JerseyScout

I might make it a certain amount of points for 75% attendence at each meeting for each patrol (meeting attendence) instead of 75% of 3 of 4 (or 4 of 5) so that if there are two bad weeks in a row (due to a flu bug, or whatever else) the patrol wouldn't just give up on attendence points altogether, but that's just me. It looks pretty good/

Guh, don't get me started. In the last five years, we've had just under twenty boys make Eagle Scout, most of them excellent Scouts who really worked hard for the honor. Every one of them (and their parents) have come away from the Eagle Board of Review with a horrible taste in their mouth. Scouts are asked the same question four different ways, and then berated if their answers are in any way different. The interviews focus less on reflection of a Scouting career and how Scouting will continue to influence their lives and focus more on tiny, inconsquential details and what I can only describe as "playing games, threatening to deny a Scout his earned-rank if he doesn't grovel properly. I thought at first that it was the board giving my kids a hard time (our troop and our district have been on poor terms with each other for forty-plus years), but asking around this seems to happen to Scouts from every troop, even those whose parents are bigwigs over at district. We've done the training, we do mock Boards ahead of time, we have a trained Eagle coordinator, and we have recent Eagle Scouts go through all of the paperwork with prospective Eagle Scouts to try to iron out any potential weak points. Nothing has worked, nothing makes the slightest bit of difference. You want these Eagle Scouts (who must be fairly dedicated, or they wouldn't be Eagles) to continue to give back to Scouting with their time and Friends of Scouting contributions, but you treat them poorly and have them come away from what should be the capstone of their Scouting career, a chance to reflect on what they've done and reflect on how it will shape them, feeling angry and disallusioned. Hell of a way to run an organization.

You win.

This is my story for my Scouts (and impatient leaders) about "the bad kid" or "the annoying kid". When I was in my troop as a Scout, there was this one knucklehead. He had at least one knife confiscated off of him every trip (as his patrol leader, it was usually by me), talked back to the older Scouts (and some leaders as well), was regularly in fistfights, had some extremely dangerous moments with fire, made the leaders absolutely crazy, and had almost no Scouting abilities whatsoever. In his third year of Scouting, we all (about 50 kids and 15 adults) went up to New York state for a week of camping in a state park. There were backpacking trips of various lengths and other adventures. One of those adventures was a 14 mile canoe trek with all of us. Anyway, the day started in the 90s with a bright sun. Out of nowhere (the weather forcast had predicted a gorgous, hot day), we had a rain storm come through that dropped tempatures 25 degrees in a half hour, as well as soaked all of us head to toe. I was unfortunate enough to have an extremely large Scout (at least 50 pounds heavier than myself) in the front end of my canoe who froze up and would not paddle. I exhausted myself trying to get downriver, and I was freezing due to the rain and the paddling wasn't warming me up. We all made it back, crammed into the vans, and went back to camp. When we got there, I wandered back to my lean-to I was sharing with "the outcasts" of the troop (who were all kids I had had in my patrol at some point and helped along), including before mentioned knucklehead (my tent had been flooded out on a backpacking expedition, they were nice enough to make room for me in their lean-to). I was exhausted and completely out of it, and I lay down in my soaking wet clothes to sleep. The knucklehead looked over at me, immediately realized something was wrong, and told one of the other Scouts to go find one of the leaders who was a nurse. I insisted I was fine, I was just tired. The other kids were laughing and carrying on and told him to leave me alone, I was fine. He told them to "Shut the (word deleted) up and go fine Mrs. So-and-so right now", which one of the kids, taken aback, did. He and another Scout in the bunk immediately started to get me out of my wet clothes and into dry ones. I was, as you may have guessed, was in fairly advanced case of hypothermia, one missed by a carload of good friends (many who were also the youth leaders of the troop, many of whom became Eagle Scouts), an ER doctor who was driving the van I was in, a lean-to full of far more Scoutlike Scouts, and, in my humble opinion, a group of some of the finest Scout leaders to ever put on a uniform. The leaders came and put me into a van with heat cranked, covered me in blankets, fed me hot chocolate and soup, and sent me 800 miles home that night. Alerted to the danger by this kid, they searched the camp and found some less serious cases, which they also took care of. It was the knucklehead, the screwup, the unscoutly Scout who figured out that something was wrong, and immediately went into action despite my own and his bunkmates arguments. If I had gone to sleep for an hour or two, who knows what would have happened? So you simply never know. And even those kids who do get removed, you still may have made a difference.

Maybe its because I work with kids that age (10), or maybe its because I've seen how alot of troops are having problems with falling recruitment numbers (my troop, thankfully, is having our best recruitment year in a decade), but five new kids are a blessing. Run with it, with five of them together, they should catch up just fine. The good thing about age is its always going up.(This message has been edited by JerseyScout)

A giant thumbs up to National for adding this on. Our troop had a crappy looking website that myself and another adult revamped information-wise over the course of a year (it had been neglected for three or four years). Then one of the Scouts took it over last winter. This scout, a kid only in 7th grade, took the site over (his father had been the adult who helped me revamp it) and completely rebuilt it by himself. And by himself, I mean, he did it with no help technology-wise from anyone. The finished (but constantly being improved) project is beautiful, in my biased opinion better looking and better laid out than our award-winning council webpage. It's got a list of events for the year, pictures galore (either get release forms signed by parents and don't label the pictures with names, or else lock down that part of the site), a troop FAQ, a copy of our newly-resurected monthly newsletter, necessary Scout forms (permission slips, medical forms, suggested camping equipment for a weekend trip list as put together by the Scouts), and tons of other stuff. The picture section is especially popular, as it allows parents to download pictures to either a) keep, b) make prints of, or c) share in facebook and other social networking forums. I also hear my Scouts say all the time, "Oh yea, I took that picture where I was hanging upside down from a tree fighting off three wolves with a stick and made it my picture!"* Upcoming additions are the troop merit badge counselor list and possibly the ability for registered troop members to leave comments The young kids make us older folks look incompentent technology wise, give them the reigns and let them go nuts. A well-made, well-laid out, picture laden, kid-run website is a great front for any troop, and a great recruitment tool to boot. Anyone who is looking for a website that is working for one troop, you can PM me and I can send you the link. * = This event has not actually happened yet, but kids being kids, one of them will figure out how to do it.(This message has been edited by JerseyScout)

We had a problem with this for a couple of Scouts who "just felt like leaving". It noticably dropped off when we started stopping someplace "cool" each Sunday on the way back from each trip. It sounds like you guys already have something like that though.

Each summer, my troop heads to a different location (the only rule is it must be out of state) for a week long camping trip to places such as the Smokey Mountains, Vermont, Western Pennsylvania, etc. We usually split into groups, one for a 50 mile backpacking or foot/afloat and a "base camp" that does day trips each day (canoeing, kayaking, rock climbing, hiking, a one night backpacking trip, etc). None of these trips has been to a Boy Scout camp (although we were fortunate enough to send crew to Philmont five years back), and we've been doing this each and every summer for over 40 years. My question is, do other troops in other parts of the country do this, or was the guy who founded our troop just nuts? Just a survey to satisfy my own curiosity.