Twocubdad

Right. And I'll add the counselor (and apparently the new troop) is doing it correctly. He's doing his job and holding the Scout's feet to the fire to complete the merit badge properly. There need to be more counselors like this guy. Looking back, the people in my life who made a difference and really taught me something were the mean old SOBs who held me accountable and required me to do my best. For the MBs I counsel I don't accept the worksheets either. They are a lazy way out for both the Scout and the counselor. Depending on the specific requirement (do, show, demonstrate, discuss, etc.) I'll take the worksheet when the Scout when he hands it to me and close it in my notebook. I then expect the Scout to do, show, demonstrate or discuss the topic. If the requirement was to write something, then okay. Too many troops treat counselors as if their only function is to grade these homework sheets. NO. MB Counselors should be a huge part of the Adult Association method of Scouting in which boys sit down with adults of character and learn from their expertise. Rubber stamping worksheets is how adults ruin the advancement program by turning into a high-speed/low-drag box checking contest. To this counselor: Good job. Keep the faith. To rdcrisco: if you truly want the best for your son, find out what other MBs this fellow counsels and encourage your boy to earn every one from him.

The Scouts should show up anyway. Play the game. Make this idiot go through the public spectacle of throwing a bunch of children out of her meeting. The boys then go outside and make their presentation on the sidewalk focusing on the number of low income Scouts served and the service projects which benefit needy families in Queens.

Predictable. Once again BSA will try to have it's cake and eat it too. Instead of grey area youth we will have grey area adults. You don't think they're really going to clip the already-flawed Venturing program of all its members over 18? We all knew a year ago there would be strange contortions to the program to accommodate an illogical policy. This is one of them. There will be more.

These survey results are meaningless.

More than one unit. Your event has been a district/council event all along. The only issue is that it is unaccredited, which is fairly common. Our council ran official district camporees for years which were unaccredited. The only down side is the council can't count the 1000 nights camping toward their program totals. (Which usually results in a sarcastic "woop-dee-doo" from most involved.) If the council doesn't care, I wouldn't sweat actual accreditation too much. However, from a liability and peace of mind standpoint, someone who understands the process should be looking at your facilities and program and comparing them to the national camp standards for Cub family camping. If you DE and council camping committee isn't interested (or if you simply don't want to poke that bear) ask the folks who run your Cub Scout day camp. They are required to go through National Camp School and train on the camp standards. At minimum, it's a conversation worth having.

No, it's really not that hard. Pretty basic unit management. At the meeting, figure out where the pack stands, financially. First thing is to get through the year. Figure out what you owe the outgoing CC and the cost of three months worth of awards. Look carefully at the awards. For example, our pack had a policy they would only present one belt loop, regardless of the number of times the Scout earned it. Given the financial crunch, maybe you only award rank badges and not all the other bling. You then have a couple options. Off the top of my head: Send letters to all the parents asking for contributions to get the pack to the end of the year. Make an "assessment" for each family. Put everything on an a la carte basis. Your kid busted out 17 Webelos activity pins? Okay, here's the bill. This really needs to be done as part of a long-term financial plan for the pack. Your new CC and treasurer should develop a budget plan for the coming year. Any of the above short-term solutions should be considered in light of what's going to happen in the fall. Don't hit the parents with an assessment in May then another bill for dues in August. Your first step is to figure out expenses. Guess your average cost for advancement. If the pack is going to pay for PWD kits, factor that. Blue and Gold, campouts, general administration. This is all covered in the training and handbooks. Contact nearby packs or go to Roundtable and ask other leaders what their per Scout expenses are. So then you'll know how much income you need. Look at it on a per Scout basis too. At that point, I'd call a pack-wide parents meeting and ask them, "here's what it cost to have your Scout in the pack. Where is that money coming from?" Then listen to the parents. If you are in a low-income area (and hopefully you considered that in your expense budget) it's going to have to come from fundraising. Then everyone needs to know they are expected to raise "X" dollars through the fundraiser. The other option is dues. But your baseline needs to be, "here's what it costs." Each family needs to be responsible for their share of the load. (There are a few other options, like asking for contributions from your chartered organization or from individuals in the community you know support Scouting. [Councils frown on that -- you're working their side of the street.] If your pack is includes a lot of low-income families, the council may have programs to help. Basementdweller runs a pack like that, I'm sure he can offer advice if that's your situation.) One bit of advice: unless there is evidence of real wrong-doing, stay away from the he-said, she-said of how the pack got into this mess. Sounds like you have a new slate of officers (I'm seeing you as the unit leader before long) so look at this as if you were starting a new pack from scratch. Don't let the drama get in the way of moving the unit forward.

