swilliams

When I first took over in January of 2025 I saw myself staying as Scoutmaster for at least a year or two after my youngest aged out. He turned 18 this week, and I'm stepping down. I'll be taking on the role of Eagle coach instead. The biggest challenge was time, made worse by the lack of parent involvement in the actual running of the Troop. Of those who were willing to volunteer time, I'd say about 80% of them only wanted to be in an administrative type position - committee member, advancement chair, service chair, etc. Of those who were ASM's, one never came camping even on the trip they were in charge of organizing, and one needed to be hand-held through everything to the point it was faster and easier for me to do it myself. (Crazily, this parent is an Eagle, yet can't cook a meal or put up a tent that isn't their own.) Anywho... it's been great, and awful, and everything in between. God bless those of you who are in this role. I figured I'd share the message I sent to our Troop after the latest political issues, because I think it's a message that's needed no matter what we're facing, but didn't want to clutter the other thread. Although I have just one more week as your Scoutmaster, I wanted to issue a statement of support for ALL our scouts, our friends, and our families. I wholeheartedly believe in the overarching mission of Scouting, which is "to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law." That doesn't change how we are meant to treat others, no matter what is said by outside individuals or administrations. Trustworthy and Loyal means a scout can be relied upon to act with understanding, Kindness and Courtesy in their interactions with others. Scouts should strive to be non-discriminatory and Helpful to everyone around them. In short, the same principles that Baden-Powell espoused when forming this organization still stand today. Do your best to continue to be the amazing young people that you are.

So... we actually have a transgender scout in our Troop, sort of. (They're still registered, but have let me know they will not be continuing with the program.) This scout is male, biologically, but asked to be called by a female name and be referred to as she/her a couple years ago. We met as a committee, at the request of the parent, to decide what we were going to do. All but one of us felt that the right thing to do was to keep the scout as part of our Troop. Since the scout had the support of the parents, that was enough for us to honor the request for name and pronouns. One committee member felt the scout should look into the local girls' Troop. It ended up being such a non-issue. Our scouts made the name switch pretty much instantly and never gave it another thought. They were all still friends. There were no snide remarks. There was no bullying and no asking why the scout didn't switch Troops. They all just went on with Troop business like usual, with one exception, which was that the scout started to tent separately. (Something many of our older scouts choose to do anyway. Hammocking has become a 'thing' with a couple of them.) That was a pretty good lesson for me, watching how our scouts handled it.

First time posting about a specific trip we've taken, but this one is worth mentioning in case anyone in the area is looking for ideas. We're Central/North NJ, so it was a 6.5 hour drive for us (not including stopping for gas and food), but well worth it. We stayed at Mount Norris Scout Reservation in Eden, VT. The camp director, Eric Bouchard, was down sick, but still repaired a door in their trading post so we could change our reservation and add people to our trip. When we arrived late Friday night to 5 degrees F, he had the lights on and the heat up and the parking lot freshly plowed. The scouts spent quite a bit of time just playing in the snow in the field near the dining hall. https://www.scoutingvermont.org/mtnorris.html Saturday we drove to Catamount Outdoor Family Center, in Williston. It's about an hour from the camp, but again, worth it. They rent cross-country skis, snowshoes and a limited number of fat bikes, and have a sledding hill. Due to thawing and refreezing prior to our visit, the scouts weren't able to ski or sled, but we did bike and snowshoe. For biking, there are sections of trail that are manageable for anyone who is a decent biker, but there are also some very technical sections. The four of us who biked all have mountain biking experience, so we did hit some of the more difficult sections and it was a blast! Catamount offers group rates and day passes, along with seasonal. They had a nice fire going in the field outside the office and rental building. Our scouts on snowshoes took out the trail stoves and cooked at the 'Cliffs of Insanity'. https://catamountoutdoor.org/ Sunday, just a ten-minute drive from camp, we visited Eden Ethical Dogsledding. I can't even tell you how much fun this was. The kids enjoyed the sledding, but it was the time spent with the dogs that was the biggest hit. If you've never walked into a house and been surrounded by twenty dogs, you're missing out on a wonderful experience. The scouts just hung out with the dogs, eating popcorn and warm cookies, for about 40 minutes. They then helped put harnesses on the dogs, hook them to the traces on the sleds, and afterward un-harness and feed the dogs treats. Jim and his staff had hot chocolate waiting for us afterward, and in an unexpected twist, brought out the Arctic Cat to rescue one parent who got turned around (lost-ish) and ended up in a ditch. All around top-notch visit. https://www.edendogsledding.com/ All three (Camp, Catamount, Eden Ethical) are open year-round.

