MattR

Why burn bridges over this one comment? It's fairly clear the sword is okay to use. The problem is grandpa (Someone). Maybe he was just having a bad day. He is not a bully and doesn't need a dressing down over this. Yes, he picked a fight. Does that mean anyone has to respond to it? If courtesy and friendship are really important then how about trying to find common ground first? Sure, this guy might be a real thorn, but maybe he's not and all the experience he has might be useful. This is why I suggested finding a way for him to save face.

I think a sword is a great idea. Me thinks this issue has less to do with safety and more about some guy just looking for a reason to puff up his feathers. If it was a fun ceremony and the scouts really enjoyed it then I'd suggest talking to the CM. Don't put him in the middle between you and Someone. Ask for clarity. The CM will regurgitate what Someone told him. Look it up. When you can't find it bring it back and show the CM. Talk about how much fun the scouts had .... You just need a way for Someone to save face when you tell him you're bringing back the sword. Then you can get back to having fun with the boy's imaginations.

@@Hedgehog, I'm trying to make a list of challenges as well. While I would like to do this on a campout I just don't have the time to put that together. (Once I put together something that included climbing, shotgun, and canoes and it was fantastic, but the overhead to put it together was too much.) So, this time it will have to be in town. I also want to create scenarios with people problems; overbearing adults, troublesome scouts from other patrols, immature scouts in the patrol. So, some simple challenges with hidden problems. I'm all ears with any ideas you have. I only have two weeks to put this together. I was also wondering about doing a very simple ticket activity. So, after the training each scout would have to find something his patrol would like to do, and make it happen, hopefully using what he learned in the training. Sort of edge method.

If the Webelos never spent time with your troop then that's one issue. If they have spent time and still went elsewhere then it might be another issue. I've had lots of parents tell me how they have been ignored when visiting other troops. We make a big deal when a webelo visits. Bring him up front. Introduce him. Put him in a patrol. Make him feel welcome. Same with the parents. When my son joined, the SPL came over and grabbed him before the meeting started and I didn't see him much. I remind the scouts every year what it was like when they joined. The big kids are huge. It's scary. They aren't sure if they will be welcome. We also invite them to camp with us but not many do. It's winter camping so that's not a surprise.

Part of the intense activity load for Japanese kids is due to how hard and how important it is to get into the right college. Once a kid gets accepted to college life is much easier. School is easy and if you get into the right school, so is getting a good job. On the other hand, getting into a reasonably good college in the US is easy. Getting out with a useful degree is much harder. So, high school in Japan is very important, in the US it's college. At least this is what it was like circa 1990, when I was there.

What I did was an exercise. Everyone took turns at being the leader. Everyone spent most of their time listening and if they had an idea they suggested it knowing it might get rejected. Everyone was also forced to take a turn at deciding everything for everyone. Believe it or not, this was the hardest part for most scouts. One scout out of the two patrols that participated refused to listen and just decide for everyone else. It was a teaching moment when his approach failed. This approach worked very well. Despite everyone's fear that it would turn into a dictatorship, the scouts were working better as a team under those rules then they ever did before. Furthermore, they also worked better the rest of the weekend. It certainly is a paradox that a leader with final say can create teamwork. But maybe there's a useful nugget there. I've seen these team building exercises for a long time and they have never worked very well. What usually happens when we run these, even though we repeatedly suggest that the scouts have to listen to one another, is they do what they are inclined to do anyway. The extroverts usually take over and the introverts rarely speak up, no matter how good their ideas are. During this exercise the extroverts had to learn to listen and the introverts had to learn to speak up, because those were the rules of this game. It has nothing to do with bad managers, it's just personalities.

I just did something for a group of new scouts as well as a patrol that is struggling that I'd like to work into patrol leader training, and it worked really well. It was about teamwork, leadership, and how the two interact. I took a bunch of the low cope style activities, one for each person in the patrol, and had the scouts do them with one exception. There is a patrol leader (everyone has a turn at this). The patrol leader has the ultimate say in what happens and everyone else must obey what he says. Also, we stress that the PL needs to be aware of this responsibility. His ideas of how to solve the problem aren't nearly as important as how his patrol solves them. After each activity we talked about what happened. By forcing the leader to lead, the team to obey, and also taking turns at this, everyone got an appreciation of both sides of leadership and teamwork. It took about 90 minutes. Each activity was 10-15 minutes. The improvement in that 90 minutes was surprising. They started off flailing and arguing. It was everyone for themselves. We reviewed, they tried again, it was a little quieter. All the bad ways a PL or patrol member could abuse things came up, we talked about it, they made it better. They learned the importance of listening. Eventually the quiet scout had to be the leader and by then everyone knew he was quiet, and gave him the time to muster up courage and tell everyone else what to do. This was the quiet scout's first campout and he was telling the 16 year olds what to do. That night several other adults and a few scouts mentioned how well the troubled patrol had worked together for the rest of the day. I like the model of giving the scouts lots of problems to solve. For us it was more like 5% talking, 75% activities, and 20% review. Unfortunately our SPL is not capable of teaching this. Let's just say he needs to take the course. The regular ILST has always seemed like a waste of time because the resulting scouts weren't any different than before. It has always seemed like a great set of tools once you know the basics but they skipped the basics. The basics are more about people than the job at hand. What I don't understand is why nobody that writes up these courses gets that. What kid in school ever sees any of this? These scouts have next to no experience at this sort of thing. I tell these guys "don't make a decision that your patrol can make without you" and this is just hard for them to get their brains around. From the scout viewpoint, of course leaders make decisions for everyone, that's what their parents and teachers do.

