MattR

I would really like to see what was covered in those 3 hours. Typical discussions, problems encountered, push back, examples, all of it. It would be fun to re-create it. I just helped with IOLS, teaching knife and axe, and all I could think was this should be a week long.

That's great! I can imagine it worked better than a basket as sliding off the end of the blade would be better than waiting for the basket to stop. Good for the scouts.

I once heard a CSE mention "getting out in front of the message." Same thing as ypt applies to what their product is. Yet I see nothing. If there is an advertising program I wonder if national creates media and it's up to each council to pay for local play. Does anyone know? It would explain why there's nothing near me, my council can't afford it. If I'm right, this model is a mistake. My guess is most councils are broke and don't have the experience to use advertising effectively.

We can't find enough volunteers to help run it. It's hugely disorganized but I'm just trying to, as the old SM minute says, help a few star fish get back into the ocean.

We do it in Feb, when the food bank says they need it most. Our council wants us to do it in Nov, so it matches up with the council in Denver and we get more press. Go figure.

Yep. Not my idea. I'm so far from cubs I really don't remember any of it.

I was talking to some LDS scouters in my district about what they have for youth compared to scouts and they said, other than merit badges, it's very similar. It's outdoors and youth led. I haven't looked at it though. If the only difference is Eagle then, sorry to say it, but that's no reason to stick around.

I think powderhorn is mostly high adventure skills. Climbing, backpacking, cycling, canoeing. So maybe there's no point on how to organize a high adventure trip in what I wanted. But the rest of it would be useful.

Yep. That replaced FOS. I told you my council is broke.

I'd say training. Think of all the most fun scouting activities and most of them require specialized, certified trainers. Aquatics, shooting, climbing .... Our most important goal is getting scouts to take care of themselves. That's what makes scouting unique to all other youth activities. Shouldn't it involve learning the best ways to reach that goal? I don't want to start another WB argument so let's call it Scouter's Peak, where adults are taught how to develop youth. Not SM specific training, which is really an introduction to scouts. Not woodbadge, which is trying to teach adults how to lead. But something to teach adults how to develop the youth. i.e., give us the tools to reach our aims. Spend an entire day on the nuts and bolts of patrol method. A day for the rest of the methods as well as turning any skill development into a game. A day or two using those skills to learn more in-depth outdoor skills. A day for developing high adventure trips. This is what I thought, or hoped, WB would be. I'm going to help teach IOLS this weekend. The I stands for Introduction. There should be training for that one person in a troop that really want to excel at these skills. They will be the ones that develop the scout's skills. How to do it. How to teach it. How to make it fun. How to encourage using it. I have an hour to do all the knife and axe skills for both Baloo and Scouts. It's going to be a very brief introduction. "This is what it looks like. If you want to learn more, please call me." As for policies, I have no qualms with saying your scouts can't do anything on their own if you don't have an adult that is fully trained.

We're now at $60 to national $200 to council $50 to unit (which we haven't changed in about 10 years) I'm hoping the council will be limited to the $60. That would be a big win for us.

I couldn't handle it anymore. I fixed the title. I don't doubt this at all. From national's view there are a million kids out there with no training whatsoever and hundreds of thousands of adults with no training either. They don't trust us. What could be changed so they could trust us? "Don't ask why, ask why not." I think that view would help improve the program. When I let a scout lead without adults around it wasn't just any scout, I had to trust them.

Just a guess, but maybe the Circle 10 council is a long way from the sea? Like in the panhandle?

Since you made everything else from scratch, try getting a spaetzle maker and making your own. Some 20 years ago someone from Germany brought us one. It's easy and tastes good. We're still using the same one.

Our scouts like the open mic part of reviewing events. That's where the funny stories come out. It's usually a case of you had to be there but the scouts have fun. Make it a celebration as much as praising scouts for a job well done. Yes.

When they used to regularly come to CU, where I was, and just kick the tar out of us. Them and Nebraska. Those days taught me the benefit of having the outdoors as a passion. Yep, pain can be a good lesson.

