Twocubdad

Perspective members are always covered whether or not they have actually joined or not. Besides, your DE will think this is a WONDERFUL idea. From his perspective it's all upside.

I think this will be a great fit. It certainly plays to the core strengths of the Boy Scout. Local councils have way overbuilt classroom and lab space at our summer camps. This will be a terrific way to utilize those resources. Besides this is a grossly under served market segment. Children have scant opportunities to learn science these days. There is only one middle school and one high school (out of 12) in our school system specializing in STEM education and only a handful of charter schools. TwoCubSon, the one doing genetic research in college, was limited to starting college with only 26 college credits of math and science.

I'm figuring these were adults. They should have sense enough to light a fire safely. I'm more bothered that they are teaching tin-foil cooking. This may be a reasonable lesson for BALOO or even WOLS, but I would hope we would step up the game for training Boy Scout leaders. My guys did that in cubs. Where is the challenge? Where is the skill development? Where is the edible meal? I know hobo dinners can be well made, but burying them in 120 pounds of charcoal is most likely to produce more charcoal. It's always amazing to me some of the nice, well-intentioned but totally ignorant trainers districts throw at outdoor training. Sure, you can read the Cub Scout Leader training syllabus and regurgitate it back to a class, but not outdoor skills. When I took WOLS they had a really nice lady teaching the session on running campfires. She did a great job of presenting the syllabus material on how to organize a campfire -- previewing skits for content, mixing skits with songs and run-ons, having the program "follow the flame", etc. Meanwhile, she's walking around a half cord of 10-inch diameter oak logs dropping matches on them. I'm figuring she has a fire lay in the middle of the ring until she runs out of matches. She then ad-libs that if you're having a problem lighting a fire, Styrofoam cups can be used as emergency fire starters. NO THEY CAN"T! At that point I and two other guys jumped in, walked about six feet into the woods and quickly came back with more than enough tender and kindling to build a proper fire. One of the worst thing we can do is teach our Scouts wrong information and techniques.

I see the same thing in the Boy Scout troop only the parents are a bit more politic and savvy in how they phrase their whinning. My opinion only, but I think this is a consequence of how youth sports are run. One or two gung-ho dads and maybe a team mom run things. Parents only show up for the games. At higher levels parents pay big bucks for their sons to be on teams with semi-professional coaches. Scout parents seem to thing that is the way of the world. Drop your son off for all the mundane, boring stuff but pick and choose the fun campouts to attend. When the troop goes whitewater rafting I can always count on a dozen parents signing up for their one-and-only scouting trip of the year. Last week, camping at a nearby Scout camp and focusing on basic scout skills, I had to scrape to get the four adults I needed.

Are these troop or district positions. Not that it matters. Your position is still committee member, the tasks you've taken on don't matter. The conflict excuse is about as lame as they come. What are you going to do, approve each other's pay raises?

Ask another non-profit group to serve as the umbrella and give the Scout cover. The nonprofit becomes the technical beneficiary and the Scout does the project on their behalf. Perhaps your CO is agreeable or that person's church. If the person is a vet maybe the local American Legion or DAV would help. But keep in mind ramps usually require building permits, engineered drawings, licensed contractors and liability insurance. The days of cobbling together some plywood up the front stoop is past.

People who only show up when there is a problem soon become associated with problems. If a UC's role in recharter is to nag late units they won't be seen as a helping hand just nags. UC's could help themselves by contacting committee chairmen early, get the contact info for the person handling recharter and build a relationship with them. Hopefully, most units have experienced people doing recharter and a plan to train their replacements. But last year our four-year membership chmn was diagnosed with cancer right at the start of recharter. The CC was new and clueless. We recruited a new membership chmn about two weeks before the deadline. It would have sure been nice to have a go-to person familiar with the system to help.