Do you have any guesses as to why she hasn't done this? Is there any benefit at all? It doesn't sound like there is, from what you've posted here, so I wonder what the reasoning is.

As mentioned, the $250 trip is for three days in Vermont with dogsledding and cross-country skiing or biking. Snow Base (in Wisconsin? Minnesota?) charges $289 for their dogsledding trips, so this price isn't outrageous for what it is. How are you doing $25 with no Troop dues? Our Troop dues cover advancement items (merit badges, rank patches, cards, Eagle kits) and camping reservations, along with trailer registration, adult registration, and a bunch of miscellaneous things. A mid-size cabin in our scout camp will run us about $250 for the weekend, and tenting sites are $100. Camping fees are just for food. We don't charge adults to camp, so the $35-$40 from each scout covers both scout and adult food.

For us, the comparison between sports and scouting comes up with scouting being far more expensive, but my kids don't do 'club' sports. They all participated in high school sports, with all three swimming (for at least two years), and my daughter doing track and fencing after she dropped swimming. Youngest son is in marching band. Swimming is least expensive. For my youngest son (high school), it's a $200 athletic fee to the school, goggles, and gas money, since our high school doesn't have their own pool. For my older son (collegiate swimmer), it's $80 goggles and a $350 tech suit, plus non-mandatory things like a team towel with his name on it ($60) and a sweatshirt ($45). Fencing required a lot up front for equipment, then my daughter injured her hip before the first meet and her fencing days were over before they began. Sad. Marching band shares the $200 athletic fee with swimming. We buy shirt, wool knee socks and shoes - around $75. (Our band wears a traditional winter wool kilt on the bottom. Tops change depending on the music/theme for the year. The school provides Scottish military parade jackets and plaids for parades. There isn't much else you have to buy, but it's a huge time commitment for parents. We are required to solicit donations for our Pageant of the Bands and spring basket raffle, and everyone has to work part (or all) of the Pageant, as well as take at least one shift as a chaperone or doing pit crew. Scouts... oh boy. Uniform - hideously expensive for what it is. $135 to Council and National. $150 to the Troop. $35-250 for each monthly camping trip, depending on what we're doing. ($35 for regular camping trip to the local scout camp or other low-cost areas. $250 is for a trip we're taking this coming January to Vermont for X-Country skiing, fat bikes, and dogsledding.) I just spent some Christmas money to get a new insulated sleeping pad, since I have to sleep outside most times (female SM for a boy's troop), and we've purchased backpacks, tents, sleeping bags, mess kits and so on. And then there's always stuff that I do as Scoutmaster that I either forget to submit for reimbursement or figure it's not worth submitting. Scouting is easily our most expensive activity. The troop does have some gear we can lend, and we have a policy of any scout who needs financial help not needing to pay, but most families aren't in that situation, we're just okay enough for it to hurt a bit.

Apologies for creating a new thread. I looked for the old one where I had seen a link for the assessment, but couldn't find it again. I have a link for the online assessment from troopleader.scouting.org and I filled out one of the sections to see what happens when the assessment is done. The page asked me to enter my name and email for results, which I then got in my inbox. Upon sending the link out, I could ask that everyone use my information, but the info - IF the scout/committee member/ASM remembers to do that - would be coming in piecemeal, for every separate subject. A lot to try and collate, and open-ended (as I'm sure not everyone will fill it out, let alone by a specified time). Is there a paper version that could be handed out at a PLC and Committee Meeting? Or is there some way for me to see the results other than by individual email? I'm sure whichever entity is receiving these (council?, National?, both?) has a way to sort through them. As a Scoutmaster, I'd like to use this to see where our members think we are.

