qwazse

I discourage parents to talk contract with a boy regarding advancement. How is making any kind of deal "self motivating"? For as many boys as we lose when they get their license, we have twice as many who actually step it up and start finishing their advancement once they can drive to meetings and activities on their own.

Since I can't quite figure out how to split your quote ,,, If a boy waits until 17 to do all three Citizenships, yes it can be a bit dull. If a boy does them at summer camp while his buddies are catching bass or sailing, it can be really dull. If the boys picks the "simplest" minimum effort requirements, it can be dull and meaningless. I honestly don't see how consolidating the three would change that. The one advantage of separating them: If he takes each from a different local counselor who has a different interest in public affairs and can provide the boy with interesting opportunities in his own home town, it can be a true voyage of discovery. Stosh can speak for himself on that, I often phrase it as "We want all of our youth to be first class scouts (the concept, not the patch)." That's because I'm on the venturing side of things as well, and half my youth can't earn that patch, and a few of my boy scouts aren't all that motivated towards advancement. But, that does not excuse them from being comfortable in their own skin in the wild and responsible citizens in their community. Advancement beyond that is there for those willing to take the initiative, but if all the boys do is hike and camp (maybe hunt and fish) and coordinate a district-wide service project and help little old ladies across the street and rapel off cliffs and biner their girlfriends and sisters in ... most of us are okay with that. Yes, the program is really designed to allow adults with diverse backgrounds to be resources for the boys. My suggestion: catch up with the person who taught the training over a cup of coffee and let him/her know three things you're most interested in helping boys learn about and ask him if there is a demand for those in the troop our your district. Counseling is not always about providing boys the training yourself but arranging for a boy and his buddy (sometimes his patrol and troop) to get the training from contacts who you trust, then reviewing with them what they've learned at the end of the day. For those partials, the arranging (i.e. summer camp) has already been done, the boy just needs to go over with a counselor the things he didn't complete.

The phenomenon is called "profusion" the exponential growth of choices that folks never had (and really never needed) before. I'm really cynical about tweaks in requirements. Plenty of changes since 1980, and non of it has patched the membership drain. Non-scouts come to me asking if I have early edition handbooks. They have a sense in their head that there are some novel challenges. Also, no regrets about the required ones. Contrary to popular belief, my sons were never asked in school to report about their neighborhoods. They were never asked to review or track their spending, family obligations, or excersize habits. They weren't asked cook meals over a fire. They were never asked to emcee an assembly -- even a classroom one. Nobody in our school district would ever suggest a kid grab a buddy on a day off and hike 10 miles through the North Side into town, then over the Hill onto Pitt's campus to meet with an ASM who was on a study break playing assassin in the Cathedral of Learning, cook lunch in Shenley Park, then hike that same distance home. In just a few years these kids will be sitting in a bar talking politics or travel or finance or how to be a responsible dad, and one or two of these "pencil whipped" factoids that the fella first learned while meeting a counselor will rattle out of his head and command a little respect. At the very least, the guy will know he has what it takes to arrange office hours wih a prof, or to meet with his seargant, or come prepared to talk with the manager and request to understand some nuance or another.

It's like I have an evil twin. :0 Warning about advice from strangers: With the strategy these fellows suggest (and I've followed) only a boy with real initiative will earn MBs outside of camp. He might not discover that initiative until he's 17.4 and finally decides it's time to earn Life, and 6 months later, Eagle ... with increased probability of missing the mark. His initiative = your palpitations. On the flip side, if he does hustle up and gets in the habit of calling counselors and knocking out an MB every month or so, when he does Eagle, he'll have time to kick back and with those extra electives rack up a few Palms.

I noticed the same perception decades ago when I lived in London. The vicar asked if I would teach the Sunday school kids along with another single fellow (a Londoner ... who helped with translation.) The thought that maybe a parent should have that responsibility over some Yank on a short stay never crossed anyone's mind. In the US, there is a sense that such things should at least have parent supervision. But, we also have many of our young singles scrambling to pay college debts and our parents of former scouts scrambling to make sure their kids get through college with minimum debt. A lot of folks don't commit to having kids until they are able to commit time to raising them, so many parents see volunteering with their kid's unit as part of that commitment.