1. Ya did good diffusing the situation with the other SM. I would have probably gone all papa bear on him. 2. The PLC should not have made a decision regarding the Scout in abscentia. But failure to appear is really bad form and would have resulted in further conversations regarding courteousness. 3. So the Scout blows off the PLC but still shows up to ask for a SMC? How does that work? 4. And here's where things really fell off the track -- under the circumstances you should have never delegated the SMC. That was your opportunity to deal with all the swirl in one sitting. At that point the PLC had (properly or not) made its ruling and the Scout should have fulfilled that obligation before advancing. 5. Tell the district adv guy to mind his own dang business. Life SMC and BOR decisions are not appealalble to the district. Plus somewhere in the bowels of the Guide to Adv. or maybe the BSA bylaws is a requirements that Scouts be members in good standing of the unit. Given the PLC's ruling, the Scout needed to meet the PLC's request before advancing. 6. Tell the father to go pound sand. Had his son not been where he shouldn't have been there would have been no issue at all. Besides his kid completed his advancement. The dad needs to learn when to say thank you and sit down.

Fred -- BSA rules and policy say an Eagle project can take as little as an hour. BSA rules and policy say an Eagle project can demonstrate leadership with only one other person. BSA rules and policy say an Eagle project can be performed with anyone helping, including parents. BSA rules and policy say an Eagle project does not have to have a long-term impact. So you and your mom spend an hour dusting bookshelves at the local library and call it good. Qwazse -- I advise my Scouts to select a project which is important and meaningful to them. I advise my Scouts to find a project which provides a significant, long-term service to the community. I advise my Scouts to take on projects which challenge their abilities and resources. I advise my Scouts to look for a project which should take +/- 125 man hours (but we don't worry if it come in under that). I advise my Scouts to look for a project which takes multiple work sessions so they have time to analyze and adapt to problems. I advise my Scouts to recruit workers outside their immediate circle of friends as that provides a varied leadership challenge. I advise my Scouts to keep the adults - parents included - in advisory roles or where safety rules require adult help. Do they have to follow all my advice? No. Do they have to follow a good bit of it? Yes, if they want me to sign the application.

CM Mike's OP (you remember the OP, don't you?) was about collection-type projects. For a long time our council discouraged and usually denied collection projects. It took a lot to sell the EP review committee on them. The rule of thumb was to get approved, a collection project needed to look like a small manufacturing operation. Unmanned collection bins didn't cut it. I know a few projects approved on the basis of building the bins, but they were eventually frowned on as the bulk of the work went toward build single-use bins which weren't terribly useful to the beneficiary organization past the single collection drive. (I suppose if Goodwill wanted a number of bins built which they would use over and again, that would have been okay.) The council has loosened its outright ban on collections, but there are certain criteria which needs to be met: Simply putting out unmanned bins and emptying them occasionally still isn't going to be accepted. There must be some process involved which requires organization and leadership. For example, a coat drive would be acceptable if it included a process where the Scout organized the cleaning, inspection, repair, sizing and distribution of the coats. Emptying bins and dropping off garbage bags of coats at the homeless shelter won't cut it. One of my Scouts recently completed a book drive which included outfitting a reading room at a community center with bookshelves and collecting books to stock them. Building the shelves would have probably been an acceptable project without the book drive. The shelves and collection together made for a very substantial project.

I don't like the choices either. It should challenge the Scout (so maybe that's "C"), provides a meaningful service to the community, provides the Scout an opportunity to demonstrate his ability AND is something meaningful and significant to the Scout. That last point is too often overlooked. I see far too many boys who just build picnic tables and drop them off at any ol' park or non-profit who thinks someone may use them some time. The best projects are those for which the Scout has a passion and commitment to the cause/organization. My older son knew from the third grade on his Eagle project would focus on literacy. We have a Scout who just finished his EP which was a continuation of his Star and Life service projects. At Star he asked the troop for donations of books which he cleaned and sorted and donated to the local after school program. For Life he collected and donated about 800 books. His Eagle project has been to outfit a whole reading room at the center with shelves and he has collected about 6,000 books. He is now putting together instructions for Star and Life Scouts to continue collecting books for their service projects to keep the program going. That is passion and commitment.

