Eagledad

Again, well said. As I've said before, I think the biggest problem the BSA is dealing with today is that the vast majority of new scout leaders and parents didn't have an experience as a youth. You and Eagle94 are an example of the value of the youth experience giving the troop a head start in a productive direction. I have spent thousands of hours in trying to teach and guide inexperienced adults on the subject of patrol method and boy run. I have experimented with dozens approaches to helping adults see the light and I have concluded the best way for them to get it is to see it in action. We are in a difficult place to where the best way for adults to learn patrol method is witnessing it in action, and the best way to witness patrol method is to be in a Troop that uses it. But because fewer volunteers with a youth experience of patrol method are joining the program, I can't see a growing trend of patrol method happening. I'm not trying to negative, rather just pragmatic. It haunts me to realize that unless the BSA makes a dramatic shift in their expectation of the troop program, Sentinel, Eagle94 and my sons may be the last generation of patrol method leaders in scouting history. Barry

Well said Sentinel. This is exactly what I mean when I say "adults have to learn more faster than the scouts to keep up and stay out of the scouts' way". Your words are more elegant and clearer. I don't know of a single great scout leader that started out great. They become great because they were humble enough to learn from the experience. Barry

Our guys don't hold hands when they go to the latrine.

Part of the problem of talking about our programs in these post is that we leave out the failures that lead us to change toward a much improved program later. In other words, our text is more idealistic than the reality. It is important to understand that adults have to grow from the experiences more and faster than the scouts to keep up and stay out of the way. It is even more important to know where you are trying to go so you can recognize when you're doing it wrong and need to change. I am not bashful in saying that we did it wrong more often than we did it right. That is why I can give opinions with such authority and confidience. But we did learn from our mistakes and make changes. You take from that what you can, but adults should always be dicussing the performance of their program to see if they are going the right direction. Do your adults have some kind of plan, goals, or vision to measure the program? They may be growing a lot, you just haven't been there to see it. Barry

This makes sense to me. What I have noticed about some troops with the older scout issues is that the program hasn't really matured beyond a first class program. In other words the program repeats itself over and over so that young scouts are always advancing with the older scouts always teaching. The problem isn't that older scouts are tired of working with young scouts, rather they are bored from repeating the same old program over and over. They only resent the younger scouts because they appear to be the cause for doing same activities that they have been doing for two or three years since they were new scouts. Even the adults who have been there two and three years are bored and that is where the notion of baby sitting comes from. The adults are bored and it doesn't take much for the bored older scouts to start repleting the babysitting stuff. This is main reason why Venturing Crew are created, which typically fail inside three years. I try to guide the adults of these programs to expand their 'Troop"program out to doing more outdoor adventures with less drive toward getting advancement credit from the experience. Just take the troop on a weekend back packing trip, or fishing, or biking. Give the scouts something new and different to experience. This gives the older scouts more patrol method leading and less teaching. And, try to create outings where advancement credits are a result of the activities in the theme of the outing, and not the theme itself. Then the older scouts are teaching skills for the theme of the activity, not for First Class advancement itself. It's a lot more fun to learn knots for a rappelling weekend. The older scouts and even adults will have a much more rewarding scouting experience in that kind of program. Then who needs to create a whole new program for high adventure. Barry

