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Showing content with the highest reputation on 11/02/18 in Posts

  1. Just FYI, on Tuesday evening, I stepped down as Scoutmaster of my son's Troop to become the Scoutmaster of my daughter's Troop. It is a linked Troop (well, it will be on 2/1/19), using the same chartering org and Troop Committee. My wife is the ASM. I will be posting the heck out of this video and the other info on the new BSA branding site on local social media and getting articles in the local papers and school communication portals to recruit. I am also getting a head count from my DE of the Webelos 2 girls in all teh surrounding towns that don't have a planned Scouts BSA program for them t
    5 points
  2. I am a dedicated Scoutmaster who comes from multi-generational Scouting family. I share my Scouting enthusiasm with everyone around me because it is genuinely felt, and also because Scout Spirit is contagious. Along with my enthusiasm, I also explicitly explain my acceptance that not every family approaches Scouting with my same level of vigor - and that's ok. Troop meetings and weekend campouts will not always be prioritized first when choosing between competing activities - and that's ok. Sometimes other things in life are more important than Scouting - and that's ok. Last night, I held
    4 points
  3. And typically look really, really, really sloppy. The GSUSA gave up on a "uniform" look uniform in the early 1970s when they went mix-and-match. Actually having a uniform is one of the things about BSA that appeals to my daughter.
    3 points
  4. I've actually made the opposite argument in my Pack. I'm an Eagle and it has not prepared me at all for herding Cub Scouts. 😁
    3 points
  5. As far as I've seen, BSA does not state anything about the adults being related or not. And in some southern states (mine included), everyone is related to everyone. lol I am my own Grandpa
    2 points
  6. On a campout, if its directly related to the Scouts, the SPL. Otherwise, the SM. My view is the SPL is the top of the organization chart.
    2 points
  7. YES! Yes to the whole idea of scouts have outside lives too. Thank you for that! I had an SM tell me that my son may not be counted as "active for six months" because he hadn't been a frequent attendee to meetings and campouts over the last six months over the fall. Never mind that he had been in this rank for two years and fall was marching band season. I replied that he should talk with my son about what he was doing and see how active he had been over the last two years instead of the last six months in this rank. My son was active during non-marching band times, going to campouts wh
    2 points
  8. Not convinced by the "scout me in" slogon but the imagery and music work pretty well. Over all I like it!
    2 points
  9. You may have read that on one of the Scoutbook forums, but that, like these forums, often represent the poster's opinions or belief system, not official policy. It may not be a good idea for a spouse to be part of 2 deep, just as it may not be good idea to have spouse in key 3 positions, but I have never seen anything in writing from BSA forbidding it.
    1 point
  10. It’s a marketing piece, and they can’t be all things to all people, or expected to encapsulate the entire Scouting program in a short period of time.
    1 point
  11. I suspect that many of the girls to whom this video would appeal would have some idea of what their local girl scout troops are (or are not) doing. If they have found their local girl scout troop not to be outdoorsy enough, then this might make BSA look appealing. Not to say that GSUSA troops couldn't do this stuff (except wearing the BSA logo clothes) but many certainly don't.
    1 point
  12. I will apologize for this in advance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqomZQMZQCQ
    1 point
  13. Absolutely agree. We actually schedule some of our fall campouts (if possible) to depart early on Saturday mornings. This enables some of the HS Scouts to do the football Friday night, march, whatever and still do the outing. This small change has increased the participation. Scouts should be well rounded and do many different things. Some of ours play football and we do not see them in the fall. Our current SPL plays baseball and he took the fall SPL slot to accommodate Spring ball. His Eagle project is focused on some aspect of the HS Baseball stadium. Some swim, soccer, marchin
    1 point
  14. Even though it sounds a bit flippant, I rely on something from an old role playing game from long while back called Paranoia. In which the whole concept was that you were part of a team whose members all had secret assignments to betray various other teammates etc on the mission they were assigned to. The slogan was, "Trust no one. Keep your Laser handy." Commonly, we as a society want to trust those who have been around for awhile simply because we think, if they were "bad" they would have been caught long ago. We watch the new adults more closely until we're satisfied they are doing ok
    1 point
  15. I would agree, but considering what National’s turned out for marketing collateral in the past, this is a pretty giant leap forward. Still, baby steps! We’ll get there. It sparked enough interest on my daughter’s part to reverse some previous teenage apathy, so I’m counting that as a win! 😁
    1 point
  16. Just so there is no confusion, that should have been: "We also do not try to limit new adults". I had that backwards. I know that it is a common thing to ask first year parents to be committee members or to ask them to wait a year to volunteer. We don't do that. Really what we tend to do is just guide new parents. If a new parent starts doing too much for the scouts, the New Scout ASM simply pulls them aside and mentors them. That tends to be all we need to do.
    1 point
  17. Just showed this to a few girls in the Scouts BSA age range, they were very positive. They loved the music and the adventure scenes.
    1 point
  18. Parents should always talk to the SM first not the SPL. Sure there are exceptions, but the SM may be working with the SPL on something specific (keeping camp clean) and may be waiting for a teaching moment. Adults should work through the SM on campouts and agree on what is the right questions to ask the SPL.
    1 point
  19. No doubt I stand my ground but some people dont want to be sold to and some just cant help themselves, I have turned the troop around fromadult to boy led and sold this to 60 parents already so I think I have the sales pitch down too. We have come a long way with the program and tripled the size of the troop and increased camp out participation from 25 to 75%. I do think the CC needs to do a better job selling to the parents in an active way. We all came out of a situation with too much drama in the troop 4 years ago so I have no problem asking people to move on if they cant/won't unders
    1 point
  20. The scene where the Scouts go camping by themselves and they rescue themselves is very timely for your discussion. Also when they take on the army to get their SM out of the stockade during war games shows a good level of personal initiative
    1 point
  21. Yes, it was amusing that both these women basically told me they new how boy scouts worked and that I was wrong. DE also liked the trip plan that I had the scouts do which clearly refuted some of her other staements about me not knowing where I was going. Duh of course I knew but I let the scout think they were lost so they could figure it out themselves. We did get grief from DE for not sharing phone #s with the ladies althought they didnt show up at the troop meeting before the campout so I didnt know this. Both had YPT and both were helicopters. We live in area where parents are
    1 point
  22. Great idea, although I might amend that. I would say that the former cub leaders should be committee members, but shouldn't be working with the boys as ASMs or SMs.
    1 point
  23. I know that one of the troops our pack feeds to has an explicit rule that any parent who was in leadership in cub scouts has to take a year off of leadership before they can assist the troop. Again, good to help transition away from the cub scout model.
    1 point
  24. @qwazse, Prayers for your peace brother.
    1 point
  25. Thomas Close, 39, who is associated with Troop 406 in Richland County and is also known as “Aqua Joe,” admitted to filming boys changing between 2011 and this year. He also said he had downloaded child pornography since he was 16 years old, and that his sexual preference was for boys between the ages of six and 16, according to an affidavit written by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations agent Benjamin Shaw. .... In August (2018), (HSI) agents talked to officials at the Boy Scouts' Lake Erie Council in Cleveland. They showed a director cropped images from some of the v
    0 points
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