While competition is good it's not the goal that counts. I.e., Cam Newton is also a very competitive person.

Steampunk is a mix of the wild west and scifi. The original steampunk was the Wild Wild West. Cowboys and Aliens and the remake of the Wild Wild West are more recent versions. I loved all those shows. What could be better to a 12 year old than a turbo charged steam engine shooting lasers at the bad guys?

MattR - sure one can make that assumption about new units, but that's not necessarily a valid assumption for everyone. Sorry, just bad wording. I meant someone starting new with any troop and trying to make it more boy led. If anything I'd think it would be easier to start with a new troop. I would seriously like to know what it is you're finding that needs more? As I said before, take care of your people means different things to different people. To mom it might mean plow the field so their son has no problems to deal with. ... "On my honor I will .... help other people at all times." Then go on to point out that the members of the patrol are other people and that also includes the PL and APL. It also means they have promised to step up and be a functional Instructor and actually work hard at helping the young boys. It might also mean something like helping boys from another patrol put their tents up in the rain...at night. And one can draw the last 15 minutes to emphasize "AT ALL TIMES", not just when one feels like it. I find that when I take leadership seriously, they do too. But steampunk is much more fun. I have never assumed character development ends after kindergarten. Of course not, nobody in scouts has. My point is that's what is walking in our door. Parents won't let it develop and we need to get it up to speed. The real key to this whole leadership training is simply telling YOUR story, assuming of course you, yourself are leading by example and that example is servant/service leadership. Don't just do as I say, do as I do, too. If the two are the same, you've got all your bases covered. Yep, my scouts do watch me. And that's been good. But listen? They are teenagers. That's where the steampunk comes in.

Wow, it really must have been part of the fabric of scouting. I guess there's been a lot of lost knowledge. That's exactly the type of thing I was looking for when I took WB.

What both of you are saying is that once it's in place it's easy to keep going. That's fine. But what if you start with a troop that doesn't have it in place? I honestly do not see many troops with at least patrols cooking on their own, so I suspect there is very little scout leadership. Isn't this one of the best ways for scouts to learn the main aim of scouting? And yet, there's no help. The BSA courses do not cover this. We've beaten that dead horse. I agree that a power point presentation would be a waste. Stosh's "take care of your scouts" is a start but I'm finding that needs more. Eagledad did say this is a great time for the SM to step in. I agree. That's what I'm doing, but it's trial and error and I'd like to speed things up. Historically, character has been taught via stories. Scouts like stories. Maybe a bunch of SM minutes based on a couple of mythical patrols? Maybe that's how to explain servant leadership. And we could throw in some good ol' Mark Twain style adventure. Rafts. Out on their own. Dealing with wild animals and bad weather. All the things we can't do anymore. Just to get their interest. We could even throw in aliens. How about steampunk? Kudos to the young scout, but he's an exception. My theory is character development stops after kindergarten. Play fair, put your toys away, don't bother people, do as the teacher says. That's kindergarten. That's were all the scouts are that enter my troop. Take care of someone? Unless they take care of younger siblings they don't have to. Maybe their dog.

My definition of take care of a scout is very different from an incoming webelo parent. And that incoming parent's definition is surprisingly close to a new SPL or new PL. Last week my newish SPL decided to have the patrols do something and I could just hear Stosh screaming "managing the task and not the people". So I asked the SPL how this was going to help the patrols and he said it will be good for them to be more efficient. It will build teamwork, he said. We had a bit of discussion about who owned the job he had in mind (the QM) how this was impacting him, how possibly a campfire might be more along the lines of what the patrols would like to do ... And none of it stuck. I let him do what he wanted. I'm not sure if he learned anything, even though he heard a scout call him something not very flattering. He honestly thought he was taking care of them. Maybe my point is most of these scouts have never taken care of anyone before. So telling them to take care of someone doesn't mean much. When I think of take care of someone I think of family: accept people warts and all, tough love, clan first, make up.... Rule 1 of marriage is listen, and that isn't explicitly in the oath or law. And using the family analogy is not so good because plenty of scouts have a challenging home situation. So I'm still searching.

