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Hi @Kudu, thanks for coming back to stir the pot! I've meet a few such lone patrols (LP). Thanks to a relative's cabin or farm and a generally free-and-open city and state park system, Western PA is rife with youth going hiking and camping independently with their mates. The recently instituted requirements for, and legalistic definitions of, adult supervision, make BSA a very hard sell for an LP. But, absent those here's my observation: The Pro's of of a (LP) joining a troop: Metrics: the LP may now have an objective rating of their performance through competition and sharing of reports. Ethics: the LP may now acquire a common set of ideals with which to challenge themselves and other patrols. Association: the LP may now access their community's most dedicated adults and get constructive feedback on any plans and designs. Materials: the LP now has access to more/better materials through bulk purchases and shared maintenance. Fellowship: members of LP can feel isolated. It may turn out that their LP stinks -- or he/she stinks in the opinion of that patrol. In a troop, the observant LP member can request transfer to another patrol. The Con's: Abdication of Real leadership. In an LP, if you don't serve your mates well, they'll invest their time elsewhere -- there's an immediate cost to failing to lead. Joining a troop provides the temptation to pass on real leadership. The former LP may bank on the troop to take up slack, and repeatedly drawing on those reserves will leave the LP with nothing of distinction. Clumsiness. Free-range patrols drive their parents nuts because they make plans quickly as soon as they see openings in schedules. Troops demand that patrols stop and think about their next move. The other patrols might have expectations. At the very least the LP will have to seriously consider meeting those expectations. More often, that is not a question of "if", but "how." Infrastructure burden. All LP members can quickly agree to use one media platform. E.g., they may meet at a particular park bench every morning. To offset clumsiness, a troop needs to maintain a more permanent presence, and the LP must now contribute to that maintenance by providing QMs, TGs, JASMs, Scribes, Librarians, Buglers, etc ...

Scout #1. Tell her to not think of it as "telling" so much as asking firmly. In fact here's an approach that I found worked for some scouts: For scout stuff, get into the habit of addressing each member of your patrol formally, with titles. E.g. Mister/Miss Surname. Each "command" begins with "Please" and ends with "Thank You". E.g., "Please get the fire started while Miss is getting our supplies. Thank you." In other words, she needs a culturally appropriate language that frees her from worrying about things like pushing her friends around. Make clear that you expect to see her demonstrate progress immediately, and emphasis your confidence that he can succeed if he tries. Scout #2. You must arrange a brief conference with him. Tell him that you observed particularly unhealthy behavior. A scout is helpful. Ask him if he wants to be a scout? Ask if he treats his parents this way. (I bet on some levels, he does.) Chances are he'll Tell him that if he wants to continue to be a scout, he'll to be helpful to his patrol ... both the one assigned by the troop, and the one assigned by the Almighty (i.e., his family). Make clear that you expect to see him demonstrate progress immediately, and emphasis your confidence that he can succeed if he tries. We'll worry about what happens to those scouts if they don't improve in short order.

On my small-troop experience, whoever did the work held the position, patches were superfluous. But how this wound up was a couple of older scouts would stay after and we asked them how things are going and what we should do next. IMHO, focus your attention on the PL+APL if they are showing up, and if other scouts are joining them and it's making everyone productive, keep it going. In the process you will identify who might be the better QM vs Scribe vs Librarian, etc ... There is no point in formally convening a PLC until the troop has three patrols who need to coordinate. Then, PL/APL from each patrol and the SPL/ASPL are your PLC -- effectively or "leadership patrol." Again, I don't go checking patches to see who is sitting there. If a scout's doing work, he has a say. In this context, how the weekly after-meeting goes is that some weeks it's obvious that what the plan for the next week will be so SPL says, "See you next week." Other weeks we have to hash out a number of details or follow-up on a bunch of activities, so the meeting is about a half hour. In that case, the SPL will let the leaders know that he'll need more of their time that week.

We were talking about a particular scout wearing a life patch. And speculating weather time scouting in Canada prior to enrolling in Scouts BSA would be a pretext for doing so. The answer: not until May 2020. Perhaps a smidge earlier if one thinks councils should honor fitness logs done overseas. However all of those logs would have been contingent on being Scouts BSA eligible, which no female scout was. On this the G2A and currently announced polices are unambiguous. The grey area would only exist for female scouts overseas beginning this February. And if a female scout dropped in my crew last week, and based on discussions with her SM, she was first class in concept -- if not the patch, I would lean on my district advancement chair very heavily to accord her that rank so she could start advancement to Star forthwith. But, the last line of GTA 5.0.4.0 is unambiguous that she would have to start her participation count, not on Feb 1, but as of last week. Therefore, I would have to find her a troop and risk loosing her to that set of girls because, if she is indeed a first class scout, the opportunity to mentor these newbies might just be too good to let pass. Bottom line: not officially active stateside = not advancing.