Do we have any updates on this hearing from yesterday?

I was hoping the rest of the title was 'rescued by Boy Scouts', lol. Even better... a girl's Troop.

My two cents as a recently-trained SM... 1. I can't speak well to what I thought of the online training because as soon as I decided to take on this role, I dove in: I have copies of Troop Leader Guidebook, volumes 1 & 2, Scoutmaster Handbook, SPL Handbook, PL Handbook, and while I haven't read every word, I've read a lot of it. I've also tried to gather as much info from online materials (Troop Leader Resources, for example) and groups like this as possible. So, long way of saying the online training felt redundant, but that's from a skewed perspective. 2. IOLS was fun, and I did learn one or two new things, as well as getting refreshers on a couple things. Can't speak to how it's run everywhere, but our Council did a great job. It was awesome afterward, during a meeting where we were doing advancement, to have a brand-new ASM with almost no scouting experience be more familiar with knots than several of our oldest scouts. They sure stepped up quick, lol. 3. Wilderness Survival and CPR. I would take these in a heartbeat, but they are not being offered, as far as I can find, anywhere in the state for the next six months. Why such limited opportunity? 4. All this training doesn't make one a good leader. I had an incident with about eight scouts going at each other in a group chat, had two scouts physically fighting on one trip, have made numerous mistakes, can't get ANYONE but our Committee Chair and one parent to read emails, and had a scout nearly drown me last Saturday. Made it through all this, and still feel like I have no clue what I'm doing. And no suggestions on how to make it better. I'm no Duct Tape.

Not to mention, our scouts have already signed up for shooting sports merit badges. If they need to change those now, they're left with the classes no one else wanted, or they're left to run amok. And boy, do some of our scouts know how to run amok. Makes me selfishly glad that I'm not doing summer camp this year, but will be doing high adventure, lol.

I took on the Scoutmaster role in mid-January. Since then, my focus has been on trying to move our Troop toward some of the direction given by Scouting America that we were not following. I typed out an example, but deleted it. Suffice to say we weren't too far off track, but changes definitely needed to be made. I feel like I still don't have a handle on all of this, but it's been a few months, and I want to sit down with the ASMs to have a discussion about the changes made and where they see themselves in this whole thing. I've been so focused on the scouts, all the training, and the stuff like working with the quartermaster to get patrol box equipment complete or cleaning out the shed (still traumatized by that, and I think I may have lung damage, lol), that I've not even thought about ASMs beyond asking who can go camping. To date, there is one ASM who is pretty reliably there for meetings and camping trips. The others (6 of them) vary in how often they show up. One ASM whose son transferred from another Troop has offered a lot of suggestions and ideas and is a regular at meetings. The input I've gotten so far also varies wildly. It seems like we're all in the 'not quite sure of what we're doing' boat, with the exception of the transfer ASM. I figured I'd ask what the role/responsibility is for the ASMs in your Troops ahead of our meeting. Thanks!

Pictures... good to know. Son said he couldn't attach them to the actual workbook and I just took his word for it. Second son still has his workbook to start, so I'll let him know in case he tells me the same thing.

I'm a defender of the project workbook in that it helps a scout understand the scope of the project better, makes the plan more realistic, helps reduce unforeseen issues, etc. But... In looking over my son's workbook there was a lot of redundancy that I'm not sure was helpful. He was getting advice from the Eagle Coach on how to write things out and what to include to increase the chances of approval by Council. That should, IMHO, be something spelled out in the workbook itself, not be information that a scout needs to get from someone else, lest his proposal be rejected or have the workbook come back for revision. From a technology standpoint, having to get physical signatures on a page then scan that and add it back into the workbook is something that could easily be improved. Being able to insert pictures, would be helpful.

I'm not sure what's happening here, but not happy. This forum has always been a great place for help, inspiration, and guidance. Being downvoted for using third-party software, which hurts NO ONE on this forum is pretty unbelievable. And not by one poster, but two. Tron gave incorrect information. I merely asked for help. Taking a break from this place for a while. Mad at myself a bit for letting this get under my skin so much, but there's enough negativity in the world that I certainly don't need another place for it.