When JTE first came out I remember being told that they would tighten up the requirements every year to slowly improve all the troops. I'm not sure what happened to that idea. One of the problems with JTE is that it is entirely based on easily measured concepts. The number of meetings held, number of campouts, number of advancements, etc. This is straight out of SMART goals. It is entirely based on the methods of scouting with no room for the aims of scouting because character, the oath, and law can't be measured. I could see a problem with with measuring improved growth of scouts and silly arguments between the districts and scoutmasters as they try to decide who deserves gold. However, character has never been a simple idea to measure. If it were, the bible would be a very simple algorithm to measure people's character so they could see whether they were good or bad. Instead, there are lots of stories about struggling with good and bad. If the PL doesn't know what his patrol is then, sure, that's a huge red flag. Can you imagine the list of rules for trying to measure how well a troop uses the patrol method? What a nightmare. I'd much rather see the SM and ASM's sit down with a knowledgeable facilitator to evaluate their aims. Rather than a ranking make it a win/win way to help develop units. It would be great to see that in Rogue Scouts as well. I think I'll go back to my woodworking shop. I'm trying something new. There was a huge wind that took down some trees at my mother-in-law's farm and a cherry tree got knocked down. I'm hoping to get a local sawyer to come and slice it up for me. I have a spot all ready to create a stack to dry the wood.

Since my kids are long gone, I'd do more in my wood shop. That's happening anyway. Yes, tools are expensive but they'd be mine. Now, if my kids were younger .... One idea I've thought of, the BSA has a great handbook, so why not just use that? Just do the program and don't join. It's not just $50 to national I'd save, we also have a $200 tax to council. Every camporee now has a 35% tax for council as well. Uniforms could also be simplified. The tradeoffs are: no official eagle scouts and no help with summer camps, camporees, MB counselors, or HA trips. While that puts more pressure on the units I'm thinking that could be a good thing if the scouts are encouraged to own more of this. My troop used to do most of this anyway (except the part about getting the scouts to own more). Who knows, if enough troops joined Rogue Scouts the BSA might get some needed competition and bring everyone back into the fold.

Our CO does a background check every year on every adult that goes to any event with scouts other than a meeting. This is just the way it's going. So, I really hope the number of background checks one gets doesn't add up and raise some flag somewhere. Then I'd be in a lot of trouble.

Nobody will, especially because nobody has heard about this. Of course, few people have heard of scout me in. Just to totally change this thread, how is advertising money spent in the BSA? I never see any ads from the BSA on anything. Does each council have to pay for ads or does national?

I like this. But some nitpicking: Get the scouts trained & Set the scouts loose: Maybe not if you're starting a pack? I'd add: get some expertise to look over your shoulder. In a perfect world this would be a commissioner. This is not a perfect world. It should be someone you respect. The training can't cover everything. Also, for troops, make sure the adults are all on the same page as to what scout led means. There are lots of different opinions. All the people you're recruiting for adult leadership have to be interested in this job and willing to learn.

I don't agree with the idea that $1000/year is still a great deal. It may be a great deal for those kids that are on crazy competitive soccer, or marching band, or mill your own robot parts. The parents of these kids can more easily afford this. But scouting is supposed to be for all kids. In the land of under employed, $1000/year is still a lot of money. Sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better. Maybe it would be better if the BSA just filed chapter 11 now. I'm optimistic enough about scouting that something good will come up from the ashes. Again, the problem isn't scouting.

We rarely go camping where there's potable water. We have the big blue water jugs that hold about 6.5 gallons. On our last campout we brought 9 for about 35 people. We were comfortable. When I asked if I could have 2 jugs for my events I was told no. We had other jugs so I was fine. Anyway, I think 1 gal/person could work for food and drinking, but not enough for cleaning and fires. And that's for very mild weather. I will drink a gallon a day if I'm exercising.

The scouts need to see a problem big enough to out weigh the cost of trying something harder. It's really easy to just stand up and talk. It's also hard for most scouts to try something new. Hence, ruts. This is about motivating teens so I sure don't have a magic recipe. What I used to do was, before planning the year we reviewed the previous year. If the meetings were boring that's where it came up. Then it was easy to talk about making them fun. I had them set goals, like number of "doing" meetings vs "watching" meetings. After that I held them to it and, just as importantly, provided enough support, encouragement and guidance to be reasonably successful. It was a boatload more work than just deciding everything for them but they learned and had some better meetings.

The best thing we ever buried in coals as a scout was a Dutch oven with a cake in it. We were so surprised it came out because we went off to play a game and forgot about it. I'm not a fan of eating up to the burnt food. The corn husks make me wonder if there's other food that can be cooked within them, or something similar. Our camps would not be able to support a camporee's worth of scouts cooking over a fire (not enough downed wood). We'd have to move it around various forests. The forest people would probably love us for removing the fuel. In my first troop I don't remember going to any camporees or any council camps even remotely close.