Hmmm, a reward system that's open ended and let's the youth cobble together their own path from a smorgasbord. No specific requirements just something from columns A, B C ... . I think I have a name for it .... http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Venturing/Awards.aspx

I like the idea of something more compact than a full-blown trailer. Keeps guys from overstocking. My first thought was which campsites would support roads that would get the kitchen close enough. But, I guess if you have a bunch of boys they can wheel it in the remaining 100 yards. My second thought was clean-up. Nice thing about a walk-in trailer: a boy can tidy it up on a rainy day (of which we have many). No dining fly required.

http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts/AdvancementandAwards/MeritBadges/mb-COOK.aspx sez Note: The meals prepared for Cooking merit badge requirements 5, 6, and 7 will count only toward fulfilling those requirements and will not count toward rank advancement. Meals prepared for rank advancement may not count toward the Cooking merit badge. You must not repeat any menus for meals actually prepared or cooked in requirements 5, 6, and 7. The camping merit badge requirements have no such provision; however, the requirements are a little more nuanced ... asking for details that the 1st class requirements don't. It is up to your patrol leaders to read the Tenderfoot through First Class requirements and determine what's fair there. I train my boys to only sign off on requirements they've seen the boy demonstrate proficiently. The "I did this for Camping in the scoutcraft area at summer camp" line does not count. And it is up to the respective merit badge counselors to determine whats fair for the respective badges they counsel. Different people, different sign-offs. But, if each is working responsibly in his/her own sphere, it should be clear that the boy had better get cooking!

Yeah, I helped feed that fire a little. My actual policy is a little more nuanced ... With E-mails, I try to copy SM/Co-Advisor/Parent or other youth when possible. Has nothing to do with YPT, however. It's how you make sure a message gets read. If I do have a one-on-one conversation with a youth, I later follow-up verbally with an adult we both trust, and summarize the gist of the conversation. IMHO, this is more reliable than copying, asking if there's a parent in the room, recording for later, filing a transcript, etc ... It's in the spirit of having an SMC in plain view. Leaders know the adult is having a private conversation, they know roughly why, they know they can get more details, and they can ask to listen in the next time if they feel the need.

I upped HH's reply because he took the first essential step in teaching any scout skill (and saving Western civilization): referencing. I upped LC's because, well, because his pic and HH's are similar , and he kinda used the "anti-reference" technique. Renax, when the ASM told you that, you should have asked him if the class had everyone look up this supposed rule in a copy of the GTA, or if they were instead taught by the inadequate EDGE method.

I don't see that happening in concert with program changes. It really would have to do with cultural changes nation-wide. That is, if large numbers of parents are taught the "ins" and "outs" of camping with young children, then the burden of training families on how to camp together would not fall on an organization who is hard pressed to even get its registered direct-contact adults to take the most basic of training. What could prepare families for such a thing? Well a generation of millions of young men and women who have spent seven years hiking and camping together could do the trick. A thousand den moms who in their youth earned Ranger or Hornaday awards would probably have a lot of leverage with the folks in Irving. It's hard to understand why this would be needed when your den is particularly chock-full of folks who do outdoor vacations with their families on a regular basis, but most dens aren't so lucky. And really, they shouldn't be attracting those "all about the woods" types. They should be attracting as many parents who would rather not camp but would love to see littly Johnny be well-rounded and pick up a couple of skills that he isn't getting at home or school .

We take two options: Perishibles are divided up among participants once we arrive at the troop meeting place. Or the boys think of what they'd like to cook at the next meeting and we save it in the church fridge.

A neat feature may be something in our profile that holds our positions as scouters (e.g. ... SM, MC, Advisior). It might be something we type, or a series of check-boxes based on the list on the BSA adult application. (Actually, there could be a block for "current" position and one for "former" positions.)

I find him in the mirror most days.

