Eagledad

One of the traditionally best recognized troops in our district had two outstanding scouts who alternated between SPL and ASPL for three years. Their SM was new when they started their senior leadership and quite frankly let the boys run the troop, because as I said they were outstanding. The troop has had a great reputation for 80 years, but it almost doubled in size while these scouts were the leaders. When they turned 18, the SM didnt know what to do. There were no senior leaders to follow those two scouts. The SM panicked and left six months later with the troop falling apart. The SM failed that troop because he didnt understand the concept of training your replacement. Those two scouts did everything for that troop and did it well, except train their replacements. Even the PLs lack the skills to step up when the troop needed them. Every leader, no matter the responsibility needs to have replacement. The SM certainly should be working side by side with their future replacement, the CC does the same. The PL has the APL. The APL should count on the QM and so on. The assistant should perform some of the duties of the leader they are assisting. I trained my SPL to stand in one place so that he was forced to allow those around him run the program. The scouts knew where to find him if they needed assitance. Not only do the assistant scouts practice new skills that will give them a resume for the future responsibilities, they also learn skills they dont enjoy. Not all scouts like responsibility, being an assistant is how they learn if its their cup of tea. I would suggest that all your youth leaders find their replacements and start training them. It will take a while to figure out how it works, but once it does, you will find that your senior or top youth leaders will serve the program by actively selecting and pushing young scouts into training responsibilities for their future and the future of the troop. If a 12 year old shows some ambition toward leadership, make sure he is on the path to PL. If you have a proven PL, push him into PLC. Dont allow one scout to dig such a big hole of responsibility that the program gets stuck when he leaves. Barry (This message has been edited by eagledad)

Hand out the awards at den meeting and recognize the scouts at pack meetings by handing out their cards. Don't need to interrupt roller skating night with a boring awards ceremony. Barry

>>So you explain to the the well-meaning-but-misguided-adult that his "take-over" idea doesn't teach boys planning skills and doesn't further the purposes of Scouting.

I've seen this a few times, you have very aggressive adults who are building their unit by aggressively taking advantage of fair minded adults who just don't think that way. They simply dont care what happens to your unit. It has nothing to do with the performance of your troop program, it's only about making there troop the biggest and best. If this is the case, getting them out of the pack is the first step to get the conflict out of the cub program. It won't completely go away but it will help. Then I would call the DE and ask for advise (help). Your pack is going to be a battle ground in the future for two troops. That is fine when the troops aren't overtly aggressive, but it drives families out of scouting in situations like yours. In my experience however, adults like this don't usually backdown very much even after a third party counseles with the two units. Hopefully your COR is understanding, but there is only so much that can be done. Don't loose you composer, I have seen friendships lost over it. Run the best programs that you can and just be proactive in letting the families in your pack know about you troop program. Good luck. Barry

>>In our troop, the Scout is required to talk to the AC (or soon, the Troop Scribe) about recording advancement.

Kind of funny, my experience on this subject occured about 20 years ago. But I don't have any regrets because I was a new SM and looked at the expereinces as learning how to do it better next time. Fred is right, these problems typically start way back at tenderfoot. That is the lesson learned, but the application still isn't as simple as it sounds. Barry

One of the phrases I gave to visiting Webelos parents was that our job was building your son into the man who makes the right decisions when his boss calls him into work while his wife is sick in bed and three kids are crying for breakfast. But now I have the widom of life and agree with Pack: ""I sometimes think scouting is there to help keep them alive long enough until their female counterparts have developed the means and skills to take over and keep them alive as husbands."" Yep Yep

>>Now I use 3 x 5 cards and a pocket calendar and it works for me. I would expose them to different methods and let the boys figure out what works.

If someone wanted to donate a tent to your scouts, is there an address you could post that wouldn't require exposing their identity? Barry

