Is the choice really the boys?

[Crossramwedge]

Every Christmas the boys get together and perform a community service. Something fitting for the time of year. We have done shoe boxes, Caroling at nursing homes, fed a Habitat for Humanity crew a hot meal etc.

 

This year they where discussing what they where going to do. Several suggestions where offered, both by adults and boys. The boys then went into their meeting room and discussed the options. It came down to Caroling at a nursing home or feeding a meal to the homeless. After every thing was discussed the meal was the way they wanted to go. They even planned it.

 

Then the SM walked into the room and asked them what they decided on. When he was told the meal, he proceeded to tell the boys that it was to hard, that the homeless would not show and that we would have to throw away the food. Well, I beg your pardon. He knows that I have been in catering off and on for over 20 years and that I have the means to order the food, the equipment to do it with and the know how to get it accomplished, even with a bunch of young scouts. In fact he himself has been the head Cook and food procurer for every OA event held in our Council for going on 8 years. . The meal would take work and planning but he or I could help the boys pull it off. If we did it together it would be a cinch. There are a couple of us who know people who service the homeless and we would have no problem with hooking up with one of them and serving a meal.

 

The SM then proceeded to espouse the virtues of Caroling at the Nursing Home. He talked them in to taking another vote. We have a bunch of new scouts who happened to have outnumbered the Senior Scouts last night. Can you guess how the second vote went? The meal idea came from our Advancement cordinator. But he did not go into the room or talk about his suggestion to the boys like the SM did. The caroling suggestion came from a new ASM who is heavily into recruitment. He had talked to the SM and ran the ideal of the Caroling by him before the meeting . The plan is to invite Webelos to tag along and sing with the boys and turn it in to recruitment tool. We do not have a feeder pack. Apparently the SM liked the idea. Do not get me wrong, the SM is a very nice guy. He tries. But I feel he got this one wrong. The boys made their choice and we have the means to pull it off and the SM knows it.

 

The SPL and ASPL are not happy. They feel that they where over ruled and had their feet taken out from under them. There is a time for recruitment, but it needs to be a planned event for the purpose of recruiting. So do they approach him with their objections? Is the choice really the boys? After all we are supposed to be a Boy led troop.?

 

 

[John-in-KC]

CRW,

 

"Houston, you have problem..."

 

There are plenty of ways to have made this work, even to the point of taking the kids to the area shelter and letting them help cook, serve, clean up one evening. You know this, of course, since you are a caterer.

 

I think you need to have a quiet, serious, mature talk with Mr SM. Do it offsite, away from the boys. Don't insist on reinstating the decision, but let it be clear that he does not have a veto. If there are constraints beyond the committees' capability to support, you'll provide feedback to him and the SPL.

[wolfmama500]

how much of that influence is real? Our SM recently did the same thing and end up being kind of retaliation for the adults for not doing a fund raiser without scouts but for scouts. It;s all the scouts decision, we were told, the kids were not offered the hole story and chose to do what SM asked them to. It always cause trouble and more often than not, people to get up and leave the troop because is not really "boy led", Hope you can come to terms with the scouts and not loose any.

[shortridge]

The youth leaders can take an informal poll and find out if there's support for doing both the caroling and the meal. If there is, they work up a plan and approach the SM with details on how both can be scheduled and accomplished. If he gets his caroling recruitment event, he should be happy that the Scouts also want to help the homeless.

[Beavah]

Yah, I gotta admit I was a bit of a rebellious fellow in my youth, eh?

 

If I were da SPL and ASPL, I'd just go ahead with planning the meal thing, workin' with you and whatever boys were interested. The Scoutmaster doesn't have to be invited. And they don't have to encourage their friends and patrol mates to show up to an adults' caroling event.

 

Sometimes it's best just to proceed rather than to argue. It teaches its own lessons.

 

Besides, this year in particular da plight of the homeless is particularly acute, I'm told. I think da boys got the notion right of serving those most in need.

 

Beavah

 

[scoutldr]

i vote to do both...the SM can show up and support it...or not.

[boomerscout]

They could do both--Christmas vacation is long enough. They could even do some extra caroling while serving the homeless.

Several have suggested ostrasizing the SM. Good idea if you're wanting him to leave altogether

[Mafaking]

 

 

'So do they approach him with their objections?'

Absolutely! But this must be done logically by appealing to his sense of leadership within the scouts. Support us! Should be their mantra. A well laid out plan for the meal and making it a success, with the duties the scouts will do and the the roles the adults will fill must must be presented.

 

'Is the choice really the boys? '

No, Its the adults. But there seems to have been an assumption that the scouts had the freedom to choose between the two. Some one somewhere approved these two concepts for the scouts to review. 'Mr. SM if you gave use the option to choose, provide us with the clear understanding of what the requirement are, then once we decided you should have been prepared to follow through.'

 

After all we are supposed to be a Boy led troop.? Boy led means different things to different people.

 

 

[Crossramwedge]

The scouts always have the right to choose what they want to do for a service project. They have that freedom. They did take a poll and the meal was chosen. They even planned what they where going to serve.

 

If the committee/leaders have a logistic problem or the ideal is something we cannot handle then they are informed and asked to reconsider and pick another project. On the face of it, that seems to be what happened here. But the SM was the only one in on the decesion making on this one. The committee did not even hear about any of this until it had all Occured.

 

I guess he has that right. Again I want to state there would be no problem in serving a meal. I have been doing it for years. The SM relizes that. There is no way that he could even think that we could not handle a meal like that. I think I will suggest to the

boys that they do both and see what happens.

[Lisabob]

CRW, are you the committee chair?

 

It might be good to tread lightly. I understand why you're annoyed and I agree the SM should not have done what you described. On the other hand, if you are an ASM or a committee member, or "just" a parent, you going back to the boys at this point may look just about as bad as the SM trying to manipulate the boys into choosing his preferred option.

 

Aside from that - the meal thing sounds like a wonderful service project idea.