Maybe the first thing to do is define what is meant by awesome. If it's get every scout 3 merit badges in 2, 1 hour classes spread a week apart then you'll see a lot of push back here. However, if you start with what is awesome for one scout working on one MB with one counselor, and then figure out how to scale it up without losing the one on one definition, then you'll have something.

Scouts. I'm finding that they are becoming more willing to take ownership of the calendar and are better at leading events as they focus more on the people. It's a paradox that they don't see and honestly most people never do. I never see that written anywhere. Instead there are vague ideas of leadership. The phrase take care of those under you is too abstract. It could easily be interpreted as "do their work for them". It's a good place to start but needs more.

@@TAHAWK, so in the old days of more outdoor skills and patrol method, how was leadership taught?

My def of burnout: when the crap hill gets higher than your passion. But passion is different for different people. Where it comes from I don't know. I have noticed it is infectious. One person can float an entire boat. I saw a pack go from 60 people to 20 in just a year when their 3 or 4 good people left. Interesting though that, from another thread, passion for your people is not too far from leadership. BTW, Stosh, I agree with you that WB doesn't give this topic nearly enough attention. I thought being a DL was also the toughest job, but I do more and deal with more as SM. For me, DL was just waiting for boy scouts. Not nearly as much passion.

@@Stosh, I realize you're an expert in a lot of things, but the subject of what rabbinic scholars do? No offense, but I'll listen to a rabbi before I listen to you. Actually, I have. I didn't make up the differences of I am who I am. I saw the quote here, saw that there was a difference of opinion of the translation, and just knew there would be a lot more to this given the importance of that statement. It took me a minute to find the discussion of I shall be vs I am. I thought it would be a fun way to illustrate something interesting about the Bible. I certainly didn't want to start an argument. There's enough of that in this forum. But, back to the OT, please. Just as religion is full of arguments about a subject that's supposed to be about good will, and this forum is full of arguments about a subject that's supposed to be about good character, the idea of leadership seems to also be full of arguments about a subject we'd all like to encourage. Solve that dilemma and I'll listen.

@@CalicoPenn, interesting connection to religion. Religion, to me, is a matter of the heart. It's hard to prove anything one way or the other. There are lots of interpretations, and yet nobody can nail it down. Maybe leadership is also a matter of the heart, or at least maybe that's what good leadership is. @@Stosh, not necessarily misquoted. From the Hebrew the quote is ehyeh asher ehyeh. Asher can translate to which, that, or who. But better yet, ehyeh can translate to "I am" or "I shall be." I am who I shall be, I shall be who I am, .... It's one of those things that gets lost in translations and opens up a lot of different interpretations.

We're not trying to beat you up here. Your asking for help is great. We've all been through dealing with people like this before and we're focusing on the practical. We're also thinking about your son. The other thing that's not being mentioned is that, believe it or not, this is an opportunity. Most problems are. Read the front page on the BSA website and it will say something along the lines of teaching scouts how to make good decisions. Granted, this guy is not anything we'd create, but, if he's not wearing down your son so much that your son is frustrated, lemons and lemonade. If your son can and wants to improve the troop, let him do it. What a great service. Yes, he'll need some help. If there are people backing you up to remove the SM, that will help. Your job is to be mom and watch your son to see if this is getting to be too much for him. Oh wait, you are mom, no problem . If your son can make progress then he will learn a ton. I just had a scout tell me he wrote his college essay about a disaster he had to deal with at summer camp. A kid brought weed to summer camp, there was an inquisition over lost/stolen money that would have driven a scout out of the troop it weren't for this older scout that did the right thing. We certainly didn't plan this. It just happened. And it worked out. Anybody can show good scout spirit where there are no problems, so we don't try and solve what we think they can handle. That's why I asked how your son was dealing with it.

Now that I think about it.... We've had requirements at times to solve certain problems but once we grew out of those we dropped those requirements. In all of the positions the SPL picks, I talk to him. I don't make decisions but I describe the job, we talk about personalities, we ask each other questions. I'm always interested in the difference between what the scouts and adults see. This discussion about different ways of doing things has some unintended consequences. Namely, if there are so many ways of doing things then the training can't really get specific about anything in particular. This hurts the new adult trying to figure out how to create a good environment. I don't know if a SPL is needed or not but having a scout that can encourage the new PLs is hugely useful, based on what I just saw this past weekend. The growth in my troop over the past six months has been just fantastic. Some of it has been patrol leaders maturing but in the past two months, since our new SPL took over, it just went up another level. Our SPL, who is anything but the rah rah leader, cares about the PLs. He's by no means polished but he cares and he tries. The PLs see this and they respond to him. Getting back to Krampus' question, there seems to be only two requirement for these positions, that a scout cares and tries. Everything else we can work on. I don't know how to measure cares and tries, so no, there are no requirements right now.

