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First, you don't nee district of council involvement unless a commissioner can help. There are a few steps before the COR/institutional head ask him to resign or move on. How about an ASM or trusted peer as a medium to address this with him. Many times we aren't in Scouting alone and have trusted peers we can vent to and address issues. Chances are he has a scouting buddy that can be a moderator. This gets it handled at the lowest level. Not a medium or doesn't listen/change, you can have a commissioner take a look and speak with him to get his take on this. The commissioner can make a

Well, kinda. See below. Actually, this isn't changing or adding requirements. It's specifying how the test is to be administered. See below The 1st class requirement isn't "Jump in to water... swim 75yards..."; the 1st Class requirement is "Pass The BSA Swimmer Test". And while the test can be administered by a non-BSA lifeguard, the test administrator is supposed to conduct the test using BSA guidelines. The guidelines for conducting the BSA Swimming Test are very carefully laid out in the BSA publication "Aquatics Supervision No. 34346" . In fact, The "Unit Swim Classif

Yep. Scout is now a rank. When it was just join, the meanings were still in tenderfoot. It was honestly confusing to keep track of what was where.

We just called around and found a high school pool with open swim. We asked them if we could use a lane. They said no problem. Each Scout had to lay $2.50 to get in. We asked everyone to ask friends who were lifeguards to administer the test. We found one who could do it. It worked very well. This is a small troop of only 10 Scouts. The pool is now open again after being closed for the virus. We will do this again. We also politely asked if we could do our rescue requirements if we didn’t get in the way. They had no problem. It took a bit of work. Nothing fancy, but it worked better than 20 l

We used to do this more in Scouting... explain, in your own words, the meaning of the flag, Pledge of Allegiance, National Anthem, Scout Oath and Law, Scout badge,...and often the scout thoughts expressed were priceless. How can we develop leaders without asking what they think and giving them the freedom to do so? For example, old Tenderfoot requirements 2. ...Describe Scout Badge & explain its meaning...memorize 12 words of the Law and explaining their meaning in your own words My $0.02,

Sorry - didn’t splain that well. The parents aren’t crazy about the idea of 2nd -4th graders being in camp/dining hall with high school age campers for a week. A few staffers is different. Before we merged with a neighboring pack they had Webelos attend Webelos camp in a neighboring council and apparently the boys picked up some colorful vocabulary from the Older Boy Scouts at the waterfront. Parents all filled in the others - I wasn’t there just have to deal with the ‘remember what happenEd when’ - after the merge our pack went to the cub weeks at the camp the council sold and there was

Found this news story: Green County Boy Scouts camp hold summer camp (VA) Beginning on Sunday, July 12, after nearly four months without the ability to practice their skills as a troop, the camp provided scouts with opportunities to learn and teach scout safety and rank skills, to hike at Preddy Creek Trail Park, to kayak at Greene Mountain Lake, and even for some light-hearted competition in the form of a Highland Games, which included events such as axe throwing and a caber toss. Finally, on Saturday, July 18, the troop held a campfire and Court of Honor to recognize all of the scouts’

Sorry, other people don't get to tell me what symbols mean to me. They can ask me what they mean to me, we can talk about it, but they don't get to define meaning nor action to be taken. It's lost on the postmodern crowd that by giving words and symbols control over their emotions they infantilize themselves.

Knot tying would be the least of the complaints on my list. In fact, I would suggest it be left off the list entirely. Youth leaders should be teaching the knots, not the ASM. When personality conflicts occur, there is a tendency to pile on. We should try to avoid that. Keep it simple. Don't bring in a whole laundry list of complaints. It makes people look petty. It is important to know who brought the ASM into the unit to start with. If the IH or COR personally selected him, I would be careful about making waves. If the SM brought him in, make it his problem. If the CC bro

It's the old adage...Do we raise money to enable a community to have Scouts OR Do we have Scouts to enable a group to be able to raise money. Agree that way too many volunteers feel the "Council" is the end all be all, the oracle or knowledge, the giver of permissions, the experts on Scouting. Actually the Council is supposed to support the unit and LOCAL Scouting. Sadly it does not work that way and many of us wonder what in fact the cast of many at the Council office actually do all day. How in fact do they (The Council and the minions there) bring value to the BSA program in our com

You do not think there is a difference in conducting a reenactment with some authenticity such as the confederate flag and someone displaying it at work or on their car/NASCAR/on a shirt?

Good Lord this is the most confused element. They are vastly different and wholly unrelated, other than both should be observed. One leader of another unit at camp was concerned about how they could have Scouts at various troop activities as it would spread leaders to thin. We talked with them, tried to guide them on 2 deep at the camp, but no one on one. He could not grasp that if one leader went wandering to the camp store with 3 Scouts, that was not in fact one on one. We took his thinking down the rabbit hole and tried to show that using that thinking for a troop of 20 Scou

One bit of advice - do not do the transfer process in paper. If you want your children to complete their AOL before crossing over, pay to create new accounts for them online with national directly and log their achievements there, and even call the hotline later to merge the accounts with their previous scouting history. Otherwise you risk a transfer, then another transfer before the first is complete, and the whole AOL rank getting lost in the suffle. Of course your council may be run like a machine, but from what I've seen my dysfunctional council is pretty much the defacto standard. I was j