Oh please, Stosh. You really think commitments work and school are equal to those of sports and Scouts? Or that parent's shouldn't set the priorities for their family?

Come on. There is a difference between troop leaders sticking with the Youth leadership philosophy and parents asserting their prerogative to determine their family's schedule. The troop may be boy lead, but families aren't.

"But mom, I couldn't possibly study for exams this weekend. The PLC decided we're going camping and we're BOY LEAD!" Ah, the inevitable conflict between the boy-lead Scout troop and the rest of the world. We solved this years ago by declaring, with few exceptions, the first weekend of every month as our usual camping weekend. Yes, way back when it was probably an adult directive. But at this point it's just SOP not a decision point. Between two public school systems, charter schools and private school, we have Scouts on SEVEN different school calendars. Add sports, church, holidays and family schedules there isn't one conflict-free weekend in the year. I think of it as a structure which allows the boys to plan successful outings, no different that the store of tents or cooking gear in the back room. At our annual planning conference in the summer we list dates or all the first weekends and the Scouts start filling-in locations and activities. I may nix the occasional hang-gliding trip and "redirected" a suggested "campout" to New York City by asking how the trip would be funded and what the Scouting purpose would be. By the time the calendar gets to the committee, there's not much to discuss. I can't recall the committee ever overturning a planned activity.

All responsible parents teach our children things like not touching a hot stove. I bet with most folks that lesson is taught in multiple ways: 1) standing in front of a cold stove generally discussing home safety; 2) with the stove hot and the child in the kitchen learning to help with cooking; and, 3) with the stove hot and the child's hand reaching for the stove. Number three is going to include my taking positive action to stop my child from touching the stove. Same with the bad guys out there in the world; there's the general discussion of bad guys and the precautions to take to avoid them; there's another when we learn the guy on the next block is a registered sex offender; and yet a third when said offender hangs out at the local playground or shows up for Scout fundraisers. Number three is going to include my taking positive action to protect my child from that person. This seems like a fairly rational approach -- taking general precautions against unknown, unseen risk but taking specific actions when the risks are apparent.

This is less than helpful. Seems to me having emergency info readily available on smart phones instead of lugging a six pound file box around improves safety. Consequently, our troop is looking at some of the smartphone-based modules for TroopMaster or Scout Tracks so we can keep limited medical info on it. We wouldn't technically scan the forms, but would enter key info from them. I mainly want emergency contact info (truth be told, the only thing on the medical forms you really need with you), but it would also be handy to have key details like serious allergies and medications (I don't care that cats make you sneeze and you take Zyrtec for it. I do care that you are deathly allergic to peanuts and carry an epi-pen.) So where are the concerns? What is it on the medical forms you don't want stored electronically? Instead of a condescending "what part don't you get" how about some real guidance?

