Eagledad

>>Merit badge classes seem to be here to stay, so instead of debating them, let's make certain that they are not abused.

>>I of course think they are wrong, but if they really deep down believe what they are doing is the best for the kids they serve. I do have to respect them for that. (They are still wrong!)

Short sheeting, plastic Icecube with a fly, rubber spider on sleeping bag, a rock in the backpack are off the top of my head. Barry

Sadly I understand evmoris point after reading the post that is equating Pranks and Bullying as the same thing. In most cases pranks are harmless acts played for the fun of everyone involved. Bullying are acts intended to harm. Bullys might use pranks to do harm, but not all pranks are bullying. If we start considering a prank and bullying as the same thing, there is no end to legitimizing simple acts of fun as harmful. Singing happy birthday to a scout comes to mind. Im starting to fear we will eventually require one adult accompany every scout in all scouting activities while at the same time requiring a bubble suit so they cant be touched. Whoops, actually two adults per scout for youth protection. I guess it is the culture, but Im sure glad I grew up during a better time. Barry

>>The other thing to watch for is that your SPL becomes the troop nag, even if it is just among this group of offending boys.

A quote from the Principles Of Scoutmastership In Relation Io The Boy Development. If a boy is to learn that helping other people is worthwhile, his practice of helping in Scouting must be accompanied by satisfaction and his failure to help must be accompanied by annoyance. The satisfaction or annoyance is greater if it comes from within. Everyone has good responses, but our job is to encourage the Scout to voluntarily change his behavior because he knows it is the right thing to do. Telling him he must change in a Scoutmaster conference or Scoutmaster Minute doesnt typically motivate the boy to make internal decision of change because he doesnt feel the benefit if it. As has been mentioned already, a schedule or agenda does that very well. Our PLC learned to start meetings on time because they got annoyed by complaining parents who got tired of meetings running late. Patrols learned better kitchen habits when they had to cook, eat and clean before troop assembly. Tearing down campsites and packing the trailer went a lot faster (45 minutes) when the scouts missed their junk food stop on the way home to meet the waiting parents. The best motivation for change is annoyance. It is also true that leadership skills have to be improved to improve respect toward leadership, but skills development requires time and practice. Change in behavior from within can be instant. Also we must consider the age. While I consider new scouts to be the most undisciplined scouts in the troop, I remember the 12 and 13 year age of raging hormones. So patience and understanding is also required while waiting for the annoyance to motivate change. The above quote taught me to find ways of annoying the scouts. It requires a lot less work and stress on everyones part in the long run. Barry

>>On the other hand, youth need to respect adults, at least partly, simply because they "are" adults. We have far too many people who seem to think "whatever 'I' want, feel, or think is all that matters", and that they therefore can ignore or disrespect anyone with whom they disagree.

LOL, that's pretty good, but I think it was somehting like "Mmmmm, sweet and tasty." Yep, I had to find a really good Troop Guide for that patrol. I'm always encouraging agressive names like: Lions, tigers or bears. A lot scouts today are into video game names. I don't play video games enough to know if they are agressive. Of course I used to be a Bob White, but we were clever and held our own. Barry

If the patrol was a few nerdy kids looking to improve their patrol stature, I'd probably consider it. The patrol name that personally gave me the most trouble was a bunch of new scouts that called themselves the Peach patrol. PEACH PATROL! That was just wrong. Barry

I'm sure this happened in our troop, but I don't remember it. Which makes me think I didn't get involved. So maybe this is one time you don't have to do anything. Let the patrol figure it out while you just sit back in the shade and watch. Barry

