Eagledad

The scouts focus is wrong. I had this same discussion with a scout who didn't want his eagle because the BSA didnt accept gays. The values Learned from the scouting experience aren't about judging the haviors of others, instead the values are how the scout himself behaves to "all" others. Ask the scout to slowly say the Scout Oath. Then do the same with the law. Then ask the scout which individuals the scout should do his best. Then ask what it means to do his best. Being an Eagle is setting the example of living the scout oath and law to all people. We all judge behavior everyday, but Eagles by their example show those around themselves how to behave around others despite their behavior. Shift his focus off National and on to how he sets the example of doing his best to live the values of the oath and law.

Even being recalled should be the scout's choice from the council of his mentor. Adults tend to loose patience and pull the trigger too fast if they have the power of deciding who is a good leader. Much better to practice mentoring skills.

I think the key word here is "loyalty". Loyalty is a selfless action to preserve the relationship with the team. Was the scout loyal to his troop? Barry

Not sure what you are saying, extra adults? We don't have a Venturing Crew associated with the troop and we don't have any permanant venture patrols. A scout of any age in the troop can start a temporary crew anytime he wants for any kind of outside troop activity. Even our Philmont Crews are temporary crews that go away when the trek is over. We've had as many as six temporary crews organizing at the same time because treks can be planned out as far as 18 months in advance. Many of our scouts are also active with OA and that can take up a lot of their time as well. So to not disrupt the troop program, we encourage all other scout activities be done outside the troops activities. As I said, it's an expectation. We certainly don't set limits on scouts ability to manage time, I had an SPL once who was also a member of a Venturing Crew. He took full responsibility for planning a Montana Backpacking trip. He was special kid and his SPL duties didn't suffer at all, including going to summercamp before his backpacking trek. Barry

Our troop policy is that the Scout's troop responsibility comes before any other scouting activity. Most of the members of our PLC are typically are members of a Troop Tempary Trk Crew, Venturing Crew and OA and we have yet to have any real problem. The understanding is the troop comes first. Barry

Just saw this thread and want to say that Twocub and Vividi are giving great wisdom on the subject. Program expectations should be given to the families before their sons join. The SM bares the responsibility of teaching all troop adults how the program will implemented to the scouts and the vision the troop is striving to meet. There Shouldn't be any surprises, only explanations for further understanding. Barry

>>No I haven't taken a crew to philmont.......<< Well then it’s informative for inexperienced adults to learn that Philmont tells each crew to do “Thorns and Roses†discussions during the trek because they experienced so many complaints by scouts who were being pushed around by adults who thought they knew everything. The Thorns and Roses discussions are supposed to be a safe way for the scouts to tell the adults to back off. Philmont also started asking crews to assign chaplins for the same reason. Some adults just don’t play well when they get tired and sometimes the Philmont staff escorts an adult off the mountain to wait for their crew to finish the trek, which is a big reason why Philmont request at least three adults per crew. I know of one situation where an adult was reported to DHS. Building, training and guiding a crew is not the same as scoutmastering a troop of patrols. The OPs question is very common, especially among new adult leaders. I know you are the smartest person here Base, but you will have to forgive those of us idiots who have the t-shirt if we don’t give your advice a lot of weight. A back country trek can be very stressful for a crew that is not physically and mentally prepared for several hours of intense physical exercise in extreme weather conditions. Add to that those adults who join the crew for their own personal adventure and find they have little patience for the slower pace and decisions of the boys. Our best crew was eight seasoned 16 year old boys who took two dads that had never backpacked before. The adults didn’t know enough to tell the scouts what to do and the scouts took a personal responsibility to make sure the dads survived. I still hear great stories from that trek. By the way, I was thinking the same as Beav on this. I know it’s not that simple because I’ve been there a few times, but the whole Philmont experience is still about scouts learning the value of moral decision making. The crew leader should set the example of meeting the requirments for the trek. Barry

Have you taken a crew to Philmont Base? Barry

Pack, are suggesting a moral dilemma because I don’t see one. Let’s add a third choice to make your scenario more interesting, a convicted serial killer who is scheduled to be executed in 24 hours. For me there isn’t a moral dilemma for the fireman who uses a slider bar to set the conditions of life because they will simply adjust their values at that moment to justify their decision. One lives and two die. But neither is there a moral conflict with the fireman who sets no conditions and believes all life is equal because they can’t change the inevitable fact that one will live and two will die. From the morality perspective, who they choose to save is irrelevant. Barry

>>I believe that atheism has lead me to become even more moral than I was as a child of religion.<< I can understand that, atheism gives a freedom of not being tied to any specific moral doctrine. Atheists feel more moral because they can create their moral conduct for any situation or any mood. Today life is precious after the first trimester, tomorrow life changes to being precious after the second trimester. The next day life changes to be precious after….. I can certainly see the temptation of atheism. Barry