Different approaches to this scouting stuff stosh. Barry

I wasn't talking about punishment, that is a whole different discussion. Barry

This analogy runs counter to the "take care of your boys" motto because age isn't a factor in being a servant. We also have a "take care of your boy" type program, although we call in servant lifestyle, and we have the opposite results with our older scouts. Our older and senior scouts not only take an interest of a young scouts present experience in the troop, but they also take interest in helping the younger scouts prepare for their future experiences like leadership. The PLC often takes time recognizing younger scouts for their growth in maturity by asking them to take on advanced positions of responsibility. That is exactly what I expect from a take care of you boys program from beginning to end. As a result, our PLC is very mixed aged. And maybe the reason we have different results is because we do call the troop a servant lifestyle. Servant leadership is only one aspect of the lifestyle. Being a servant is a full time responsibility. I'm not talking about the comments here, but I must say I'm surprised that some adults assume attitudes of serving will change with maturity. I hear it a lot, "older scouts don't like to babysit young scouts". The troops I observed with older scouts that have attitudes of superiority got the attitude from their adults. As for scouts of the same age not taking charge, it's human natural to shy away from conflict, especially with your friends. The way we got through this was guiding the scouts to work as a team for being responsible to each others behavior. They understood the concept better when they found the whole team being held equally responsible for one members misbehavior that the team could have prevented. When the whole group is held accountable to one persons bad behavior, the risk of conflict is diminished a lot because the group is appreciative and supportive of actions to change the behavior. There was a humorous result of that team accountability concept; one of the methods our scouts used to deal with misbehavior is asking the misbehaving scout to leave and wait outside the room or area until after the activity or meeting. Sometimes the scouts are instructed to find the SPL or SM for conference about their behavior. Kind of a last straw thing, but I was always blown away when a scout walked up and asked for a conference because their PL sent them. It seems the scouts bought into the team accountabiliity so well that most are willing to accept consequences of their own misbehavior as part of the process. I can honesty say I never saw that coming. LOL Barry

The BSA made a decisive move to increase the number of Eagles. I was told that the FCFY was created as part of that goal. I was also told, but I don't remember, exactly what motivated National to go that direction. I'm sure it something to do with membership. Coordinators for life scouts is ok if the adult understands the real intention of the job. But I found most adults in the position used it to push the scout, rather than just advise. It goes against our parenting human nature not to push, and there is a fine line between advisory/cheer leader and coach/director.

Yes, there does appear to be some easing of requirements. But from my observations over the years, the main influence for the eagle is adult pressure. A lot of troops and districts even assign adults to their life scouts for additional guidance for eagle. There is a lot of pressure on scouts today to get that prize. As I said, our troop leaders didn't apply that pressure and the results I saw is that most of our Eagle scouts didn't receive the award until they were 16 and 17. The average age of Eagles in other troops was 14 and 15. My son and a bunch of his friends did their BOR within a month of their 18th birthday. When scouts are busy doing fun scouting stuff, advancement isn't the highest priority. Barry

I was taught that a mentor is passive and that the mentee approaches the mentor for clarity. Leadership is aggressive and that leaders approach the team members to provide clarity. That helped me when I was guiding adults of their roles with the scouts. Barry

Yes, the drive for Eagle is bothersome. I'm honestly not really sure where it came from. It wasn't there when I left home in 1977 for school and life. But it saw it big time in 1990 when the UCs would do all the talks at Cub Roundup telling parents that cubs was the starting place for Eagle. First thing I did was take over that talk for our pack. I replaced the eagle part of the talk with fun and adventure. The units I was part of didn't buy into the Eagle drive because most of our adults came from a time of patrol method. But I spent "a lot" of time with parents trying to guide them on the benefits of patrol method over an Eagle program. I had to practice the speech that I gave to Webelos parents explaining the virtues of Patrol Method so that it made sense and had a value worth considering. As much as it appeals to experienced scouters on this forum, 300 feet patrol separation does not appeal to parents without scouting experiences. You have to explain at a parent level showing them how patrol method develops the growth and maturity of character their sons will use when they are fathers, husbands and community leaders. We had a few parents choose the Eagle mill down the street, but I guess the reputation of our troop was enough for parents to trust us because we grew from the smallest troop to the 3rd largest troop in the district with the single largest group of older scouts (14 thru 17) in the whole council. And we didn't want to be that big, after 50 scouts, boy run is very very difficult. I feel patrol method gets preached so much on this forum that it starts to loose the luster of it's true impact on scouting. Our troop was up front with everyone that advancement was only a small part of the program, not the main part and the scout himself was responsible for how far he took advancement. You won't hear adults pushing scouts to advance in our troop. However, when scouts like going to scout activities, they will hang around long enough that the earning an Eagle doesn't require all that much additional effort on their part. We also had the 2nd highest number of Eagles in the district next to the Eagle Mill. But, our troop also had more high adventure treks than most troops, which were pretty much organized by the scouts. We did so much outdoor adventure that many of the scouts, including my sons, didn't realize that not every scout in other troops had their levels experience. It took me a long time to develop the high points for selling patrol method to parents so that they could balance its merits over their brainwashed image of the Eagle. I fully respect the challenge today's leaders like Eagle94 have in selling patrol method. It's kind of like explaining God, you can't see it or touch it, so you have to be able to describe patrol method and boy run in a way that parents can visualize something tangible enough that the growth from the experience is the real gold ring they want for their son. I found that patrol method over Eagle is an especially hard sell for moms, but once you do sell them on it, you have dedicated followers for life. I believe what has hurt the troop program the most in the last 25 years is that between 50 to 75 percent of new troop leaders never experienced scouting as a youth and they can't see it except for what they get from the materials and training. Which doesn't even scratch the surface of the patrol method experience. Barry