Well this explains why every troop is different. 1. We handled it through the PLC. In our troop the scouts have the floor and run the show. If an adult wants to say something, anything, he has to get permission from the scout in charge. Adults never put their sign up first, they either waited for a youth leader to put up the sign, or requested a youth get the groups attention so they could speak. Also, we purposely did not yell or rant in our troop because we wanted the youth leader to learn how to control a group without yelling at them. I always told the scouts that yelling is a sign of lacking leadership skills and it was time to learn something new. 2. This would not have happened, or never ever happened while I was there. The scout is an to adults, so he is treated as an equal. What if this were a parent or another adult, would they have been treated the same way? Actually I found that scouts kind of got their way with the committee because the committee enjoyed them in the meeting. The adults even tended to show off a little as well. 3. It wouldnt happen in our troop. Also, we had a policy in our troop, if a scout doesnt understand why we do something and the adults cant justify it, they dont have to do it. This isnt quite the same issue, but the attitude to always be clear and have and explanation is the same. It forces the adults to justify their actions and not force their stature of being an adult over the scouts. 4. Im surprised to read this happens as much as it does. Adults must set an example of expectation. But I will admit I had to ask a ASMs once in a while to live up to the SPLs example. Never saw it in an BOR. 5. Refer to answer number 3. 6. Adults need to grow up. Looking at these examples, we just had a different troop and different attitude. I look at these and realize the one big difference between Lisas troop and ours is we assumed our scouts to be adults. If you fill in adult where she has scout, I think it would change a lot. Oh we had blunders now and then, just like adults have blunders with each other. But in general we did not have the situations Lisa described. Barry

Boy I read this and felt I could write a book on the question. Its not as simple as the question seems because programs evolve as they mature in their particular environment. But, after thinking about it, I think there two things that we did to make it work: PLC meetings and communication. To start off, for those who arent familiar me, I was the SM of a very boy run program. While I was SM, my personal philosophical approach to boy run was to develop the troop so that the adults never had to be around except for transportation. Our troop is different than most in that we had a Planning PLC meeting every week before the troop meeting instead of every month that most troops are accustom. There are several reasons I asked the PLC to try this and I can explain that if anyone wants. But to keep the answer short for the moment, we had a lot of PLC meetings to keep track and direct the program. I counted once that our SPLs averaged leading over 100 PLC meetings in their six month time in position. Rarely were any of the meetings longer than 20 minutes and probably closer to 10 to 15 minutes. I am convinced that any of our SPLs could run a meeting for a Fortune 500 company. They were really good after six months. The other thing we worked hard on was communication. Communication is an area where all troops struggle and we were no different. But we pushed it pretty hard because it was so important to our program performance. Our SPL typically made two calls to his officers each week. One in the middle of the week as kind of a reminder of what was going on next week and one on Sunday to find out what they were going to report on Mondays meeting. I trained leaders that they should know everything that will happen in a meeting before the meeting so that there are no surprises to make the meeting go long. His last call on Sunday is to the SM to get the adults report. It is also a convenient way for the SM to learn of any situations developing. I dont think a large troop could be boy run without good constant communication. As for the new scout program, I cant remember a year we didnt get at least 20 new scouts. So while I hate aged based patrols, we did use a New Scout Patrol type system for about the scouts first six months. I firmly believe the rate a scout grows is directly related to the number of older scouts he mixed with in his activities. New Scout Patrols reduces that number a lot no matter how you do it. But, I also learned that a mature Patrol can only take two new scouts before it adversely affects the patrol dynamics, so that is the reason why we used the NSP system. We typically moved the new scouts into existing patrols after summer camp. That is a very simplified answer to what I think is a complicated question. I hope it made some kind of sense. Good question Mike Barry

>>I am very active at District and Council levels and am becoming more involved at National, so we get more attention than your average unit.

>>Good Scoutmasters tend to be very desirable. So one solution is kick out that Scoutmaster and find one that isnt so good at the job. Barry

>>The difference between practical jokes and hazing is your position. If you are the victim, then it is hazing.

>>Now, back to my buddy, OneHour's, question: How do we cap it?

>>I don't know that I have seen anything in the thread thus far that indicates the troop adults actively encouraged such behavior in order to reduce the number of young fellows in the troop.

>>Expulsion from the troop could be justified for the younger and older scouts, but in my opinion especially the older ones who should know better.

>>Our PLC knows what is acceptable and what isn't, and they pass this down to their Scouts.

