MattR

WFA is good for 2 years, pins are forever. If you can convince your scouts to keep their training up to date, sure, get them some bling. Or, get them bling but tell them they have to return it if they let their training expire. Might be a good way to explain how it works for adults.

Just my two cents: Leadership is part of personal growth in scouts. It was never an aim, until recently. Maybe responsibility rather than leadership. That too could be part of personal growth. An important method that's missing is fun. No calendar works without it. In all honesty, reducing the entire program to 8 or 9 bullets is tough. What could really help would be a better way to explain them and how they are used in day to day scenarios.

And ruthless efficiency. I knew it had to be a Monty Python quote. It took a while. Well, could it be that cookies are an easier sale than popcorn? If the BSA really wants to cross a line they should start selling cookies. Give the rack a turn.

Well, just because one service unit has a bee in their bonnet doesn't mean I still don't like those cookies. I don't buy from tables in front of stores, though. The neighbor kids that ring my doorbell get my money.

This seems rather vague. Youth protection training has nothing to do with interacting with adults. It sounds like there was a youth protection issue and it was addressed. What wasn't addressed was the fact that "the parent was called out" by a scout leader. Am I right about this? If so, that's the point of this thread. To be honest, if I were "called out" and later proven right, as it seems in this case, I'd be fine with knowing I did the right thing. I'd leave it to the troop to decide what to do with the leader.

My mother-in-law is in Dubuque, IA. They are adding a half hour a day to make up the lost time. Sounds like a gimmick to me but it won't mess up calendars too bad (except for all the sports and other after school activities). They should have just assigned homework to be done during the snow storm. Kind of like working from home. I guess you could call it homework.

Great subject, @Eagledad. Thank you. There's another aspect of this I'd like to hear more about. It's about motivation. For the scouts that are internally motivated it's best to get out of their way. But many scouts don't have that. They need to be externally motivated. The question is how to get them to the point where they're internally motivated? Some scouts are motivated by competition, by shiny new things, their imagination. The 4-ings (forming, ....) all depend on everyone being motivated to accept the challenge. I made a challenge for my district to build sleds for klondike. Most patrols had them so it worked, but in the case of one patrol in my troop the PL was super excited about it but just had the worst time getting some of the other scouts interested. They did get it built and had a lot of fun with it and so I hope next time they're a bit more interested. Anyway, it seems like there might be some art to creating those challenges. We do cooking competitions all the time and when we do the level of food is amazing. But when we don't do it the food is back to the same old thing. One problem is some scouts are just not motivated by the usual competition or, say, climbing a mountain. How many scouts are self motivated? Do you create a challenge like this for every campout? I had a campout years ago that was a teamwork training event. I crammed it full of challenges, time was of the essence. The rewards were big. Consequences were also big. The scouts went all out. In the end they said they really liked it because they had so much spare time (!?). I was rather shocked. I explained to the scouts how much they did and how their unusually good teamwork was what gave them the extra time. They said oh, that's cool. And went straight back to their old ways on the next campout. I guess the big question is how long does it take them to internalize the motivation?

I'm actually agreeing with you. Sorry if it didn't read that way.

You could have mentioned that no fire is required to whip a rope. And besides, go outside and fuse the rope. Yep. I'd say it's better to get everything else signed off and then ask the scouts what they want to do about the ropes. Again, not sure how the commissioner should best affect things.

I wonder if changing the rules of nomination will change much. My troop is brutal when it comes to nominations. Someone says pick the best so they do. The top 2 or 3 make it, no matter how many are eligible. And yet my troop doesn't show up at any OA events or meetings any more than any other troop. I really really hate to say this but these scouts don't see why they should join. Being the best at something is similar to going on an adventure to some degree (you have to push yourself) and we see fewer scouts interested in that as well. That's not just my troop but my district. There was a group of scouts that joined my troop 7 years ago and it struck me that this group was mostly not interested in adventure. They wanted eagle and that's it. Their motivation is mostly external and they have little internal motivation. Most never grew up like the 16-17 year olds usually do. Now, there are a few of them that are interested in adventure and they are also the best leaders, the best at helping out, and the most reliable in the troop. Their personalities are all over the map but they're the ones that will accept a challenge. It has little to do with their parent's interest in the outdoors. I'm not even sure it has anything to do with video games either. None of them are super busy with sports or other activities but most do some other activities and it's a reasonable mix. If it were just my troop I'd know where the problem was but it's every troop I talk to. So, when you get the OA fixed I think there's a lot more where you can apply your solution.

I think the best way to keep your sanity is to do it for the kids you're working with. If you didn't have siblings tagging along with you when you were a scout then ask these new scouts if they, too, don't want siblings tagging along. Keep them away from the boys if that's what they want. Do it for them, not for anyone else. My council is a wreck, numbers are down, parents struggle to volunteer, there are all sorts of reasons to walk away. But there is one reason to keep at it. The scouts I work with. So have fun with these new scouts.

Okay, everyone. We're going off in a non productive direction, which is a nice way of saying Courteous is waning. The current topic of this thread (!) is how to help @Mom2Scout with the fact that her son's troop is creating a new troop. This is a concrete subject. How about we focus on that. There are good and bad ways to bring up the subject and there are likely good and bad ways of structuring the troops. My troop is talking about a linked troop but we're adamant that there will be minimal resource drain. The SM will not have anything to do with the girl's troop. We expect mom's to grow into taking over the SM and ASM positions. Gear and money is not seen as an issue because that is mostly per scout.