He could be the biggest jerk in the district but if the committee likes him then that's what they want. If the scouts like camping only 4 times a year then what happens when this parent demands he leaves? I often hear and see what happens when a new parent tries making a big change in a troop and it doesn't work. It doesn't matter how valid the new parent's ideas are. This SM does sound like a jerk but unless there are other parents that agree this is likely not going to end well. If this guy is so bad then why is it that everyone accepts it? This troop could very well be a mess. Who will help these new parents fix it? I suspect nobody will help them. This troop doesn't care about advancement or camping, so who's going to suddenly start doing more? Not the parents that have been there. The parents that like to camp have already left. The worst case scenario is the new SPL and his parents get into a power struggle with the old guard. Best case is the new SPL ligts a fire in this troop and a bunch of scouts and their parents say we want to follow him. That's not going to happen over night. That's why I asked what the SPL thought about the situation. If he see's it as a challenge then keep on going. If he's frustrated then he should look elsewhere.

What does your son think of the situation? If it's bothering you more than him, then stop letting it bother you. Talk to him. If he's upset then give him moral support. That might be all he needs. Encourage him to seek out feedback from the scouts. If, as you say, they like him, then that will also be plenty of moral support. However, your son being so young, the SM being grumpy. I don't know. Digging a bit to find out what the cause is might help a lot. It might be that the SM is upset because he feels someone is taking his power. I don't know what the dynamics were before your son became SPL. Does the SM just complain about everyone, or was the SM just running everything? Understanding where it was and whether your son has made some huge change might explain what's going on. It could be the SM is a reasonable guy but just hasn't gotten used to how your son is doing things. Final bit: I had a parent send out email to everyone in my troop demanding I step down, I was getting old, time for new blood, etc. That blew up in his face like he didn't realize. As everyone else has said talk to the committee. Change is always hard and demanding it, no matter how good it might be, might not go the way you think.

I don't know if this is sacrilegious or not, but the push for Eagle by 15 seems to be a mistake. 15-16 is the height of what we call the slacker phase and I understand that getting eagle before that will raise the numbers, but the scouts that make it through that phase seem to be much better scouts. They help out more, enjoy the activities more, the younger scouts look up to them more. I don't want to do the girl scout model and I won't prevent a scout from completing eagle early, but I sure won't encourage it. @@qwazse said: are we discouraging scouts who would never make Eagle from enjoying the program? The only place I really see that is at summer camp. It's fairly well known and studied that kids learn best through playing. Scouts can ignore the rest of the advancement/merit badge push elsewhere (at least in my troop) but at summer camp that's hard, and summer camp is really important. Summer camp is primarily set up for advancement. It's not about playing. If you want to play on a canoe you have to sit through the whole merit badge. I'd rather see camps encourage scouts to play and then, if they want the MB, they can complete it. I know it's not quite that simple (scouts playing with rifles before safety instruction?) but the focus should be on safety and having fun first, and merit badges second. I don't see that.

Other than about 3 scouts, there is only one cluster in my troop. Technically you can get Eagle up to 3 months after your 18th birthday (so long as the SM signature is before) so my guess is our average is a bit over 18. Very few scouts can actually wear their Eagle award given that their coh is usually months after they complete the rank. We should just hand out knots. We just had an ECOH for 3 scouts last night. All of them completed their rank after their 18th birthday by about a month, and it was all the same month. After his mom pinned the medal on one scout I joked and said he had to take it off after the COH. He looked at me with big eyes. I told him I was serious. He didn't believe me. His dad also told him. We finally told him about the Eagle knot. It was a fun evening. As for how many get Eagle, a rough estimate is a third of scouts that join the troop earn it. That percentage is also close to how many parents help out or at least understand what it's about and think highly of it. But there are also those parents that push too much and everything blows up. One of the scouts last night told everyone in the audience he went through 3 stages in his boy scout career. The first was fun and excitement, but he was embarrassed to tell anyone he was a scout, the second was indifference/boredom, and the third was giving back and pride of what it meant. That describes most of the Eagle scouts from my troop. I've learned there is a constant search for matching scouts in that middle region with leadership positions that are important to the scout. Anyway, one of the Eagle scouts in my troop that got Eagle when he was 14 doesn't have nearly the maturity or appreciation for what scouts is about compared to any of these 18 year old Eagles from last night. One more tidbit, another scout, that is currently in that middle phase, came up to me last night and said he was going to forgo track this year so he can get more involved with scouts. ECOHs are great advertisement. It was a good night.