Advancement Resources
Scouting ranks, merit bades, and the advancement programs
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LATEST POSTS
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Adults wearing Eagle rank patches. Not the square knot, the oval. And I'd personally let it slide for an 18 or 19-year-old, but I'm seeing too many 50-something men wearing an oval Eagle rank patch. -
The cautionary tale is you have to have the boys troop(s) onboard with supporting the girl troop. I've witnessed girl troops fail to launch because they didn't have the support or planning in place in a timely manner and by the time resources are in place the girls have lost interest due to the interim s-show. If you do not want to be co-ed you should adopt the boys schedule of events for the 6-12 months to give the girls troop time to learn the process and get a plan. I'll echo Eagle with if I were a betting man I would bet on coed going live by February. I will say that my primary troop is setting up a plan for a linked troop right now for a small crop of female crossovers and our plan is if national doesn't authorized coed we're just going to have a linked troop that functions as a female patrol regardless of the situation in our first year. We're in a situation where most of the female scouts in our district are from our town but have been feeding out to towns 1, 2, or in a couple cases 3 towns over and once we get a female or coed troop up and running past our DE we know we're sucking the air out of the room because all of the parents have voiced that they are sick of driving so much. -
What I am seeing with troops above the "32" scout headcount is that they seem like they are doing great on paper but once you get so big a lot of scouts start to fall through the cracks. Scouts with parents who have stepped up into a scouter role always achieve and advance at their personal optimal rate but the bigger the troop the more the scouts without a scouter parent start to fall back and not advance at their optimal rate. My primary unit is very large these days and I've really noticed that the older scouts who are stuck at Tenderfoot or less are all scouts without a scouter parent. We have some really good leaders that are trying to help as many scouts as possible but there is literally only so much capacity in each person to help so many scouts. Right on. I've worked with troops that do the age based and the mix patrols, and the age based for a couple years and then mixed patrols. I had a really bad experience with a mixed age patrol troop and ever since them I am not cool with the structure; toss in the safeguarding rules and it just works better for scouts to be in age based patrols in this era. I like this PL/APL stance. Too many troops only have the PL involved in the PLC.
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Hmmm. Thinking out loud for you AM... -change PLC location (and time) -change PLC construct to "patrol planning meeting" vs troop planning -physically separate PLC into PL/APL buddies to plan their patrol -have SM conferences with each plc member to hear from them and mentor -reign back SPL to serve as resource/help to PLs (mentor SPL) -roses/thorns the PLC meeting -suggest menu planning NOT as a whole patrol, but done by grubmaster/assistant (if each patrol member does not have a specific role, start there) -planning by group is difficult, split into subgroups each plan small parts. (Both Patrol and PLC planning) You probably thought of many(all?) of these already which should serve solely as validation of your ideas. As mentioned I was thinking out loud, so feel free to ignore too. -
Of course you should be always flexible, but recruiting will go smoother if you have an SPL in place. That said, I hardly see the point of an SPL in a one patrol troop. It doesn’t sound likely but ask around if another troop might want to loan an SPL. That’s how the troop of my youth got on an even footing when it started.
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