We intentionally avoid "instruction." Just have fun. Each Boy Scout patrol puts on a demonstration of some fun Scout skill with the goal of getting the Webelos excited about Boy Scouts, not trying to complete requirements. (Anathema!) For example, we always have a first aid station, but inevitably the focus moves from demonstrating first aid to how to create the grossest fake wounds. We now have our own official troop recipe for fake blood. Last year the guys built a huge pioneering tower which the Webs could climb and rappel down. (yes, it was supervised by our climbing instructor.) Cooking usually include stuff the boys really like, but which the Webelos haven't though about cooking on a campout -- box oven pizza, doughnuts, funnel cake, etc. The afternoon always includes a "hike" which really turns into a tour of the camp. We intentionally camp at our summer camp just so the Webs have a chance to get a first look at summer camp. The adults take an the time the boys are on the hike for an orientation meeting with the Webelos parents. We also rotate the Webelos through the patrols at meal times so they get to meet all the Scouts. But we leave it all loose with no tight schedules, plenty of time for hanging out, exploring and sitting around the fire.

Here in the south we would just smile and say, "well bless your heart" and move on. All you can do is run your program and not worry about the rest. Ultimately the boys know the deal. A couple weeks ago I attended a Eagle project work day with one of our Scouts. He had a number of the troop members about his age plus one kid who left our troop a few years ago under less than stellar circumstances. He transferred to the local Eagle mill across town. You should have seen the looks on the faces of my guys when this kid announced he had passed his Eagle board of review: they all turned and stared with their mouths opens. Finally one guys said, "well I never saw that coming." Later, when they started comparing notes about this kid's Eagle project, what he (hadn't) done for a POR and how his troop, that they earn 6-8 merit badges at camp every year and that the troop spoon-feeds classes for the rest, my guys could believe it. When he left they couldn't wait to tell me all about it. (Of course, I knew how the troop operated.) They kept telling me, "we could never get by with that." Reminds me of the time I was coaching my son's t-ball baseball team. One of the boys asked me what the score was. "Well, we don't really keep score. Everyone plays and we just try to have fun." From somewhere in the outfield I hear this little, cherubic voice say, "It's 17 to 2. We're kicking their butts." Kids always know the score.

Then you'll have folks complaining they missed Outdoorsman. People make choices. These families have made/are making theirs. As I recall, Readyman wasn't a one-meeting badge. It will be considerably more than "review" for the boys repeating it -- what? three times in a matter of a few months? I would let these families know the campout will be the last den-provided opportunity for earning Readyman. If they miss it THEY will be responsible for learning the material on their own. (Maybe some of their buddies will offer to work with them.) But then the den will take one meeting sometime in the future for those scouts to work with the den and den leaders to sign off on the requiremrs. 'Cause you know the next thing will be those parents calling you for individual meetings to do the sign-offs.

My only experience with losing a scout in the middle of the night was with two Wolf cubs tenting together but adjacent to their dads. One kid got up in the night and his buddy rolled over an went back to sleep. The only detail the buddy. Could provide was "it was dark out." After a 90 minute search the CM of the adjacent pack brought him over. He was in line for breakfast and they hadn't noticed him. Consequently I don't put a lot of stock in the safety provided by an unconscious tent mate. Frankly, if a kid can't manage to get himself to the loo and back he probably doesn't need to be in scouting. Our troop provides each patrol three two-man tents and one three-man. The three-man is available to accommodate an odd number of as a perq to the PL if he wants the space. No prohibition against sleeping under the stars, in hammocks or solo (although we do discourage it with newbies. They may say they want to sleep alone but they frequently change their mind after lights out. ) We discourage but don't ban personal tents. We got tired of mediating disputes between landlords and tenants. The only rule we have in no Coleman Condos for the reasons KDD mentioned. With 8 guys in a tent SOMEONE is always awake talking.

Is your troop chartered by a law firm?