You are playing their game, Fred. I agree your first step is to sit down with the parents and explain the purpose of the advancement program to them. Explain to them that their sons going off reservation are spoiling the program for both their sons and the others in the den. It will probably fall on deaf ears, but this conversation is prelude to step two: New rule: you don't accept sign-offs by phone or email. Make it face-to-face. The Do, Show, Demonstrate and Discuss stuff needs to be done, shown, demonstrated and discussed WITH YOU. Even the stuff where the kid only had to show up need some discussion so that, 1) you are comfortable that the Scout actually did it, and 2) for the Scout to get the benefit of the bigger picture -- what he did, what he learned, and if he had fun. New rule #2: the "official" record is the boy's handbook backed up by the den records you keep. Parents can keep all the records they want, you only look at handbooks. Yes, this is going to take a little extra time on your part -- but not much. Have these meetings AFTER den meetings. Parents will be in a hurry to get home. You limit them to about 10 minutes -- you are in a hurry to get home, too. If other Scouts have stuff to sign off or if both the "high achievers" have stuff to sign off, they take turns going over one requirement with you until the 10 minutes is up. In other words, you control the flow. Dear Sweetness can do 87 achievements -- you're only signing off on a couple at a time. This is a hot button for me. I HATE the whole notion of Webelos Super Achiever awards. I'm the one who has to clean up this mess next year when the Webelos have learned this lesson well and think Boy Scout advancement should work the same way.

Asking someone like that is a TERRIBLE idea. They may take you up on it.

Time and pressure. One can be a positive influence for change without being destructive. Work within the current system and within your role to affect change. With a nine year old, you have the potential of influencing this troop for 10 years. Do what you can. Be a MB counselor. Go on the campouts and hang out. Sooner or later they're going to need ASMs. Sooner or later they're going to need someone to spend a week at summer camp. Sooner or later the CC or SM is going to move on. Wait for an opportunity. That opportunity may be as simple as leading a Second Class hike with the boys or organizing meals for a campout. Within the your assigned tasks, you involve the Scouts as you feel appropriate. DON'T, however, spend the next 10 years sawing on the SM's limb. If you aren't capable of being involved in the troop without undermining the current leadership, don't get involved at all. Here's a great podcast on the topic: http://scoutmastercg.com/scoutmaster-podcast-217

Late to this party. Sorry. Camping all weekend with the troop. Bare minimum, this man and his wife's attendance at a Scout function was grossly inappropriate and incredibly insensitive. Do you think a convicted KKK member should be welcomed at a NAACP meeting? It is inconceivable the wife, as a BSA employee, could be so amazingly tone deaf. From there one can speculate on what his ultimate motives may be. Personally I don't think those speculations are out of line, but they are speculation nonetheless. Absolutely, he should have been asked to leave. Absolutely the wife should be held accountable with her employer for her incredible lack of judgment.

Well, I was trying to by coy, but yes, that's exactly how we handle it. I ask my guys to complete as much of the final plan as possible. For nuts and bolts projects this includes "before" photos, plans or drawings, a materials list, a budget and a schedule (not calendar dates, but day 1, day 2...) No I can't require the Scout to do that. But then, no one can require me to sign the thing. I look at it this way (and OBTW, I'm told this is how the district looks at it as well) -- I want to make sure the Scouts have a reasonable chance at success. Not guaranteeing success, but a reasonable opportunity. That's important for two reasons -- 1) I simply want my Scouts to be successful, and 2) say what you will about the Scout's being responsible, if they screw up an EP and tick of their beneficiary, it's going to come back on the troop and/or council. If step one of a project is to rip out all the existing landscaping around the front door of the elementary school and there ends up being no step two, how many more EPs will the school (or probably school system) allow? How I judge "reasonable chance for success" is by seeing the Scout has a reasonable understanding of what they are getting into. If they've created drawing, developed a materials list, totaled the cost and thought through a work plan, they can intelligently answer when I ask, "is this something you can do on your own?" Since the new workbook was released, we've had 12-14 boys go through the process described above. All breezed through the approval process and successfully completed their projects. Currently we have 6 or 8 guys in some stage of their EP. Back in the winter we had them all meet and went through the planning and paperwork as a group. Several of the previous Eagles helped with the presentation. To a man, they all said our approach made sense, that the additional work we asked for with the proposal is all stuff you need to do sooner or later and that doing it up-front made the process much easier.