Someone replying to Bryan's blog did me the favor of quoting that section in full, and the last paragraph says: Which means the bottom line of GTA 5.0.4.0, provides a is multi-pronged denial of any form of high speed low drag. It explicitly says for any scout coming from overseas (be she a citizen of the US or Canada or elsewhere), the following requirements must be be completed in a BSA unit: Active participation: That includes the T2FC activity and outdoor ethics requirements which stipulate since joining Scouts BSA, which for young women was not possible until Feb 1. Position of responsibility: for Eagle, that's at least 16 months in office after earning 1st class. Unit Leader Conference: all six must be done after completing the previous rank while working on the next. Scout Spirit: Why scout spirit on foreign soil doesn't count is a mystery to me. My best guess is that such enthusiasm should be recognized by an award from that country. And to give two awards for the same activity seems like double-dipping to some. Service project: Again the closest I can think is that service projects under the auspices of other WOSM organizations should be recognized by that organization and not BSA. In other words, even if you've acquired the skills overseas, a scout must do the time in a BSA unit to receive a BSA award.

There's three hard facts that adults need to accept in transitions like this. "My patch, my rules." Is the level of respect that everyone should accord the one person who steps up to take point. This actually applies to coaches as well. "By the book." Is often what SM's throw back. I focus on the BS Handbook. I also pick campsites that are a couple of miles in from the parking area. That tends to thin the herd of helicopters. "I'll believe it when I see it." is the attitude most adults who are willing to help your program actually have. When they see one or two little successes they begin to buy in. Sometimes to the point where they actually think it was their idea. So pick your battles. If I were you, on the adult side I would invest in talking things through with your CC and COR at a campfire someplace, and stay as quiet as possible in committee meetings. Let the CC and COR do the talking for you. On the youth side, choose your favorite of any of the above suggestions and work it with your youth leadership. The list that I laid out? That's what I gave to our new SM, verbally. We're going forward with the first an last items. Just that little bit, and the difference is night and day. Even though there's a long way to go, there's the sense that we're getting there.

@Eagle1993, firstly congratulations! And thanks for stepping up for our youth. Start simple: Respect your SPL Make sure he has a leaders manual Let him know your expectations, they should include that he Has fun with his buddies Is a friend to younger scouts Shares plans and personal schedules with the ASPL Communicates, communicates communicates Respect his time: As you learn more about this scout, you can add or adjust expectations. Get in the habit of doing this every election cycle. At your troop's opening, expect scouts to line up by patrols. SPL takes roll call, by patrol. Each PL reports "All present", or "All or accounted for," or "# present or acounted for, # absent" Then, the SPL asks each PL to account for each absent but accounted for member. The PL with the least unaccounted absences gets the pick of next week's duties. Some duties that each patrol may request to be assigned for each meeting: Pre-opening activity/game Color-guard Clean-Up Song/Skit Program There may be others. For example with that large of a troop, should scouts be directing parking? Assemble PLC regularly We actually opted for 10-15 minutes after the troop meeting closes. Train the SPL to ask "What went well? Not so well? What should we do differently?" Ask if they need any help from the adults? Stay positive. If a patrol stands out for doing something we, thank that PL. Don't worry about higher level stuff like patrol corners, uniforms, positions of responsibility, camp set-up, patrol outings, etc ... until you hear from adults and see the youth perform. I'm suggesting that you start at meetings because that's where everyone is watching every week. How meetings run sets the tone for how every camp and activity will run, even if you haven't told anyone how you expect every camp and activity to run.

This is national's fix : no female Eagle until October 31st of next year: Miss Ireland could still be the 1st female Eagle, all that is needed is for all other females in Scouts BSA to withhold submitting their application until November 1, 2020.

@Oldscout448 Godspeed. And, if you fall in with anyone fielding a program for youth in a way that you can get behind, let us know.

The found no solution. They just ignored the rules. We have discussed "border jumping" for advancement before. And, the problem would still remains that while advancing in a comparable program overseas, the scout was not a boy and therefore would not qualify to begin Boy Scout Rank until this year. The scout could wear any distinguished medals that the foriegn association awarded. She could even wear venturing medals. Regardless of the fairness of the thing, her rank is based strictly on requirements completed this year ... patch notwithstanding.