Sorry if this makes you squeamish, Matt, but this is exactly how adults ruin the advancement program for boys by applying their adult experience, education and organizational skills to a problem the boys should be figuring out on their own. We provide them with fill-in-the-blank forms to make sure they don't waste a minute of our, um I mean THEIR time on starting, stopping and starting these merit badges again. Of course we adults can figure out all sort of ideas for organizing ourselves to make earning these badges easy. But easy isn't the goal. Overcoming a series of progressive obstacles is. Sure, with our educations and years of adult experience, we all know how to approach these requirements, but there is a reason there is an age limit on earning Eagle. The program is designed for boys aged 11 to 18 to figure these things out. Consider that the underlying requirement in the three 90 day badges isn't just doing chores, exercises or tracking a budget, but figuring what it takes to stick with something on a daily basis for 90 days. Adults cheat Scouts of that experience by handing them charts, setting up classes, figuring out how to piggy-back activities and double-dip on requirements. Scouting is to be experienced, not completed. Experience takes time. Trying to impose adult ideas of what is efficient does not add to the experience but detracts from it.

Our troop has had one of these for years. It's called THE BOY SCOUT HANDBOOK.

Hard to argue against more training. But come on. We tried everything formal training to one on one handholding. I don't know if it's laziness per se, but certainly a lack of seriousness, pride in a job well done or responsibility. Take scribe. I'd be thrilled to have a scribe who will CONSISTENTLY take attendance. I can't conceive anyone making it through the second week of kindergarten without understanding the concept of taking attendance. PLC minutes is different. I doubt most adults know how to properly record the minutes of a meeting. But how about "take notes"? I've created forms for our scribes to simply fill out. I've sat with the scribe and taken the minutes together. I made a 3foot by 4-foot version of the troop meeting plan sheet out of whiteboard material so the entire PLC can help. Bottom line is as soon as I stop the "training"/handholding the note taking stops.

Perhaps I'm missing the point, but my understanding of the main issue here is the older, "cooler" guys don't want to put any effort into the program. They expect the adults to spoon-feed them fun and adventure (well, maybe not adventure, that takes work too). Their parents and at least some of the adult leaders are backing them up. These older Scouts and their parents have well-defined expectations of the troop which must be either changed or met. The best outcome under Stosh's program -- which will be great if it works -- would be for the dorks to come together as a patrol, develop a great program which wins over some of the cooler guys. But based on your description, I don't see all 12+ of the cool guys making the buy-in. I'm guessing these older guys and their parents were fairly-well catered to under the leadership of the former SM/COR. I'm further guessing they have grown accustomed to a certain level of service and an easy path to advancement. Those are hard habits to break. One session in the much-maligned "new" Wood Badge course is on the topic of managing change. It's been awhile, but as I recall some of the points of that session were in order to effect change, you must have a clear vision of the new direction you want to take, make sure the people key to your success are on-board and expect fall out from those who aren't. The down-side of your best outcome may very well be all-out war from the older guys and their parents who don't fall in with the approach Stosh outlined. The question is who will last longer, you and the SM or the older guys and their parents? The answer to that depends on the level of support a real youth-led program has within the committee and the chartered organization. Which is why I suggest the adults develop a clear understanding of the direction you wish to take the troop. You may find that most of the Scouts and families are willing to go along with the new program. But you need to find out. My impression from your posts is this isn't a tweaking of an overly adult led unit, but a sea change at the core of the unit. If that is the case, sounds like someone needs to find a new unit. Maybe it's you and the SM. Maybe it's a few of the older guys and/or their parents. But if most the Scouts, their families,the chartered organization and it's representative are happy with a big Webelos III program, who are you to make the change?

IMHO, your Number One issue is the lack of a clear, common vision for the troop among the key troop leaders. Until the adult leadership can agree on a vision and direction for the unit, expecting the youth leaders to fall in line is ridiculous. Fall in behind who? Unfortunately, you have to come to terms with the COR. He represents the owners of the troop and it is his vision you need to work toward. That's not to say you don't have input. You should. But so should the parents of the slugs, um, Scouts. If the COR, committee and parents want a glorified Webelos III program, it going to be very difficult for you to run a traditional, boy-led program. You and the SM need to sit down with the CC and COR and outline your vision for the unit. If they don't support the changes you want to make you need to move in another direction, and by direction I mean another troop. I don't realistically see where you are going to make the U-turn with this group.

Please don't.

Who knows. All these discrepancies are well within the media's usual margin of error.

Note the join date. But the two cubs are still around, just not Cub Scouts.