You are going to find that everything you just said including the big brother type and so on are discussed in the Scoutmaster essentials course, Scoutmaster Handbook, and Woodbadge, unless they were changed in recent years since I retired. You got to remember, William Hillcourt (GreenBar Bill) was very involved with the developing this program and a lot of his stuff is still used by the BSA. I'm an engineer, my job requires me to think out of the box and I'm quite good at it. thinking out of the box is probably my favorite thing to do. But I'm also pragmatic and there is a difference between pondering around the question or leading the discussion off by calling everything crap with misinformation to support. Stosh isn't saying anything or doing anything in his troop that many of us on the forum haven't said or done ourselves long before stosh become a scoutmaster. Trust me, stosh has nothing new on many of us on the forum and most of everything he says he does is somewhere in BSA publications. The issue for me blw2 is that Stosh keeps saying that BSA program is intentionally leading adults in the wrong direction. I keep asking where he reads this stuff and he can't answer because it isn't there. But you without the training and the handbook believe him, so you go off repeating his misinformation which doesn't help those other new adults who are looking for a base of information to develop their program. So you can understand why I think his post are counter productive. Where the BSA has gone wrong is that the publications don't get into the details like they used to, especially in patrol method. But neither does stosh, his explination is to suggest that anybody who doesn't do it his way are bad leaders. That isn't productive either. Imagine how much more influential stosh would be if he didn't even mention his opinion of the BSA or the leadership styles of others. Then we get the good stuff without of the smoke and mirrors in the middle. And if you think I'm just picking on stosh, for whatever reason, I held many scouters here accountable to what I think is unscoutlike behavior. I don't know why, I just find it disgusting and I believe it drives people away. Barry

Most of us have discussed this many times over without distorting reality. My struggle with stosh's messages is that he taints, distorts and corrupts acceptable practices, writings and traditional concepts to force a point. I joined this forum to help adults develop a quality program and have a fulfilling scouting experience without making the same mistakes I made. Lately it seems the forum struggles to grow membership and it doesn't help when a new freshly trained leader reads that everything they just learned was a waste of time and wrong. This comes from a Unit Commissioner who is supposed to encourage unit adults get trained so they can help their unit move forward. IF stosh doesn't believe training helps, he needs to get out of the UC business and just stick with scoutmastering his five scouts. For us old-timers, the present BSA information isn't the best guidance for a quality program that we experienced in our units. But it is all that today's adults have and if we can't help guide them to develop a quality program from today's information, they will struggle and fail because there is no fall back plan. One mans option of "My way or the highway" is guidance to failure. I know we help adults build good quality programs more like the traditional patrol method because many of us have been doing if for several years. But it takes sensible reasoning and understanding of the objectives to build a quality program starting with todays information. Growing requires helping one get from "a" to "b"without suggesting that adults who aren't already at "z" are terrible leaders. Kind of funny, after reading stosh's original post, I remembered long discussions in past years where he went to great lengths explaining the proper techniques for mentoring, guiding and coaching of scouts. Seems this scoutmaster stosh didn't like that scoutmaster stosh. Barry

