents and through communication and consensus the logistics of making it happen for the boys is reached. If we are having a water activity and the boy can't swim, a discussion is held with the boy and his parent as to what that means for him. We challenge the boy to get lessons, the parents hear this and make the arrangements on the non-scout side, etc. The boy is not banned from the activity, but if a parent comes along and takes responsibility for the boy for that part of the activity, that decision is reached between the boy and his parent. As SM I reserve the right to veto that if the parent can't swim either! I may cut corners, but I do not cut safety. If a parent sails all over every lake in the nation with his non-swimmer son I have a difficult problem with forbidding him to do so within a Scout activity. I have known many fishermen, boaters, etc. that can't swim and rely on their PFD's for safety, the same as climber who relay on their gear to scale mountains. Each issue must be totally evaluated on a one by one basis with an understanding that just because Joey and his dad did it last time doesn't mean that Peter and his dad can do it this time. Circumstances vary and all the boys and parents are aware of this as an underlying safety concern. If I applied every safety principle in the book in every situation, my boys would go nowhere ever. Putting 7 boys in my van to drive to a museum is as dangerous as any other activity out there. As I have mentioned previously, there have been many occasions when right in the middle of the activity, safety concerns arise and the activity is over right then and there! Stosh

Yep, not a problem, the MB counselor and his son go off sailing and the troop can go home. Works for me. Sure hope they can find another MB counselor someday. There's always summer camp if they offer the MB. Would be great, however, if all MB counselors are screened to the nth degree, but alas they aren't always. I can site many examples where there's been things over looked throughout the years of my experience alone, especially all the MB counselors at summer camp that aren't 18. Go figure. Stosh

BSA doesn't have to put it in print, it's all over in practice. "What's going to happen to the troop if all these patrols just go off and do their own thing?" "It'll destroy the PLC!" "The older boys owe it to the troop to help the younger boys." "What's the SPL supposed to do if all the patrols went off and ran their own program." "The PLC runs the troop and is a consensus of the patrols." "We don't have enough boys for patrols so we do everything as a troop." "The patrols are purposely mixed so the older boys have to ..." (fill in the blank). These comments are dime a dozen on this forum. Look at the organizational chart of the ideal troop. See who's at the top and who's on the bottom. I teach my boys that each PL is a SM of a mini-troop and the PL is the "highest ranking" officer in the troop. The SPL is the #1 "go-to guy" to help them do their job because he's got the most experience to give them the best assistance in their jobs. I'm losing my SPL in a few weeks because he would prefer to be a TG and help a promising TF scout to recruit the new Webelos boys and have the TF scout be PL with his mentoring. I asked him what happens when he turns 18. He said it wouldn't be a problem because he then would just be the "adult" advisor to that NSP, because they should be on their feet and functioning pretty good by then and wouldn't need him to be involved as much. Like I said, not all my boys attended the same summer camp this year. Do the math. Stosh

There are those who might question my "safety" but never my safety record. I have done Civil War reenacting for 11 years with my crew and have NEVER had a problem because we all know one accident and the crew is defunct. Our boys are trained way beyond the expectations of the hobby and have been known to walk off the field when they feel the other units in the area are unsafe. I work as an adminstrative assistant to the safety department of a multi-billion dollar international company and and have been described as anal in my approach to many issues including G2SS. But after 40 years of working with kids and their parents there are often compromises available that can "make it happen" for boys in special circumstances. The boys called off our last canoe outing because the temp was in the low 50's and the wind was blowing and we would have been in areas where if the canoe rolled, even a strong swimmer would be in trouble with hyperthermia. We toured museums instead. Although G2SS doesn't state it, my non-swimmers wear PDF's when shore-line fish. All participants wear PDF's any time they are doing an afloat activity and within 10' of the water's edge. Every canoe must have extra paddle and rescue throw or they don't go. The adults carry block and tackle to use if necessary. Yes, I've had to use it after rescuing the boy, the tackle is necessary to rescue the canoe. G2SS is but the beginning of safety expectations in specific situations and one must be constantly aware of the dangers all around to minimize them. If I take a parent and a non-swimming son, they are fully warned that the liability for such actions is in the parent's hands. If parents don't accept that expectation the boy doesn't go. But the boy doesn't go because of the parent, not the scout troop or some G2SS rule. So for all those out there that need their shorts torqued, yes, I have sold military assault rifles to children. :-) G2SS doesn't forbid it so far as I have been able to tell. (It sounds so much better when you leave off the details...) Stosh