Yeah, this is why camporees suck. My suggestion to our district activities committee was a gathering of district SPLs and let them come up with the program. I was basically called a communist and dropped from the email list. I have no problem with a concert -- who says campfires have to be built around stale jokes and lame skits? But it needs to be music the Scouts plan with the adults running for cover and/or earplugs. And someone tell me why the camp master is telling Scouts what they can and cannot do? If I'm okay with the Scouts in our unit heading back early, it's none of his dang business.

Guys, guys, guys..... Such crazy talk here. Scouts calling counselors, knowledge retention, quizzes..... Crazy I say! Do you not all know the merit badge program is under the National Advancement Team and their High Speed, Low Drag advancement policies? Anything, ANYTHING!, which stands is the way of a Scout checking the boxes in the most efficient and minimalist way is absolutely forbidden.

M-brau, Unfortunately, according to the letter of the G2A, once the proposal is approved, there is no requirement the Scout have any contact whatsoever with anyone in the troop or council before beginning the project. The proposal is the only point of contact before submitting his final EP report. It is equally unfortunate that the Eagle Scout Bill of Rights (or whatever that page is called) instructs Scouts and their parents they should ignore any Scoutmasters or local Scouters suggestions contrary to the minimalist national policy. I don’t think there is an 1-800 hotline for squealing on your Scoutmaster, but I’m sure that was an oversight You are absolutely correct the proposal section of the EP book is terribly inadequate. My understanding is national was trying to correct two problems when it developed the current proposal format. One was some councils, our included, required insanely detailed eagle proposals. Fifty and sixty pages was not uncommon. One of my ASMs is a Six-Sigma instructor and he used to shake his head in disbelief. Actually, National did a good job of solving that. The second problem was with Scouts who invested tremendous amounts of time into a proposal only to have the basic project idea rejected. Consequently they came up with the two-step, proposal/final plan process under which the conceptual proposal may be approved with little or no thought toward implementation. But like you, I have an issue the only approval point being at a very conceptual stage. Consequently I very strongly suggest to our Scouts they include in their proposal most of the planning asked for in the “final plan†section. Our troop leaders have enough experience with Eps that we know what will fly with the district – frankly, our expectations for an EP exceed those of the district. We’ve never had a project rejected under the new process and, with one exception, all the Eagles and their parents are appreciative of the advice and input we provide our Scouts.

Is it me or has the problem with the quick auto-logout been fixed? Thank you , thank you, thank you!!!

We participate in Scouting for Food in the winter with the council and do our own project benefitting the local food pantries and soup kitchens in the summer. Over the past three years we have collected something on the order of 50,000 pounds of food. In the fall we do a day of service at a local quasi-public park where we camp regularly. And we average about four Eagle projects per year we require at least two work days each.

1 -- probably just semantics, but getting hit on by a sleaze bag outside a work environment I don't think is sexual harassment, it's just sleazy. As the object of such sleaze, you handle it is how you handle it. Had this guy come on to you at a neighborhood party how would you have handled it there? How about, "Really? What would your wife say about this conversation?" Or of course you can always threaten to stuff various parts of his anatomy up his nostrils and pull them out the opposing ears. However, as the committee chairman responsible for the good administration of a Scout troop, I think you have a different obligation. This sort of stuff is poison to a Scout unit. What happens to your volunteer base when word gets out female volunteers aren't safe around the SM? What happens when he hit on the wrong guy's wife? Are parents going to want this guy instructing their sons in moral behavior? Or trust them with him at all? Which begs the point, why do you trust your son with him? Any unit leader who becomes aware of this sort of stuff needs to step on it hard and fast. There is absolutely no room for this in scouting. You and your girlfriend should have reported his behavior to the COR, Institutional head and Scout Executive AT ONCE. I guarantee the sun would not have set again with this jerk in our troop or pack. I don't know that BSA would move that quickly, but I suspect he would be on the "permanently ineligible" list soon enough. 2a. The committee is there to support the calendar developed by the Scouts, not to develop it. The SM's job is to coach them through that process. If it's not getting done, your job is to ask the SM what additional resources he needs -- maybe you need to recruit additional ASMs who can work with the Scouts or maybe you need to recruit a new SM. 2b. I'm not sure either why it takes you so long to review an Eagle app. Not your job to fix typos, just verify the info (mostly dates) are correct. Maybe you're thinking you need to review the Eagle project report too. While reading it is fine, there is no space in the project book for the CC to sign. And OBTW, in this situation the Scout's 18th birthday is a moot point. All REQUIREMENTS must be completed prior to his birthday, but he has 90 days to collect signatures, submit his application and complete his Board of Review.