I'm not sure how you are relating this to the current discussion, but our pack does those things with the cubs for their growth. But like everything in scouting, growth has to be in the confines of maturity, otherwise there is no growth. For example we guide the Tiger leaders to stand as a participant with their scouts in skits. We asked the Wolf leader to stand with the scouts, but not be a participant. The Bear leaders doesn't participate at all, but helps their boys pick out the skits and practice. The 1st year Webelos pick their own skits and practices on their own. The 2nd year Webelos write all their own skits. Each year is a progression of growth based on the maturity of their age group. At the pack meetings, two 2nd year Webelos lead the Flag ceremonies with a younger den actually carrying the flags. Two first year Webelos stand one step behind and to the side of the 2nd year Webelos to learn the responsibility for next year. The two Webelos leading the ceremony arrive to the pack meeting an hour early to teach the cubs in the den carrying the flags what to do. The other Webelos set up the room. During the Pack meeting, the Webelos are assisting the Cub Master. After the meeting the Webelos guide the other cubs and parents of putting all the chairs and tables back in storage. The Webelos write and create all the ceremonies and skits for the final pack campfire in May. They are very ready to stand in front of a troop of strangers the next year to lead the flag ceremony or just plan the patrols part in the next campfire. But it isn't about leadership skills, it's about developing confidence to step into the unknown. The Troop experience is the same. A new scout joins the troop and is asked to be a Cheer Master because that responsibility give the scout practice in communication with his patrol mates, and planning for campfires and COHs at the level of experience for a new scout. It's a small responsibility intended to develop the confidence for the next responsibility which will require more communication, planning and association with other folks outside the patrol. This goes on and on until the fully matured scout leaves at age 18. It's one big master plan that starts at the Tiger age. And it works very well. Barry

Mentoring, guiding and coaching are discussed in several BSA training syllabuses and user handbooks. I've haven't seen "perpetual" used anywhere accept in stoshes scary tells. I wonder if there is such a thing as helicopter straw men. Barry

Well I don't believe that is what TAWHAWK said, but I would like you and TAWHAWK to show us where mentoring and guiding are not good techniques to work with scouts? And let's throw coaching in there as well. Barry Barry

Umm, what? So are you saying that mentor, direct and guide are in opposition and conflict with boy-led emphasis and are in the same group as adult control, adult mandates and adult directives? Barry