I can't express my shock and grief. He was a great scouter and made this a better place. I know he loved this scouting stuff. He is missed. Barry

>>Niether old nor far right. But I do enjoy firing up liberals who................ I also enjoy firing up conservatives the same way. You see, the problem with the far left and the far right is they …bla bla bla. . We may or may not agree on things but it's those types of attacks that prevent constructive dialog

>>and then interpreting (more like mis-interpreting as every passage has dozens or more different interpretations) it's meaning to bend it to their beliefs..<< How do you know? Is any kind of interpretation really the problem? Several folks on this forum believe the bible is nothing more than an over-interpreted history book. How would they know what is mis-interpreted? From these definitions, I think most of us here are Scouter Thumpers. Barry

What is a bible thumper? Barry

>>Scouting is about independence and trust. If you know he won't be able to contain himself fairly regularly (once a camp out or even every other camp out), then you don't TRUST him and scouting is probably not the right answer for him.<< The worst moment of my scouting experience was telling two very good parents that their mentally retarded son was not safe on campouts. They knew we tried and that we were thinking for his best interest. We’ve told the parents of several scouts that they were required to attend troop activities closely with their son to help control his behavior, and strangely their son’s behavior suddenly changes most of the time without the parents having attend. Parents just needed a wakeup call. While we have had families quit our troop when parents were asked to help with their son’s behavior, we’ve never asked any scout to quit. The parents always made that choice. When behavior gets to the point of pulling the parents in for help, change usually follows one way or the other. Barry

>>Scouting is about independence and trust. If you know he won't be able to contain himself fairly regularly (once a camp out or even every other camp out), then you don't TRUST him and scouting is probably not the right answer for him.

>>The sad thing is.........The guilty I feel hoping he never comes back.<< Yes, I’m sorry that I have no consoling words to help, but I think guilt is a reflection of a good person trying hard to do the right thing in a hopeless situation. Some years later I still reflect on the scouts that didn’t come back. Most were very troubled and I pray they are doing OK as adults. But I have far more success memories to keep my sanity balanced. What you are doing is hard and it pulls on all our emotions. There were many nights I couldn’t sleep. Some nights I smiled and laughed myself to sleep, some nights I cried. It’s a hard world out there and the SM sees more than his fair share because the title alone assumes them to be more trusted than the average person. Some parents expect us to perform miracles, some just want us to babysit. But what you are doing is noble and it requires courage to stand up against the constant waves of strife we see in these kids. Our own families suffer and our sole takes a beating. Sometimes we are just in the wrong place at the wrong time and we become an outlet for the single mom who feels hopelessness in how to raise their son into a man. But in the end, the rewards make it worth it and even motivate us to hurry to the next activity hoping for another day as good as yesterday. For every step backward, we go two steps forward. It’s hard to get it right every time, but I promise the skills you learn from this situation will be needed again. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

>>A lot of what you're talking about is problem solving. ILST mentions communication, planning, and EDGE, but not problem solving. The PL and SPL handbook talk about conflict resolution and problem solving, why not ILST? << I don't know, we didn't have ILST when I was SM, we had something much more basic. We learned most of our wisdom through the humility of doing it wrong. I'm trying to save you from that kind of growth because scouting is hard enough. Barry

>>After all that I wonder if that hour of sitting with the scout and mom was worth it.<< I think so, its not a scout problem anymore, it’s the parents problem. You made her responsible for the future of her son in your troop. >>I wonder if we just should have dismissed him from the troop.<< For every one parent I dealt with in your situation who didn’t care, five did care. You are giving the family and yourself another chance. >>I wonder if the suspension is going to make a difference in his behavior or life.<< No it will not, but this is about the parents, not the scout. I personally don’t care for suspensions because all they really do delay the inevitable. Either the family will agree to terms, or not. I usually knew within a week. >>I wonder if he will return or not.<< I wonder if mom will come around. I think you did good. Barry