I think @Eagle94-A1, that speaks against the method. Not against hole punches in general. However, I agree that these hats are not amenable to modifications. Holes in the brim = water straight under your collar on a rainy day. @PinkPajamas, maybe some advice from National Park Service rangers might help. I have seen some pictures of rangers with their chin strap in back, and their bun/ponytail above that and below the brim. Any female rangers out there with other advice?

Our soccer girls were vicious competitors. (Half my job as crew advisor was talking them out of wanting to finish the season with a red card.) But they also conditioned in the off-season with the boys, so that may have influenced their attitude. That said, I tried to pitch awards and recognition to the lot -- because many weren't pursuing a GS award -- and it fell on deaf ears. The same went for the boys who weren't already scouts. There is a down-side to that lack of interest. It translates into a lack of commitment to organizing activities. But, it doesn't help when parents "take up the slack" and do the organization on the kids' behalf. I mean, the unit has fun -- for a while -- but leadership deficits go unnoticed. You can't develop if you don't know what you're lacking.

Organizations', plural: decades of GS/USA leaders who thought they knew what was best for all girls (and it wasn't Golden Eaglet or First Class) and BSA leaders who thought their girl-facing counterparts were right. That all leadership training (detached from the outdoors and patriotism) was leadership training and the youth would never know the difference. Bill Hillcourt pulled BSA away from that brink, but their was nobody to do the same for GS/USA. Thus was generated the vacuum that parents and empathetic scouters (and girls themselves) asked us to fill. But what I find quite surprising in the two Scouts BSA girl troops who I've met: the rush to Eagle is not that great. They just want to hike and camp and maybe fish. They want the chance to be nationally recognized, but I don't think any of them have earned 1st class yet. The leaders aren't high-speed low-drag people. They just got sick of the "tailored for girls" organization telling them "no, just sell those cookies" at every turn.

Every group of boys is different. If I were you, I would focus mentoring time on your older scouts. What you and the ASMs want to do is encourage the SPL, PL's, and TG's, etc ... to be doing things for themselves. Sometimes adults take things for granted. But you have it fresh in your memory how difficult is was to do certain things. (E.g., staying organized, not giving up when you burnt breakfast, etc ...) If you can help the older scouts see how a younger scout might need help in those "mind over matter" kinds of things, you'll go a long way. The YP stinks. (Or, specifically, all of those adults who didn't regard a youth's protection stink for making the rest of our lives harder.) But use it to your advantage to create a little space and objectivity. Meanwhile, use your time serving the troop as an opportunity to get to know the other adults. Take advantage of the campfire to bring up challenges your facing and get their ideas. If the boys see that you leaning on other people for advice, they might be more willing to talk to a caring adult before things in their life start to go south.

Welcome! And thanks in advance for all you do for the youth.

It's not to hard to infer that if we've attracted 10K+ girls, then we've attracted 5K or fewer boys -- zero gains in boys if @malraux is correct. What's important in all this is the number of transfers from LDS units. If there haven't been many, then staying even represents a lot of new recruitment/crossover of boys.

My reply (well, one of them) when this was discussed on Bryan's blog https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2016/02/24/eagle-scout-statistics-for-2015/: The more useful stat that is less biased by "migration" of boys in and out of the candidate pool is the cumulative # of eagles over the rate of scouts ever registered. I calculated that statistic with centennial numbers: 3.9% of those who were ever registered as boy scouts obtained Eagle. This is what the general public perceives. They know lots of dads and grandads who were scouts. but not many who were Eagles. Up until the 90's, this number hewed closer to 2%. Then declining membership numbers and unrelenting increases in numbers of Eagle scouts began to add more to the numerator than to the denominator. So, what's happened, IMHO is that BSA and NESA have not promoted being a first class scout. They have oversold the importance of making Eagle, and scouts who only had it in them to make first class never felt welcome. That's the real harm in high-speed low-drag advancement. It makes first class sound easy. It's not if you are afraid of the lake and that's where you want to swim your 100 yards, or you read "complete" an orienteering course as find 100% of Mr. Q's fiendish controls, or memorize all of the verses of the Star Spangled banner, or whatever it is you think you need to overcome. And if leaders sign off "good 'nuff" on too many requirements, the scout will feel patronized and move on to something outside of scouting that he thinks is truly "next level:" This comment from Bryan's forums is very telling (https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/forums/topic/trail-first-class/#post-114117): In no universe should any scout who makes it to 1st Class, even if it takes him 7 years, feel like a failure.