I'm going to be different again in that I think this is a problem for the whole troop, not just the Scouts. While I agree that scouts are going to have to be given room and trust to make some very difficult choices here, the adults are going to have to be part of the solution. For some reason this forum demonizes adults to the point that any new scouter taking the advice from here has no where to go except to be dysfunctional. Adult Association IS one of the Eight Methods. It needs to be practiced to learn and grow from the experience. And for newer members here, don't assume I am an adult run promoter. I was called the boy run guru in our Council and was part of very successful boy run units. But there is a place for the adults in successful boy run programs and I know Eagle94 had that experience in his own youth scout troop. So, lets move on. Maybe because I've been there and suffered greatly from the experiences, but the expected number of new scouts next years is not trivial. I have said before that when a troop doubles in numbers overnight, THE PROGRAM IS STARTING OVER. There is no way the scouts can manage the program that doubles in size overnight running business as usual. If the troop (adults and scouts) don't have a plan for the growth, the troop WILL LOOSE at least 50 percent of the new scouts within 6 months. So I think you are right Eagle94 to be concerned about it. So lets not look at this as the scouts will figure it out when the new scouts arrive. Even when my Troop was at its best with mature well experienced 17 year old seniour scouts, the PLC still hated the first four weeks of getting new scouts because of their chaotic mischievous behavior. Remember, up until a boy joins a troop, he has been guided, trained, taught, coached and disciplined by adults all his life. Not other boys near their age, but adults. Ten year old boys by their nature give adults respect simply because their stature gives them the authority to discipline their behavior. But they don't have that experience with other boys. They in their nature will ignore the instructions of boys if they choose because they don't respect their ability to hold them accountable. So it takes some time for new scouts to develop that respect. In the meantime watching the older scouts work with large numbers of new scouts is best described as herding cats. And trust me, the scouts don't like it. Folks think that scouts are comfortable with chaos and misbehavior. They hate it. To get to where your troop can be somewhat ready for this invasion, the patrols have to develop enough habits and traditions that when the big change comes, they will keep on functioning by simply doing what they have been doing. First off, as I said, the troop is starting over. The patrols likely won't look anything 18 months from now to what you will have at this years summer camp. But, if the patrols have a routine of getting up, cooking, eating, assembling for the day, program, lunch, program, free time, cooking, eating, assembling, campfire, crackerbarrel and lights out. They have a place to start. I think it is very important that your patrols have this routine by summer camp because that is where the patrol method will be branded into scouts. What they have after summer camp is likely the best you will get between now and next December. So you have a lot of work to do. Next, there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY you can have a functional troop in one year that is ready for the invasion if the scouts and adults don't work together. That in noway suggest a compromise to the boy run principles of the troop. What it means is everybody needs to be on the same page of where the troop is now, and where it wants to go. The scouts need to take the lead, but that only means the adults need to give the scouts authority of making the choices for moving forward. Let me give you and idea of what I mean. While I was SM, I never allowed the any adult to put the Scout Sign up first for any reason. If the adult had the floor but couldn't talk because the room was too loud, the adult walked over to the scout with the authority and asked him for help. The Scout initiated the action for change. In that way, the adults give the scouts respect for scouts directing the program. I agree with the idea of asking scouts for ideas to the problem. Several approaches this and one way would be to have a youth leaders and adults meet together to discuss the concern. Only one adult talks while the others sit in respect to the authority of the scouts. I would have the concerns on paper so that everyone is reading off the same page. Maybe the groups could breakup then with a plan to get together that day, next week or whatever to listen to the scouts ideas. That should lead to other discussions, but AS A TEAM, the group needs to focus ideals for specific goals. Then work as a team for the next year to be ready. Other suggestions are have the ideas the scouts are going to use in writing so that both the scouts and the adults understand what is going on. That way when obstacles pop up, both groups understand the problem and possible approaches to solutions. I encourage troops to purchase the SPL and PL Handbooks and issue them to the PLC and Adults. They are easy to understand and keep both groups working in the same direction. When a question pops up, the adult and scout sit down and pull our their handbook to see if there is direction there. This is how the troop develops the scouts trust for the adults that someone mentioned. This is a difficult balance for a troop with such a challenge, but so long as the there is an understanding of patrol method and the objective of using the method, everyone should be able to move forward. Now I've left out a lot for how to develop the adult scout relationship as it pertains to patrol method, boy run, independent decision making and so on. We can discuss that too, but my main point with this post is to get your scouts working the method now to develop some habits and traditions that will carry them through the big change. It's going to be fun. Barry

Figure out what you want in a tent, then go from there. We use two styles of tents in our troop, car camping and backpacking. The scouts usually bring personal single or two man tents if they want to use a backing tent, as do the adults. The car camping tent hold four scouts. And consider the typical weather you will use the tent. Oklahoma is one of the windiest states in the US. Dome style tents usually hold up better in wind for us. But we typically have treks in the mountains where afternoon showers are common. Lots of choices these days. Barry

You are asking adults with years of experience to answer a question that has changed for us as the adults, scouts and program matured. I guess the answer is really more of "depends". I've asked before, does a 12 year old SPL require the same guidance as the seasoned 16 year old SPL? Does a new troop of five 10 year olds use different leadership than the 10 year old troop of 100 scouts? And I harp on this over and over, but what are the objectives of the program? Does that make a difference when the one year old troop of five 11 year olds receive 25 crossover Webelos? How does a program maintain some kind of control over 30 boys 12 years old and under? I relate to the challenge of trying to get your mind around the basic details of the program structure because of the little experience to start from. And maybe this forum isn't the best place to draw that picture because the are so many different experiences expressed here that it gets mind boggling. There is nothing like experience to clear away some of the clutter. And sometimes you find yourself with obvious choices because your experience might be best described at that moment as herding cats. One active forum member here once said SPLs are only used by self serving Scoutmasters to keep personal control of the patrol leaders. What do you think? The BSA has been using SPLs for almost 100 years. A five scout troop is a different program than 30 new scouts. 100 scouts is quite a different program all together. I think you will find that leadership matures and changes over time and different circumstances. But What one thing can tie these different programs together? What keeps the program going forward in the same direction even when structure and situations continually change? Barry

