UNOFFICIAL Guide to Earning Eagle Scout: for Parents and Scouts: a step-by-step strategy to achieve Scouting's highest rank

[KentClizbe]

Hi,

 

My new book, UNOFFICIAL Guide to Earning Eagle Scout: for Parents and Scouts: a step-by-step strategy to achieve Scouting's highest rank, is now available on Amazon.

 

The book website is: www.unofficialeagleguide.com

 

The book is targeted to Scouts and parents who do not have previous ties to Scoutingâ€â€or Scouting Outsiders.

 

This is a huge population of Scouts. They are, many times, intimidated by the Scouting culture, and unsure how to succeed.

 

The UNOFFICIAL Guide provides a simple handbook for these Scouting Outsiders. The core is the UNOFFICIAL Strategy for earning Eagleâ€â€6 key points that provide the tools and attitudes to ensure any incoming Webelo can attain Eagle.

 

The UNOFFICIAL Guide package also includes an UNOFFICIAL Eagle Trail Planning poster. This visual plan allows Scouts to see the crucial steps in their trail to Eagle. It is a constant reminder of the Strategy and steps required.

 

Also included in the book are charts and logs specifically for the “First Four†Eagle-required merit badge long-term projects. We know that these long-term projects, and keeping records of them, are the downfall of many Scouts’ progress. So, a key point in the UNOFFICIAL Strategy is that a Scout must begin to work on these First Four on the first day of his Boy Scout career. The charts and guides ease the process.

 

This book is perfect to award to Webelos as they cross-over to Scouting.

 

I'd be happy to provide copies to list members at cost.

 

Just email me, and I'll reply with a link and a discount code.

 

Thanks very much.

 

Yours in Scouting,

 

Kent

 

 

 

 

Kent Clizbe

kent@kentclizbe.com

571 217 0714

[qwazse]

Good luck. Although the last thing I would give a Webelos is a guide to Eagle.

 

I might consider giving crossover a "Guide to Becoming a First Class Scout (the Concept not the Patch)", or maybe I'd just introduce him to his patrol leader.

[duckfoot]

WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH...This seems more for the parents instead of the scouts.

[Stosh]

I'm a bit with qwazse on this. I would not promote a trail to Eagle to a Webelos boy. I'm more interested in the boy enjoying the journey rather than spending a lot of time worrying about the destination.

 

If I was running an Eagle Mill type of troop I might consider it.

 

If a boy is two-3 years into the program and hasn't gotten beyond TF, I might get him the book.

 

Stosh

[TAHAWK]

Not sure where the marrket is for the item being spammed. The % of those ever registered as Scouts who obtain Eagle rank is 700% of what it was in 1965 and has more than doubled in about the last decade,

 

Send your Scouts to a Merit Badge Mill Summer Camp. Many take solo campers for their "Trail to Eagle" programs. You can stay as many weeks as you want and obtain all 21 Merit Badges in one summer - say four-five weeks.

 

Look for the local Merit Badge Mill troop. One local troop has "Eagled" every Scout who stayed to his 18th birthday over the last thirteen years. None had any chance to exercise leadership or experience the Patrol Method, but good for the resume.

 

 

 

Can I flog products here? I have a new portable solar distiller, but the profit margin is pretty poor since it's free.

[Twocubdad]

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

[MattR]

Come on guys, be Courteous. You can't tell a book by it's cover.

 

We tell parents how they can help their sons get Eagle as few scouts do it with adults that don't care. Things like get involved, teach your son how to solve his own problems, how the program works are all parts of what we talk about.

 

If someone put that in a book it would be hugely beneficial.

[Twocubdad]

 

The book website is: www.unofficialeagleguide.com[Also included in the book are charts and logs specifically for the “First Four†Eagle-required merit badge long-term projects. We know that these long-term projects, and keeping records of them, are the downfall of many Scouts’ progress. So, a key point in the UNOFFICIAL Strategy is that a Scout must begin to work on these First Four on the first day of his Boy Scout career. The charts and guides ease the process.

 

 

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.

[King Ding Dong]

Kent, as Twocubdad pointed out all of us here know how to make getting Eagle simple. I think it would help if you posted a PDF version of the book here so we could look it over and provide some reviews or at a minimum the table of contents and a few chapters.