This takes us back to the fundamental question of troop structure. For the most part BSA teaches that patrols are sub-groups of the greater whole of the troop. The troop is more important than any of the patrols and all patrols must place troop's needs as more important than the patrols. As one who's always breaking the rules anyway, my troop is a gathering of patrols and that each patrol is designed to meet the specific needs of the boys in that patrol. We don't have a VP because there's no need for it, we just have older boys operating that way already. We basically have no "troop" just a gathering of patrols. The only thing we do as a troop is openning and closing flags. Now, before everyone strokes out, I have had numerous occasions where older boys have found it enriching to get involved in the younger boys IF THEY WISHED TO, not because they were forced to. Recently I asked my SPL (working on Eagle Project right now) what his legacy to the troop was going to be. He told me he was going to take a young tenderfoot that had some good leadership potential and help him recruit a patrol of new Webelos boys and help him get them to FC. A couple of years back a "patrol" of older boys were camped near our summer camp site. They built a fire and sat back and basically jaw-jacked their entire summer camp week away. I noticed this and visited in their pow-wow for a while. It would seem they were all older scouts, been-there-done-that, had all the MB's the camp had to offer, done the high adventure stuff many times and because they were all going into their senior year, they wanted to just go to camp and simply enjoy each other's company that year. If there was a SM or another adult with them, I didn't see him/her all week. That doesn't mean they weren't there. I hope one day my boys reach that point. Stosh

Depends on why one would want to have it as their goal to exclude scouts. Suppose Mr. A comes to an activity on his sailboat to teach the troop sailing MB for the weekend. His son Joey comes with him, he's not a swimmer but a member of the troop. As SM do you tell Mr. A that his kid can't ride in the sailboat for the rest of the weekend? Yep, I can see this situation turning ugly rather quickly when the SM pulls out his BSA G2SS and starts quoting chapter and verse. Stosh

Sorry, but G2SS quotes and rules have nothing to do with it and do not apply. G2SS does not apply to the relationship between parent and child. At a parent's discression, they can take on whitewater canoeing, sailboating, rafting on the Colorado, or sea kayaking with their non-swimmer son anytime they wish. So, once again if a non-trained, uncertified, observing parent and son are in a canoe/raft/sailboat/kayak and wish to go the same places as the rest of the troop, it can happen. Otherwise, is it G2SS/BSA policy to tell parents and their sons what they can or can't do? I'm thinking not, too. Stosh

Why do the 16-17 year olds have to teach the 11 year olds? Why can't this be done with the 11-14 year olds? Aren't the 11/14's the ones needing the POR's and should be training? The older boys should not be taking opportunity from the middle group leaving them with no leadership skills. Venture patrol is an excellent opportunity to keep older boys 16/17. Used improperly it will serve no purpose at all. "You can have a VP if you teach the younger boys". Yeah right, that works. I'd of gone along with that one. "You need to be Life scout, have specific merit badges, sing, have scout pants, be a former SPL, OA vigil, and own your own canoe to be in the VP." Another good one! "You can have a VP, but Mr. B_____ must be your advisor and all decisions made must be approved by him." Now who's doing the babysitting? It totally surprises me how transparent adults can be to the boys thinking they are pulling one over on them. These older boys aren't stupid, quit trying to con them. Older boys will stick around if they feel they are a valid and integral part of the troop. They need the respect and freedom due their age, and they don't need to be hovered over by adult leadership like they were a bunch of tenderfeet. If they have been trained up properly, they should be able to have a patrol that is 99.9% independent from the troop that comes back as needed to do specialty projects and programs. If an older scout from the VP wants to mentor a younger scout because that's important to him, then he does it. If they want to go off and pick out their own summer camp in Alaska, great. As soon as we jerk their chains and reel in their leashes, they will be gone in a heartbeat and I don't blame them one bit. Stosh

Don't offer them anything. Ask them what they want to do and then let them do it. I'm sure none of their ideals for activities include teaching knots for the 100th time or going to the local summer camp for the 5th time in a row, etc. etc. Call them on it. If you don't like what's being done in the troop, then make plans to do what you want to do. If they say they want to go to a camp half way across the continent next summer, the standard answer is: "Great, sounds like fun, can I go and when do you plan on leaving?" We promise them opportunity but do we ever deliver? Stosh

I wear the old belt axe/sheath knife combo all the time. My hand axe is overly sharpened to knife keenness and they both say BSA on them. I use them all the time on campouts and activities. I can create a pile of tinder/kindling faster than anyone in the troop. Unfortunately for the boys, until they get BSA hand axes and sheath knives AND are trained in their usage, the are not allowed. As far as worrying about what's happening "across the pond", as a person of Norwegian descent, yes, I carry a Viking battle axe and short sword at most scout campouts. How does knowing that torque your shorts? Stosh