>>There are better ways for the PL to solve the problem and ways to teach that is what I'm looking for.<< I kind of thought that was really your question. The site is very difficult and it’s taken me several attempts to get this far, so wish me luck. First off, you are struggling with a very common situation that most all of us have confronted. It’s just part of growing into a mature unit. Adult leaders need to grow as much if not more than the scouts for the program to mature. And you need to understand that these aren’t scout problems, they are adult growing pains in learning how to be good mentors and coaches. You said leadership is about gaining respect, but that is not quite right. Leadership is about guiding the team to accomplish successful goals. Respect just makes the job easier. I do agree with you that servant leadership is the best way to led. But where inexperienced adult leaders go wrong is they try to force the value of respect on all the scouts through the leaders. Respect is developed through helping all the members of the group feel they are equal and treated fairly. The Oath and Law only guide scouts to serving others, they do not define who and where to serve because we are expect to serve everyone all the time. In short, you really want to encourage a servant lifestyle and a servant heart in every part of your Troop program. Servant leadership is just one opportunity for a scout to practice serving. I’m sure you want your scouts to act as servants to each other even when they are in not Positions of Responsibility. Back to your problem. Like most of us from time to time, you are seeking new ideas for helping the adults teach skills that help the scouts motivates actions from other scouts in a non confrontational way. That is a difficult skill for adults to learn because have it easy since they only need to pull their adult card to intimidate a scout into action. But the scout’s peers don’t have that leverage, nor should they. Adults need to learn not to pull the adult card, which is a very difficult habit to break. You are going to have to learn how to think like a scout to better understand how to get him to change his way of thinking. You want a scout to independently make the right choices because it is the right choice, not because he feels intimidated or forced to do it. 1st principle: a scout follows the pack, he rarely leads it. I encourage our scouts to think and work as a team, especially with behavior. We had a scout cut his foot pretty bad while running through came one year. This happened right in front of the SPL and 20 other scouts. The SPL admitted he knew the rules and should have told the scout to put shoes and not run in camp. Great SPL, but I realize then that his bad decision was only 1/20th of the problem. The bigger problem was that none of the other scouts felt obligated to stop the scout’s wrong choices either. I found a troop problem that was caused by the adults because we tried to handle responsibility only through the leaders. So we attacked the problem by starting to hold everyone accountable for everyone. The scouts started to see that if they were capable of stopping bad behavior and didn’t, no matter how many scouts were there, they would be held equally accountable. Believe it or not, scouts actually like that because it gave them permission to stop their friends from making bad decisions. Why is your PL the only scout in the patrol holding the problem scout responsible for doing his job? I work with every new PLC to understand how to work as a team. If one scout causes problems, the member of the PLC (or a senior scout) closest to that problem should immediately deal with it. I explain that a PL farther away shouldn’t have to yell at the scout because he is too far away to deal with the problem quietly. Also, if the problem requires help, another member of the PLC (or senior scout) should walk over and help. Don’t leave a fellow scout stranded with the problem. Work as a team and deal with the problem quickly and quietly. 2nd principle: Scouts don’t change habits until their heart wants to change. What I mean is that just saying a person should respect leadership, or a leader should have respect doesn’t change the heart. You have the choice of either forcing a person to make the right choice or changing their will so that they voluntarily make the right choice without outside pressure. Your adults need to learn and practice (a lot) the art of finding a scouts heart, or motivation. I once had a mentor tell me that motivation follows the path of least resistance. So he made sure scouts always had clear choices. A scout should never be forced to against his will, he should have clear choices. Let’s look at the scout who refused to help out at KP. If he were given a choice before the campout that he was expected to help out at KP, or not go on the campout out, what would he chose? Either he is all in or all out. Our troop had a real problem with scouts just taking their time breaking camp, some scouts simply refused to help without the help of an overbearing adult leaning on them. Parents were upset because they had to wait in their cars for quite awhile. We were dealing with your same problem and wanted to find a better way. So the SM and the PLC worked together and came up with an idea. Our troop has a tradition that the scouts really enjoy of stopping for junk food on the way home from campouts. The PLC explained that getting the troop home on time was their first priority, if they take too long to break camp, they would skip the junk food stop. We never had another problem after that in the following 10 years while I was a leader in the troop. The scouts had clear simple choice of which path to take. Find the heart of the scout and use it to develop good habits. These principles aren’t just for problem behavior, but for all behavior. If scouts aren’t enjoying a part of the program, they need to learn to take action and change it. That is kind of the bases of my part in this TLT discussion. We had good trainings, but they got repetitive and old and the scouts started dreading them, so the change them to be fun again. Every part of the scouting experience should be fun. Personally I don’t see that you have a leadership problem, you have a bigger problem of bad team work in the patrols. This tells me your program isn’t pushing the patrols to work as a team. If the patrols had a choice of cooking, eating and cleaning in 45 minutes, or miss out on the fun activities, would their motivation change? Scouts need a reason to have to work as a team. I think “time†is a Scoutmasters best tool for encouraging motivation, but so few use it. Hey, whatever happened to patrol inspections? Also you need to simple message for your simple servant lifestyle vision. The Scout Law is a pretty darn simple guideline of servant habits. The scouts need to start practicing to make decisions (all decisions) based from the Scout Laws. Make it easy on yourself and start encouraging decisions based from the scout laws instead of MattR’s laws. Even the simple act of making a menu should force the scouts to consider other scouts allergies, likes and dislikes. So what can you add or change in your TLT right now to help youth leaders deal with unmotivated scouts or bad behavior? Understanding of course your other problem is patrol team work, but here are a couple suggestions. First teach the scouts how to handle difficult behavior in a nonconfrontation manner by always approaching talking quietly and never yelling or losing patience. Teach them to just do their best to explain to their expectations and why. Second, if the scout still refuses to change his behavior, then simply remove him or the problem from the group or activity and deal with them later. This is a great habit for adults too, but we guide the scouts to just ask the problem scout to leave the area and go visit the SPL to explain him the situation. If the SPL can’t change things, he can ask the scout to visit the SM to give him an opportunity to help the scout grow in his decision making skills. If the scout still chooses incorrectly, then he can hang out with the SM and miss the activities while the SM performs his responsibilities like washing dishes. LOL. I once got two new scouts up an hour early because they kept the PL and SPL up all night talking. We just quietly collected fire wood and started a fire. There was some mention of the scout law and general respect of others, but really not much talking or lecturing. The very tired scouts got the point. Another thing is encourage scouts to explain the expectations so they understand what is expected of them. One suggestion is for the PL to show the scouts the roster at the meeting before the campout and have them approve it, meaning agreeing to follow it as written. If the scout has an issue, they can deal with it there instead of the campout. If the scout chooses to break the agreement on the campout, then the SM has another opportunity to help the scout grow, and we like that. Finally you can get three or four other adults and perform a skit to the scouts showing them how to deal with difficult behavior. Add a little humor and the scouts will lock into it. I remember a scout reacting to a skit at our TLT by saying loudly, “Oh I get it nowâ€. Sometimes we adults get lucky. Honestly I think I learned more that day than the scout. I’ve gone way long here and I apologize. I love this scouting stuff and sometimes I just can’t stop. I hope something, at least one little thing I’ve written can help make your job a little easier. The time you are giving to help our sons is noble and we should do what we can help. Barry

