Eagledad

>>The requirements for both the Scoutmaster's Key and the Scoutmaster's Award of Merit include rank advancement. They also include earning the Quality Unit Award, which includes rank advancement. We are setting up the leaders to consider advancement.

Hi All The only wisdom I gave about the sign was to our PLC. I told them group respect is a team accomplishment. When one member of the PLC puts their sign up, the rest of the PLC follows in support of the team and encourages those around them as well. I also agree with Beavah that consequences of performance change behavior. Our PLC improved a lot things (including starting on time) when the meetings were running long and all the complaints were sent to the SPL. Most of the complaints came from the parents tired of waiting outside in their car. In our troop, the adult never puts his sign up first. When they need the attention the group, the adult ask the senior scout in the group to get the attention. That may seem like a simple thing, but the boys sure like the respect that is implied by the act. Barry

Hi Lisabob Everyone has given good information. My perspective from the District point of view is training can help you get the middle of the road you are thinking about. Of course there are the obvious differences between packs and troops. The big one being that an adult can completely change the mood, direction and dynamics of a pack without really affecting the dens because the den programs are basically mini programs that run independent of the pack leadership. Troops are called boy run, but just about all parts of the troop program are intertwined together, so you cant just change a few adults without it affecting most everything else. On with the training. In writing this, I started giving examples and the reply was getting long. So instead I will attempt to make the point without examples. A good way of getting more consistent performance from different units is train them all with the same information. In this case, you need to first get everyone trained to your districts expectations of unit performance. So go the extra distance to train each unit and make sure the training materials include things like Each adult leader should recruit an assistant just incase the leader has to leave the position. The training can be difficult because you will find that some units will refuse, so you need to go to the unit to do the training. But, the important part here is teaching the idea, encouraging it from time to time and even rewarding the unit for it. You might come up with a District Quality Unit award with a really cool patch where one of the requirements is 80% of leaders have an assistant. Sound hard? Well it may be a bit laborious to introduce, but I think you will find that most adults kind of except it if done with the goodness of there unit in mind. I rarely had units not want to improve their program. Other things you can add that helped us are "Recruiting Training". Around August and September, I spent a lot of time teaching adults how to recruit, so I created a district course four weeks before school started to help packs feel more comfortable about recruiting. While the leaders liked learning how to get more boys, I was surprised to find they were very interested in how to recruit more adults. Also while I had the captive audience, I also spent some time giving the adults ideas of how to plan better yearly agendas and how to provide a simpler but more fun program and how to make the program easier for the adults. We read a lot of these ideas here on Scouter.com, but in reality, very few adults read scouting forums. This is mostly on the cubs side of course, but Im sure you could make it work for troops. See I find that not that many units really have a big picture of their program. They are just going from one month to the next, especially packs. when you give ideas that simplify their lives, they take everything you offer and ask for more. Our district improved our cub recruiting 20% after that training and we got far fewer calls about adult recruiting. Im just thinking off the top of my head of past experiences where we wanted to change units habits and I could go on and on, but does the idea of training adults to more middle of the road habits make sense to you? Barry

>>For all we know, the troop's position may have been stated clearly at the pre-camp meeting (but the dad didn't attend) and in writing in the pre-camp mailing (but the dad didn't read it), and to the scout at camp (but he really wanted to try riflery for fun and the counselor generated a printout because that's his job, even though there was no SM-signed blue card).

>>Makes it hard to do the right thing, doesnt it?

Hi All In my business, I learned to constantly re-evaluate my work and performance so that the product improves. I took that habit with me into scouting and I quickly learned to evaluate the reactions and comments of our customers, or families. I find that 90% of the time their questions or comments are directing our attention to some part of the program that needs some kind of tweaking. Most of the time the tweaking is something simple like educating the families better about our program. We have discussed here that something as simple as "boy run" is not very simple. So I learned to explain boy run, aims and methods, character and so on well enough to paint an accurate picture of our program. Sometimes the changes require changing the adult Leaders around or even asking one to leave. That being said, of course parents can push hard. If you dont want to work with difficult people, dont be a scout leader because parents are protective and ambitious with their kids. You are either working with them or against them. When they feel it is against them, some parents just dont have very good social skills. Your job is to either change their mind or change the way things are and some folks just have a hard time serving people like that. In general, what most are saying is important and means something probably needs a little tweaking even if that tweaking means just explaining things better. I struggle with those: I am the SM and that is the last word kind folks. That isnt a very good example of servant leadership or living the scouting principles. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

>>How is a kid harmed by gettin' an extra dose of safe handling checkout that isn't done immediately after the original instruction - so that it actually has to be remembered for somethin' longer than 10 minutes?

Hi All I'm just glad folks here agree the SM signature comes before the scout starts work on the badge. That used to be a challenge for many. Of the many thousands of cards I signed, I can't recall a scout every really caring about the MBC. Now I had scouts with neighbors or family friends wanting to be a counselor, so we had them come in and do the paperwork and also get to know a little more about them and their MB skills. The only issue we ever had was the dad who wanted to do all his sons badges. There is know restriction against that, but we had a lot of heavy discussions to why it wasn't going to fly well in our troop. Most folks are reasonable a will do the right thing. They just need to learn why? I love this scouting stuff. Barry

>>I'm no big fan of Dr. Laura, however, she ends each radio show with "Now go do the right thing."