More or less, yes. About 8 or 9 years ago, when I became SM, I set out to hold the first "JLT" the troop had in years. At the time, BSA had phased out all the old, cheesy '90's videos with the promise of a new JLT syllabus. But all they ever produced was a set of wallet-sized job description cards with instructions for the SM and SPL to read them to the individual Scouts. Bleeh. So I wrote my own syllabus. It was based on much of the then-new Wood Badge leadership material, but also included stuff I felt our Scouts needed. Like how to organize a meeting. And how to best deliver a given message to your patrol -- phone call? Email? Printed handout? Lo and behold, a few years ago, BSA finally got around to producing the above syllabus, It is very close to what I had developed so I feel like I've used it, even though we don't actually go by this document. The one thing we do, which I would HIGHLY recommend, is to take this as a starting point and adapt it for what you feel the needs of your troop are. Sounds like your biggest adaptation is creating the ad hoc PLC patrols and sending them off into the woods for the night. That's great. We invite everyone in the troop to attend, First Class and above (or with SM approval), so many of the same guys are taking the class year after year. To keep it fresh, we always have at least one big change. Last year we decided one of our weaknesses was in the Scouts doing advancement sign-offs, so we spent a several hours doing a Scout skills round-robin with the boys evaluating each others' performance and deciding whether or not they "passed." A few years back we felt the quality of camp cooking in the troop was weak, so for dinner the Scouts, individually or in pairs, tried cooking something they had never made before. One guy had never cooked his own steak, so we bought a couple rib eyes and let him try. Another kid wanted to make gazpacho of all things. It was terrific! It worked and all that experimentation and confidence building did trickle down to the patrols. So yeah, I like the syllabus, but take the time to make it your troop's own.

The time-out function seems to be only 7 or 8 minutes. Not being one for one word responses, I frequently get disconnected while still typing. Instead of the little auto-saved flag blinking, I get something about no server response. I have to manually log-out, log back in, find the thread I was on and reopen my response. Fortunately, my reply is still in there -- at least up to when the auto-save feature quit working. But sometimes not. Frequently, after being bumped several times I just say the heck with it and give up responding.

We've done it a couple ways. One is to give patrols a larder of food for the weekend and they have to take the ingredients and figure out a menu for the weekend. Usually there are a couple obvious menu solutions, but we give extra credit for think outside the box. The other is to make it more like the TV show where the patrols cook one meal using several required ingredients but with access to a variety of extra spices, ingredients, and cooking utensils. One thing we did with this was to recreate the Iron Chef stadium by having all the patrols set up their patrol kitchens in one area. While the patrols may try to keep what they are doing secret, this allows the Scouts to learn from each other. Actually makes for a much more fun activity. One thing we do which does more to step up the level of patrol cooking is during Troop Junior Leader Training. Early in the day we have the boys pick one over the top recipe they want to make for dinner. Anything goes -- something you've always wanted to cook, something you were afraid to cook. a favorite meal you've never had on a campout -- whatever. We haul out stacks of camp cook books and challenge the Scouts to come up with something. Failure is totally okay. There is a grocery store a half mile from the Scout House in one direction and a McDonald's in the other -- we won't let you starve no matter how bad it is. After the Scouts come up with their recipes, we send one on the adults to the store while the boys continue with the JLT program. This is one thing which we encourage adult participation. Rather than allowing them to flop, this is a good opportunity to for the adults to work with the scouts and teach new cooking skills they may not have seen before. The guys really en