Beascout.scouting.org will tell you where troops are. Yes, ask friends. Also, go visit every troop. They're all different. Any scout that takes this on by themselves would be great to have in any troop. Go for it. And let us know how it works out.

I'll try. Because you're chartered by Acme you are part of Acme. Troop 123 is not an entity. So technically, writing a check to Troop 123 is the same as writing a check to Acme. But to solve your problem, how much money are you talking about per donation? If it's small then there's really no need for receipts. If it's large then have Acme write a receipt to each donor. The donors just need proof of donation for their tax purposes. Or, if donors really want to write a check to someone with a recognized 501c3 name, as you said, have the donors write it to Acme and have acme transfer the money to Troop 123.

Welcome to the forum, @Cburkhardt.

This is really the only question you asked. I think if you dig a bit deeper you can find out where some of this comes from. There are a number of issues with advancement. The ideal model is it's a byproduct of doing fun and adventure, and the scout knows it solidly by the time it's signed off, or at least by the time they age out. All the rest of the rules are based on this and they work fine if this happens. Unfortunately there are things that get in the way and cause problems. Changing the time frame, which I believe is what you're talking about, is a crutch to manage some of these problems. Take for example the idea that a scout knows the skill solidly. How many scouts tie a bowline, get it signed off, and then forget how to tie it a week later? Probably most. One way to solve it is to have the scouts tie a bowline often. Have them teach it. Have competitions. That takes a lot of effort to set up. This also conflicts with the idea that the PLC gets to decide the calendar. Maybe they don't want to do competitions. That's usually because they don't want to admit they don't know the skills. The trick here is to use SPL whisperer skills. @Eagledad is the one that mentions these. I'm not a good SPL whisperer so I only got it to work with the good SPL's, but the idea is to convince the SPL and PLC they truly owns the program and the program includes knowing all those skills. It takes an SPL with a lot of humility if they don't know the skills. What this has to do with the topic of adults changing the rules is simple. What I'm mentioning here is not really taught to SM's in any training I've seen. It's not mentioned in any round tables. And yet, a lot of SM's understand that signing off on an eagle scout that doesn't know how to tie a bowline is kind of defeating the point. So they add testing before ranks, they change the definition of active or scout spirit. I've done some of these. I've even had scouts thank me because they had seen scouts in other troops that didn't know the skills. Anyway, the SM's aren't all bad. Some are, but most aren't.

The real subject of the thread is whether a new commissioner should step in and say something about how advancement may be happening in a very new troop. I have no idea about what commissioners are supposed to do but asking questions is a good place to start. I'm working with troop guides right now and the point of Scout is to teach the new scouts how advancement is done. It's possible the rank could be done in one meeting but if these scouts came up through cub scouts I'd be suspicious. Again, ask questions. What we don't want is the cub scout advancement model. As for "adventure, adventure, adventure," I'd think "fun, adventure, friendship" would be a bit closer. I told my troop guides that for every skill they teach, whether advancement or outdoor or patrol, they have to try to make a game of it.

Must be a common theme this time of year, my troop just did this. I sat in with the older scout group. Most of it was see videos and talk about them. It worked but there's something that really helped. The adults had plenty of real stories of scammers and ways they had tried to gain someone's trust online. We didn't need to tell that many but just enough to get the scouts thinking about it. For example, all the Eastern Europeans joining this forum and trying to convince us they're really scouts. Reality is a much better teacher than bullet points. When it came time to do the project we suggested a skit so they could have fun with it. Than I said, in my best Russian accent "Me Boris, we friends, give money." They got really into it after that.

Didn't read the article but isn't it the same for adults?

What happens when you wash and dry something with 10% wool? All my wool things have a lot and while I can wash them on gentle I just let them dry on a rack like thing. Anyway, is this why they say dry clean? I would never dry clean a scout uniform. Using an iron is hard enough.

My first thought was there are roughly a million kids in scouts doing all sorts of really great stuff and this one kid, and likely his parent, does something off the wall and here we are reading about it in the washington post. When I was 14 or 15 I certainly had it in me to do something like this. I probably wouldn't have done it at scout flag ceremony but I might have. And my reasoning would have been to just get all the adults' dander up. I was pretty good at that and when scouts do similar things now I catch myself. Now, if you ask this kid why he did it I'm sure there would be some altruistic reason but, having been there, I'm not sure I believe it. It's likely more about getting attention and pushing buttons. The difference between then and now is the low friction media. Should we let this bother us or just right it off under the category of dumb things kids do? Actually, that sounds like a good sub forum.

They got rid of all those worthless pockets! Good for they. Now all I need to do is leave off all the patches and it could be useful outdoors. I'd be happy with the floppy shirts while camping. I went and read some of the comments. It sounds like they're all a size too big.

Since the theme is no cleaning, how about a cast iron skillet that just needs to be wiped out?

Welcome to the forum, @PinkPajamas. As for which training to do, which might be more useful after the webelos den leader leaves? Or just plan on doing both of them over 2 years and have fun picking.

I think the requirements are referring to "the written word" and not "the written word." Maybe "in writing" would be better. And this requirement refers to the spoken word as opposed to a famous speech written down. You have to admit, given that the requirements are about understanding language, it sure shows how complicated that can get.