Tents are a difficult piece of equipment for backpacking Troops. Most backpacking troops in reality are troops where the scouts may backpack a couple times a year and maybe one high adventure a year. So youre basically left with nine or ten nonbackpacking weekend campouts a year. That means you need a tent stout enough to hold up to a couple years of plain old camping, and light enough for a couple backpacking campouts. Im not sure there really is an ideal tent for that kind of troop. I admit Ive been out of the troop camping business for a few years and tents technology changes every year, so I dont know whats out there now. But our backpacking patrols eventually moved to stout four man camping tents for nonbackpacking campouts, and personal light weight tents all for the rest. That seems like and expensive way to go, but in reality the scouts found pretty good deals for the kind of tents they personally wanted to use. Typically an observer on our campouts would see two or three of the hardy stout tents with one or two personal tents in each patrol. As our troop gained to more experience, both the adults and scouts got better at determining the best tents for each trip. For example, we found campsites in the Northern Tier trips was very limited in size, so we tried to keep the number of tents small by using 3 and 4 man backpacking tents. However, two man tents were better on full week backpacking trips in the mountains beacuse they packed a lot better. Sometimes scouts to use single man backpacking tents if it worked with the crew number. Philmont doesnt allow single scouts in tents. Then there is the style of tents to consider. T2Eagle has given some great advice. Through the years we learned two entrance tents work better for backpacking because it allows each person to enter and exit with minimal disruption to the other occupant. Keeping mud and dirt out of the tent becomes a high priority for comfort through the week, so a little time is required to sit in a tent entrance while taking off the boots outside. No big deal on a nice evening, but if it is raining cats and dogs, somebody is left standing in the rain waiting for the other to get dang shoes off. Then there is that stuff you leave outside the tent but under the vestibule like the boots and raingear. Two vestibule entrances just work better. We spend most of our backpacking in the Rockies, and mountain showers in the afternoon are more common than not, so we learned the faster you can set up a tent, the less messy it will get inside. We found that tents with sleeves for the poles were painfully slow compared to tents with hooks. And then what about those tents that required a dozen poles to hold it up. I personally like no more than two poles for the tent and maybe one for the vestibule. Oh, if you dont think a self-standing tent is a big deal, try finding some hard ground for that stakes of a non-selfstanding in a mountain forest with six inches of tree compost. Its not any fun running out in the rain every hour at night resetting that stake. I know other folks have other advice from their experiences, but T2Eagle reminded me of the advantages of different tents. Barry

>>Being lazy forces a person to get by in life by developing other skills than actually being a contributor.

>>Actually, I do a good deal of recruiting adult leaders as well as youth. The "Was I too BOLD?" thread illustrates how I helped a unit recruit a new Cubmaster and Committee Chair after the departing Cubmaster was ready to give up.

>>I'm sure there are cases that could be argued to disaprove allowing the scout to do the badge, though for the life of me I really can't identify one.

Yep, some folks messed up. Usually the SM catches all the flak for the mistakes other adults (like the AC) make in doing this scouting stuff. I agree with NJ, doesn't sound like leaders working as a team. Barry

>>After I sent him the link to the Guide To Advancement, he read the section on "active" pretty thoroughly, and was working on an argument that justified his not participating on outings.

Guy, have you called Eureka? It's been a few years, but they replaced our poles for free. Also, there are some custom pole makers out there that will make reasonbly priced aluminum poles for weight and shorter sections that fit in packs. Use the fiberglass poles on nonbackpacking campouts and save the aluminum for backpacking. Barry

>>If we ran our packs/troops/crews/ships/whatevers this way, they'd fall apart (and we all have seen this). So why do we allow for our districts and councils to be this way, at least on the volunteer side? And why do many of us perpetuate the myth that, really, everything is totally functional?

You might even get some cooperation by encouraging (allowing) the scouts to use the smartphones or smartpads. Barry

>>BSA's intent and intended processes is debatable because of that messed up documentation. BSA does intend some level of "approval" but it's the most minimal level ever implied by BSA. So minimal you can essentially view it as not an approval, but more documentation of a conversation between the scout and the SM.

>>Publishing a current MBC list is one of the District Advancement Committee's primary responsibilities. If they are not doing this, what ARE they doing???

>>The SM and I talked about it last week -- his inclination is to hold the Scout to the two more outings that he originally agreed to, and then if the Scout wants to approach the appeal with National, he is free to do so.

>>Fine, but that's no reason to not sign the card. Strictly speaking, the scoutmaster is not "approving" the scouting doing the MB.

>>Carry one yourself! Explain what you put in it, See if you actually use it yourself. Explain the benefits of them, if the boys find them to be helpful, they'll use them. If it's just one more "top down" directive and they don't "get" why they should use them, they won't.

I took the attitude to never assign the MBC because I wanted the Scout to be incharge, so we had discussions. If we felt a counselor wasn't the quality that we wanted for the scouts, we took them off the list. If the scout found a counselor he wanted tht wasn't on the list, we ask the person to come in and fill out an application and get some training. That gave us the time to kind of do an interview and learn more about the person. I never forced a scout to not use a counselor, and I never had one use one that I didn't think was good for the job. Barry(This message has been edited by eagledad)

I guess I've never had that happen. We discuss the counselor he decides to use and I sign the card. I'm not sure why the scout would change. However, I'm also not sure I would know about it if he did change. Our MB Cards don't require a second signature by the SM. Once I approve his choice, it's out of my hands. Barry