One other thing. Our program came from the Membership Committee. We invited the UC corp as a team member to help. Adding additional activities and programs can quickly overwhelm and kill a program or committee. So I'm not suggesting the UC corp take on whole programs. It really depends on the make up of the District. We asked only for the help of the UCs to help us identify the weak dens. We then took responsibility for helping those dens. As I said, each district is different in how they can approach issues, but I have seen more good ideas fail than succeed because the work required to make the idea succeed created an imbalance to the overall program that couldn't get righted. You have some good ideas, try to share the work and the wealth. Barry

No, we were looking at helping the first year Webelos leader. We found that most of the weak Webelos leaders were either Wolf Bear leaders who were burned out but couldn't find a replacement for the Webelos years, or they did find the replacement, but their heart wasn't into being a leader and only did the minimum required. So by identifying these leaders quickly, we could attach them to a willing troop where they could offer help. It really wasn't a stretch for most troops because they an adult memeber who had Webelos experience. Each den is different, so the help required was different. But the troop didn't need to help that much to get the den moving forward, and the little they did provide was a huge boost for the Den Leader. Boys identify their expectations of the future by experience of the present. We found that scouts who are bored in the den program relate that expectation to the future or Troop program. By attaching the den to a troop, hopefully the den program becomes fun, AND the boys get to actually observe a real troop program in action and see that it is a new and exciting adventure. It was an easy sell for me. Councils set goals for the Districts and our district came up about 7 crossovers short that year. I pointed out to the DE that if we could get just one additional boy from each Pack to crossover, we would not only surpass the goal by A LOT, we would break all the goals of all the other districts. Imagine what we could do by getting just one additional scout from each weak den. Imagine getting whole dens to crossover. We also created several activities to help the packs with the Webelos dens by helping them get associated with Troops and helping them with ideas for better (easier) den programs. We found that most Webelos leaders are reluctant to contact Troops because they don't know anybody and find talking to a strange leader of a strange troop very intimidating, especially female den leaders. These were in addition to and outside the Round Tables because a lot of leaders can't make RT. We were trying to help make the Webelos program less daunting, especially for those leaders whose hearts weren't really into it. They are the dens where the scouts don't crossover. Barry

Wow, stosh, that is actually pretty good. Our district wanted to confront the Webelos drop out problem when I was the Membership Chairman. Nationally the drop out rate of Webelos to scouts is over 50 percent, and our district was right along that number. We had identified that adult burnout was the major cause of the huge drop out rate. So we came up with a plan to attack the problem by identifying weak Webelos dens and attaching them to a troop hoping the troop leaders would help the den leader plan a better program. All that to say that we created a Red Flag list for the UCs to help the UC Corp identify the weak dens. That was a while ago, so I don't have the list anymore, but the objective was for the UC to be able to evaluate each den from a distance so as not to appear intrusive or judging. We were trying to fix the problem at the front instead of finding the problem at the back or rechartering. The list was only to find weak dens, not try to improve the performance of all the dens. In our studies at the time, probably 30 to 50 percent of the dens fall under the heading of leader burnout. I guess I'm trying to say that if the UC corp can find ways to identify problems at the start with simple little checks, finding solutions is a lot easier. Barry

As the first course director in our district of Scoutmaster Specifics in 2001, I had to spend a lot of time trying to make the whole syllabus flow because some information contradicted itself in other chapters. A few years later I met one of the authors of the syllabus and he said there were three authors who wrote the content. They never met each other and they never saw each others contribution. National took the three authors contributions and assembled them into a syllabus without the authors help. Everything made sense once I learned that. Barry