Eagledad

Makes sense, we typical look for a GS in our neighborhood and purchase A LOT of cookies from her. They were nowhere to be seen this year. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I need to remind my wife about the 12 month shelf life because we are still nibbling on last years batch. Or are they year before? Barry

Like most of the youth programs, OA is the vision of the adults in the moment. I have seen OA programs cross the spectrum of what the handbook says they are. Sadly, many adults see their part in the program as the key to the image and they take out the honor of the OA. As scoutmaster, I supported the elections, but stayed away from the program because I didn't care for the adult side of the program. That being said, the scouts in my troop were in leadership roles for about 10 years. Since our troop wasn't involved with OA other than holding elections, I attribute the success of our scouts

Yes, of course. Barry

My problem with OA today is that the program drivers (adult sponsors) don't plan a program where the activities practice growth toward the honor of serving others and camping. As a scout in the 70's, young scouts learned quickly that Arrowmen where experts in the outdoors and they could ask any question for help. And, since serving was their other character traits, they were usually easy to approach and lacked the arrogance many of the older scouts had. Frankly, the election process back then filtered out immature scouts and scouts who only wanted the Arrowmen status. Those are the main m

Sounds like the unit is starting with a good CC. That is a step forward many units don't have. I've been in your shoes; a new unit with new adults. There are two important contributors to a new unit starting in the right direction; vision and humility. I was assigned to working with struggling units and the one contributor that just about all these units had in common is lack of vision. The adults didn't know where they were going, so they didn't know what part to take in the team. Instead, they all tried to just fill in where the program appeared to need help, It was chaos. There i

Yep. Even if there was some value from the old SMs comments, it lost any integrity by the way it was delivered. Changing scoutmasters is tricky because the new scoutmaster has to find their footing without the heavy shadow of previous SM hanging in the air. Yet, the old SM can be a great resource. But, it’s tricky. At the request of my replacement, I took six months off from the program. And when I did give advice, it was in person or through the CC. Actually, the CC was the person who sought out most of my advice with some of the challenges the new SM found himself in. I th

Done correctly, commissioner is both fun and rewarding. But, that kind of program requires good leadership. District Commissioner was my dream job after I retired from Scoutmaster, but council and district burned me out the next few years and I retired completely from scouting. They came to my door and offered me the job 3 years later, but I developed to many new habits with the family to jump back into the program. My loss. Barry

That is rare, but the way it should be. How do you rate your commissioner corp.? Barry

Good point. The reason for the mistrust is because most of the actions unit leaders see from commissioners has the perception of authority. Right or wrong, commissioners are perceived as disciplinaries for the districts. Most participants of adult leader training classes express that a major benefit of the classes is making new friends. How many of those participants or teachers are commissioners? Commissioners don't mingle enough within the activities to build a friendship and trust. If we choose to recruit experienced scouters for the role of commissioners, then they need to show

Your opinion is certainly just an opinion. As an engineer who has to think logically every day in big pictures to work problems, your opinion doesn't makes sense because you don't have any information, proof, or data to show that your theory is killing scouting. None. There are a lot of dynamics going on in the world, culture, and BSA, at the moment, so how could anyone determine what is killing scouting? Or if scouting is even dying.; Sure, the BSA is taking hits right now, but can we really say that is the result of actions within the BSA. The world is in a mess and a lot of organizati

I think you would find the discussion surprising. When we were involved chaperoning, attending and transporting youth in church, school, sports and so on, we found their youth protection polices very limiting compared to the BSA youth protection, if they had any guidelines at all. Often the on the spot ad-hoc policies came from scouters who were used to the BSA youth protection. My wife was always the most nervous youth getting hurt when she chaperoned the annual school group to New York City. But the teacher who led that activity many times took the concern in stride because she never ha

My experience is adults who limit their program from typical scouting activities did not have a scouting experience as a youth. They see these activities, especially outside unit activities, as competition, not as additional program opportunities. They likely would not want their orders scouts to join a Venturing Crew either. And I agree, likely this is a pretty adult run program. Barry

Im not thinking competition, or judging, or potluck. I’m thinking adults get together to cook the meal. We did this at a trooperee where the adults roasted a whole pig. It’s an all day job. You could have several shifts where each member of the shift is from a different troop. There are adults that love that stuff. Barry

We have had the troop adults cook the Saturday night meal for everyone. But, you could also do training for swimming, rappelling, boating and so forth. Fun stuff that would pull all the adults into the same group. Barry