>>There are better ways for the PL to solve the problem and ways to teach that is what I'm looking for.

>>There are better ways for the PL to solve the problem and ways to teach that is what I'm looking for.

>>The vague concepts are important but there are some common situations that a patrol leader should know how to handle.<< How do you think they should handle it? There is certainly nothing to prevent modifying your syllabus to enhance certain aspects of the training to meet your current needs. But the more difficult problem for a lot of us is just figuring out the skill that will help the scout in those situations. Motivating stubborn scouts is a difficult skill to master even for adults. Barry

>>How did the PLs leanr what to do? Using the Patrol Method, we observed the youth leaders we were responsible to, and imitated them when we be came responsible for the patrols and troop. Also a lot of mentoring in SMCs, and peer to peer mentoring too. One on one instruction I guess you could call it. << Yes, what you and Basement describe is what I expect from mature boy run troops, and should be the goal of all troops. Skills development of all skills should come from observation and practical applications, not specialized training sessions. There is no need for specialized skills training in a perfect troop because the scouts learn everything through observation and practical application in their activities. But there is no such thing as a perfect program, so troop leaders make up the shortcomings through skills training sessions like TLT and skills classes. We use training sessions like TLT to get scouts up to speed for specific skills that they haven’t had time to learn through the troop activities. But I used to teach unit leaders that using specialized trainings should be viewed as red flags in your program and to seek out changes to the program where the scout will learn that skill through observation or practical application. A question might be “What can be changed in the troop activities so that a new PL is better prepared for his responsibility?â€. Boy run programs work best for maturing toward needing less specialized training because the scouts learn how to initiate decisions based on the needs of everyone else. Very hard to do in adult run programs because the scout independently chooses to put the needs of other ahead of himself. Adults can preach it all day long, but when the scout is left to himself to initiate a decision, he usually follows learned behavior. What we find in mature boy run types of troops is the older scouts take on rolls of mentors for younger scouts who need more confidence to grow. Even the older 12 year old scout finds himself mentoring new scouts to help them gain confidence for the new activities of a troop. Typically the senior leaders are the oldest most experienced because they earned their stature of wisdom and skills that were developed over the years. Mature boy run programs have 16 and 17 year old SPLs and JASMs while the age of those scouts in adult run programs are typically 14 and 15. A lot of difference because the PL is typically two years younger. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not an anti-TLT or training person, I was the Council Youth Leadership Development Chairman for several years. It’s just that leadership development should be the goal of unit leader, not leadership development sessions. Teaching sessions are a needed crutch until the unit leaders and their program mature enough provide the same level of growth thorough observation and application. A troop that works toward that vision is more fun for the scouts because it challenges each scout to grow and gain confidence at his own maturity and level of skills. It becomes a troop where the scouts like to go because they like the person they have become there. Barry