>>Are you certain about that? The signature by the SM is permission to start work, and he's to give the name of a registered MBC, but I don't know anywhere where it is stated that the SM has to approve the selection of the MBC.

>>" The real Scouting is dying, a slow death "...it refurbished into tigering, cubbing, and weblows. As I said before ,soon we we will have " diaper Scouts, and girls scouts will be the baby sitters ".

>>A Post Trophy? Past Atrophy? Apt Apathy? A Post Toasty ? Holy Guacamole.

>>Mr. Nelson, before you criticize, I would suggest you do some research. Long live Scouting spirit.

>>I hope all this almost stream of conciousness helps. Adulthood is not easy. Sometimes it is not fun either. We muddle through, one day at a time.

>>While it won''''t solve the Guide to Safe Scouting challenges which demand two adults at a Den meeting, there is a program person who can be a huge aid:

>>No big deal. Why would it be?

HI All Been there and done that. When push finally came to shove and no one else was going to lead, then I explained to all the parents that would be my asstance. First I asked for two dedicated assistance so that if one of us got sick, there were two still there. I didnt do it for Safe Scouting reasons, I did it to maintain adult sanity. Then, the rest of the parents had to take on a month of planning. I planned all the meeting except the theme activities part. The parent of the month led that part. My part was basically flag ceremony, games, and closing. I had my assistance keep up with the advancement paperwork because that can be a lot for 13 boys (17 in my case). Have your meeting and give the parents a basic agenda for the year with themes for each month. Then ask a parent to volunteer for a month. Another way I keep better control and the boys busy is I generally had two activities going on at the same time. I divided the den in half and each half would go to one activity for 20 minutes, then the switch. That does require two parents planning for the same meetings, but I found they like that anyway. The advantage to this is you wont be over worked, your parents will become close to the boys and the den because they are part of the activities and you will have a close group of families. As for wild meetings, there are a lot of ideas here to help that. But the main thing to understand is these are boys and boys like fun, mystery and to be moving all the time. Action and activities. Action and activities. Do as much outdoors as possible. One other thing that helped me a lot with that many boys. I went from three 1 hour Den meetings a month to two 1.5 hour meetings a month. That extra half hour gave me the time for two activities and one week off for a breather and planning. You have come to the right place because there a ton of good ideas here to choose from. Your active parents will come out as they get comfortable. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

>>Removal may well cause the Scout to walk away from Scouting. Is that what the young man and the Troop need and want?

Hi All A lot depends on your response. Do you want the other scouts to learn from this scouts example? Do you want to just get rid of him so the PLC will perform better or up to adult expectations? Does the scout know he is not doing well? Personally I look at the troop as experience for real life (real life scaled down to a boys size experience). First, I want the scout to make the decision to give him the experience of practicing habits of character. I want the PLC to see me and the SPL give the scout a lot of counseling before the scout makes that decisions so they can learn a method of trying to resolve a difficult situation of accountability. Finally I want the SPL making the announcement at a PLC meeting so that business matters are handled in proper places by the proper people. And I would guide the SPL on how to make that announcement in enough detail that the troop moves on without further discussion because sometimes more damage is done by not saying anything. Everything about this situation should be a learning experience so that it can be done better the next time in each persons life. Accountability is a very difficult skill to develop for youth and adults. Not just in PORs, but in all behaviors. Holding other people accountable requires a large portion of patience and understanding along coupled with an equal portion of compassion. Barry

There are some Den Chief trainings out there. I would call the DE and ask if your district has one. If not, ask him/her to check the other districts in the council. Our district did not have the training, so we did our own. After the district found out about our training, they ask our trainer to do a district Den Chief training course. It is not really that hard, its more of a review of what the Den Chiefs duties are with the Den Leader so that the Den Chief and Den Leader go into the first meeting as a team. I would say couple hours. I will admit that as a CM I didn''t care for den chiefs, they weren''t trained and they actually increased the work load of den leaders. But, as a SM working with Patrol Leaders, I noticed that scouts with Den Chief experience where had a lot more leadership maturity then the other scouts. So we started including Den Chief as part of our JLT program. But they should be trained or it could be a negetive experience for the Den Leaders. Barry

>> Wow, with a CO of that size, maybe they need to charter two packs? Seriously.

>>Frankly, some of the comments and reactions here leave me with the impression that bad training and disorganized adult-led troops are much more common than good training or effective boy-led troops. So I have to be careful not to burn any bridges.

I''m with lisabob and funscout on this. I support your pack''s decisions Pack212scouter because I''ve been where you are at. We never turned away a scout, but I think we wished we had. I took a personal responsibility to make sure our Den Leaders only had what they could handle because they are the key to success of the pack. Still things don''t always work out and I personally had 17 Webelos that required so much dedicated work that I wouldn''t wish that experience on my enemies. Not that I have enemies. But just as important, I had to ask a few adults to quit their den leader positions for different reasons and that is a horrible job. Looking back on it, we knew they weren''t a safe choice in the first place, but we didn''t have any prier experience with them to say no. This adult gave you a window into his behavior. Is that the person you want to lead your son, or all the other sons of parents in your pack? By the way, talking with upset parents is a way of life for Scoutmasters if you are thinking in that direction. You will develop very good social skills from the experience. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

>>Why would you lower the expectations?

>>How, then, do you get all the scouts you put into positions to actively fullfill their position. Is it something along the lines of if the scouts don''''t at first fullfill their position they are not put into a new one until the promise to do better?