It's really a fine line. Same troop averaging around 20-30 scouts: Son #1, he and several of his buddies made eagle. It seemed like his entire den, but I pointed out, much to the den mom's chagrin, about half of the boys from her den did not stay in the troop. Still, 50-60% is a high rate. A few years later, one den mom did have all of her Webelos earn eagle. There were so many ECoH's over about three years that the SM couldn't attend them all (we took them in shifts)! It was actually getting kind of annoying because a lot of them were on Saturdays/Sundays and coupled with graduation parties, and I missed some good camping opportunities. A few years later, we were back down to about 25% of each class yielding Eagle. Son #2 was the only one from his den. Several of his younger buddies (he tended to clique with underclassmen) aged out happily at star or life rank. Now we have a cardre of 16-17 year old life who are lining up projects and wrapping up MBs so the raw numbers will bump up. But, we have a bit of attrition, so the rate after counting those boys will still be 10%. Really, the program didn't change all that much. It's just that some years, for example, when we took boys skeet shooting, many followed up with their counselor. Other years, we could do a similar fun activity, and nobody would use it as a springboard to earn a related MB. Or, a scout would come to camp and re-take a MB he did last year because he thought it was cool. Do that enough, and you might not make rank. But in failing to make rank, you'll have racked up some good memories!

@mrkstvns, 12+ eagles awarded/year out of a roster of 90+ is not all that surprising. A troop's rate will wax an wane. This troop's is on it's high side. More boys will join, they will take their seniors' progress for granted, and many of them will have slower advancement. The trick will be making sure those boys always feel welcome even if they aren't advancing.

The other thread made me wonder ... has anybody had scouts working on Personal Fitness MB soon after joining? The exercise log for that could count for trail to first class. I could see encouraging it if you have a newly-joined older scout who is interested in athletic training or wants to fill a slot in an upcoming high-adventure trip. You need that scout to be in the best shape possible by summer. I recall that Daughter was a much stronger swimmer than any of her boat mates at Seabase Bahamas, this limited where and how long she could snorkel. In retrospect, I would have pressed the crew to get pool memberships and commit to a fitness regimen. Had they been eligible for Eagle, I would have used the required MB as motivation. They would have all probably achieved 1st class by that time, so overlapping timetables wouldn't be an issue. But I could imagine that if I had a scout who needed to bone up physically now and earn 1st class sooner rather than later, I'd seriously consider counting the MB work for the lower ranks as well. If the high adventure is 24 weeks away, and the scout has a couple of years, I'd suggest logging the 1st 12 weeks for the T2F requirements and the log for the next 12 weeks for the MB. After the adventure, there might be some new scouts coming in, and this scout will have had a solid personal experience with which he/she can encourage the newbies.

In general, I would rather a qualifying Webelo cross over when he wants to. There might be something in the pack he/she wants to do. Or, maybe he/she hasn't settled on a troop yet. Or, maybe he/she wants to stick with his buddies. Our pack does have a single crossover at the Blue-and-Gold banquet. That's nice because the scouts can plan to attend. But, we now have enough older scouts with various free schedules that at least one of them could free up time to welcome an "off schedule" crossover.

I've seen the first string of varsity football players from a championship team crumple in the third quarter in less heat. My guess is they all caught the same bug while training, or were up late partying the night before, or they could have had a decent meal with tainted milk the morning of. The EMTs were busy that day. Point is, before game time, there was no way of knowing the boys' condition. Personally, I once hit a wall at about this age on a land navigation course. Between the more distant markers, I called for a break under some shade. I opened my eyes a little later, and asked my buddy how long I'd been out. "A while." My buddies gave up the course, got me back to campsite, put me in a hammock, and kept one eye on me while they made soup. Those electrolytes and a soak in a nearby stream got me back to normal. It was not a particularly hot day. Certainly not arid. But the big advantage was we could get out of the sun. Sheltering in place at the first onset of symptoms, then dividing the group so that half could get rescue might have made the difference. But that would depend on their ability to find/create shade. I'm sure it's a question these scouts and scouters will be pondering for the rest of their lives.

My garage borrows poly tarp from the camping gear.

13 activities in three months? Packed? We knocked out about 12 in as many months. It just depends on who needs to do service projects. Let's see a throw-down!!!! @SSF's tenderfoot scouts vs. @willray's!

Actually, we do. A round oval. I mean really, if the scout took 4 years to earn the patch and we saw his/her picture bragging about it, have we any more evidence that he/she did it legitimately?