Yes, I think saying a troop that does MBs during a troop meeting means the troop is adult run is overstating without knowing the troop program. While MB activities during a troop meeting might be typical or indicative of a adult run troop, it doesn't mean it is an adult run troop. Our PLC once planned Car Show at one troop meeting where a dozen or so adults brought their hot rods and muscle cars. That was a very cool meeting for the scouts (AND DADS!). And it was under the theme of the Car Engine Maintenance MB. A dozen Webelos joined our troop because they visited on a night our troop was doing some cool activities under the Space Exploration MB. We had a really good SPL at that time and the PLC actually planned three real good meetings under that theme. If the scouts were only focused on advancement and not the MB theme, I might get concerned. I would be real concerned if they only planned MB activities for most of the meeting. But if scouts come up with great programs from MB themes, I'm cheering them on. We also do first aid every year. Barry

>>I have had the reigns for a while now, and I am implementing these ideas one at a time. And my goal is "the easy chair", as Hillcourt put it. I am not sure that round table lectures will instill this.

I had a really good write-up on this that I did about 10 years ago; Ill see if I can find it. But in short, it is very dangerous to cap troops because that reputation can hurt in the long run. It is better to reduce growth by adding requirements for the privilege of being part of the troop. The way our troop tried to control it was through higher yearly fees. Even then we still grew larger than planned, but we had a lot of money to spend. The goal however is not to develop a reputation of being a special troop or a snobbish troop. I have seen several Troops in our district live and die by that sword. Another risk of capping I saw that bit a couple troops in our district was limiting new scouts to almost not allowing any. These troops found that when the groups got to the leadership age, they didnt have enough scouts to run the troop and struggled in keeping a fun program going. The SM of one such troop saw the writing on the wall and retired quickly. His troop went from 70 to 20 scouts in two years from the sudden loss of older scouts to younger scouts who didnt know what to do. I am also not a believer of splitting troops. I did extensive research in this area trying to learn the best way to approach it and found that it fails nine out of ten times and the troop with the original SM still grew large. When our troop had 95 scouts on the roster, we typically had about 60 active. The reason for us was that our troop was friendly toward scouts in sports and band, so depending on the season, we averaged 60 active scouts except in January and Summer camp when we were back to 90. I guess I understand trying to keep the roster clean of deadbeats, only because my wife was the treasure and didnt enjoy maintaining their account, but PLC will give the best indication of when the program is too big. They simply wont be able to keep up. In reality, the troop will size itself to the SM. My observation is that it really doesnt matter how small or big the troop wants to be, the program will size itself to the SMs style of leadership. Good Scoutmasters tend to be very desirable. So one solution is kick out that Scoutmaster and find one that isnt so good at the job. Barry

>>I have always said I would split the troop if we got that large, but with good support and experienced leaders from this our troop's "Golden Age" returning to our committee, I am slowly warming to the idea of a larger group. There are plenty of strong troops in our immediate area, it is unlikely we can grow that big...

>>This will be great for round table -- thanks for sharing!

I think you have written a very good guide and I don't want to take away from that, but I think its too long, and here is why I say that: When I was the District Boy Scout trainer, I used to poll adults all the time to find out what materials they were using and I found that less than 40% of the scoutmaster even read their SMH. I think it was actually far less than that. And I found that the ASMs were half of that. The thing is that most adults think they already know most of what is being presented or written, so they may glance of gaze through it, but they aren't going to give the time for reading the whole thing. Lets face it, the Scoutmasters Handbook is one of the best sleeping pills a person can take. I used to ask my participants to ust read the Patrol Leaders Handbook and SPL Handbook because those are fairly short easy reads and they pretty much give most of what the scoutmasters need from the SM Handbook. I'm not trying to say you did it wrong or its not good stuff, it certainly is. But if you want it to make an impact, start cutting it down to the bare bones. Turn it into a reference guide or proceedures guide to improving patrol method in a troop. Kind of check list of what the troop should be doing to go in that direction. I hope that helps, I really like what you wrote and hate to even comment, but I'm kind of excited with what you have done here and would like to see it spread out beyound your District. Barry