Sore subject Pack. I'm one of those schlubs who thinks that any English translators since Jimmy's crew would have been better off dropped in the hands of some impoverished, yet inquisitive, peoples who don't have so much as a verse in their native tongue. Out with the new, in with the old, etc ... But the thing is formally named a resource center, so I guess that calls for innovation. The guy who spearheaded this has his heart in the right place. He's an Eagle who's been working with his fellow young adults for quite a few years. He's known folks who were around for years and didn't even know we had a book room. If they did, a lot of our literature was anchored in the sixties and seventies ... and frankly a lot of our young people are wanting to get their heads around more ancient writings that we never collected and apply them to ethical dilemmas heretofore unknown. Frankly if folks made off with our books and never returned them, more good would come of it than them languishing on shelves for decades. This was the right time and place for a change, he just needed the volunteers to get it done, and a boy needed a project he could be proud of.

Better yet, if at all possible, consolidate all old accounts into the new ones, if at all possible. Yes, I'm talking about rekeying on a clustered query if entries are mutually exclusive. Some platforms accommodate such an operation more easily than others!

i'm sure it's on the way, but I'm missing the Green Bar Bill logo and link to his dedication in the banner. But, by golly, I like this interface already. Let's it for multi paragraph posts on the iPad! Now it's time for the worlds ugliest bunny to hide some Easter baskets.

Since the forum underwent a migration (a truly millennial experience), time to report ... Son #2 is wrapping up his Eagle project, which qualifies as the wierdest I've seen. Imagine a dozen volunteers around conference room tables with piles of books typing furiously calling out titles and category names while an 18 year old troubleshoots problems and adjusts data collection. Church is relocating it's library ... Including purging of old materials ... and because of staff churn and rotation of computers, the catalogue was lost. (We found a hard copy with entries from 5 years ago, but nobody knew where the electronic copy was. Yes, the church has a file servers, online presence, and internet. Nobody thought to copy their hard work of cataloging the Library there.) So ... worksite: the church conference room and a sever somewhere in internet land. tools: the usual library cards, pockets, labels, carts for moving books, etc ... Wireless access (provided by beneficiary), personal computers, laptops, etc... steps: from home a 1st year scout from a troop on the opposite side of town develops an online spreadsheet and shares with Son #2. The following weekend folks gather to enter data. What used to take a secretary a week to do, gets done in hours. The hard part is adjusting collection because not every electronic device could access the website ... and printing labels for lost cards. (SM and I, who have enough postmodern data/computer security problems in our paid jobs, go find a place to do some fine woodworking with power tools.) New Library is up and running for Easter!

Axes, saws, fires, toxic plants ... no problem. Firearms, rappels, swims, rocks-and-bogs ... a little management and all is well. But what is it with disks and balls? Within an hour of appearing some boy is coming up to us with some bone broken! I think the there should be a signed statement of responsibility if a parent lets a kid add a football or flying disk to his pack.

Well, the argument I made on http://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2015/03/12/no-app-t-shirt-shows-off-whats-right-scouting/#comment-134747 about what Key-3 would read the JTE FAQ just got dropped in the latrine (or flushy, if you happen to be "camping" near one) ... Okay, before you go quoting that to your boys, ask yourself: "Who is responsible for signing off on JTE?" then ask "What kind of unit would bother with parsing a FAQ, if not one who knew their program wasn't doing much in the way of outdoor requirements for advancement but their calendar had 9+ weekends blocked out?" Then ask "Who is responsible for signing off on Trail to First Class?" then ask "What kind of boys would bother coming to you with a dilemma if not ones who want to think through what really defines a first class scout (the concept, not the patch)?"

By the way, if someone like SST reports about a scout's behavior, I will try to get in a discussion with the boy (or venturing youth) or their parent within the week. ... Keep a little heat on the brats until they are well done.

It's not so much a matter of confidentiality, but rather efficiency. If somebody reads "decided to help Joe" or "went with Jane's idea" they don't have any clue about what actually was decided. Too much gibberish in the chronicle, and folks who read them (or, rather actually read them to make decisions) will soon stop doing so.

After fulfilling the requisite camping nights, adults may be nominated, in limited number, by the troop committee. You may read up on the details here: http://www.oa-bsa.org/pages/content/membership-and-induction