[SSScout]

Here's that discussion again. Does a Scout GET Eagle? Or does he EARN Eagle?

 

I can GET a Maserati, with enough money. I can EARN (or GET?) the money , many ways, some more better than others. Some ways are judged by society as more appropriate than others. Convincing people to buy my pencils rather than someone else's. Curing cancer. Loaning money for sub-prime mortgages. Raising dairy cattle and making milk and cheese. Importing opium to Detroit. Building railroads and bicycles. Choices, choices.

If the goal is the Eagle badge, sure, worksheets, wall charts to mark off progress, all good ideas. I agree with TwoCubDad, we already have the book. But my question is, HOW DO YOU GET THE KID TO READ THE BOOK? .Seems most boys nowadays WAIT for someone to TELL them what to do, how and when and where to do it. And because often they are told and given and so they never read the book. Where my BSHB was fairly shopworn when I "aged out" (never heard that term until I was an adult). The BSHB that our boys bring to their BoR is often uncracked, clean. Kept in a plastic bag by mom, so the BoR can sign it, neat.

 

To treat the Eagle rank as a "goal" as a "reward" is only natural. One has to want it. But why want it?

[fred johnson]

If you can get your book easy to find and easy to buy, I'm sure parents google'ing the topic will buy it. But, I must admit as a unit leader I would strongly avoid my scouting units from having any involvement in the book.

 

The scout starts the BSA Boy Scout Handbook, period. He needs to open it and page through it. That BSA handbook has rank advancement pages that we initial and date as requirements are complete. Those are enough guide for him. I would NOT want to present a ten or eleven year old with yet another document to try to consume.

 

As for parents, we want them to open their son's scout handbook too if they have questions. And our scouting units have parent handbooks. Any "guide" is better done with a one or two page quick reference sheet. More than that is a distraction.

[NJCubScouter]

Come on guys, be Courteous. You can't tell a book by it's cover.

 

We tell parents how they can help their sons get Eagle as few scouts do it with adults that don't care. Things like get involved, teach your son how to solve his own problems, how the program works are all parts of what we talk about.

 

If someone put that in a book it would be hugely beneficial.

 

Not by its cover, but perhaps by its jacket blurb, and what the author has provided here is sufficiently detailed for me to say, in the most courteous manner possible, that at least some of the advice in the book does not seem consistent with what we are trying to teach the Scouts. A book that teaches the Scouts how to solve their own problems would indeed be hugely beneficial, but that does not seem to be this book. This book seems to teach parents how to take control of their son's advancement. Not to mention teaching 10-year-olds that they should be starting to work on particular Eagle-required merit badges (Personal Management, Personal Fitness, Family Life and I am not sure what the fourth one is) from Day One. There is a reason why T21 are earned before Star, Life and Eagle, but this book seems to be having the Scouts "go for Eagle" from the minute they walk in the door. If I am drawing incorrect conclusions, I apologize, but everything I am saying (and much of what the previous posters have been saying) comes right from the author's post.

[dfscott]

 

Not by its cover, but perhaps by its jacket blurb, and what the author has provided here is sufficiently detailed for me to say, in the most courteous manner possible, that at least some of the advice in the book does not seem consistent with what we are trying to teach the Scouts.

 

Not having read any of the content, I certainly can't judge, but I agree with NJCS. In fact, at first I thought this was a joke post. The fact that it says "for Parents and Scouts" indicates to me that this is a team effort, and I disagree with that. While scouts need the *support* of their parents, it needs to be the Scout first.

 

Quaze, I completely agree: a "Guide to First Class" would be great. Hopefully by the time they get there, they won't need a guide to Eagle.

 

[perdidochas]

I think it's a bit too cynical and aimed at getting the Eagle as fast as possible.

[MattR]

Yep, NJ, you're likely right. But I also know that writing anything, whether one page or a book, is tough when people criticize it. It's very personal. If you've ever written a thesis or journal article and had someone you don't know drill you a new orifice you'd know what I was talking about. I was just asking for people to be polite. Who knows, if we were to try and help him he might rewrite it in a way we'd all like. People rarely get a paper written the first time that will be a final draft. He likely doesn't have an editor that knows anything about scouting, so this is the first draft. There might be some good nuggets in the book from which another book could come from. We don't know.