allangr1024

To me, the key to the project is the role of the manager of the project (the eagle candidate). In my college management classes, they outlined several roles that a manager takes on, including: Staffing Planning Directing Coordinating Controling I think a good scoutmaster can lead the scout in each of these areas, and see that he functions properly in each one of them. In project management, you start with a simple concise statement of the project. I have my scouts do this, and at the end I ask "Did THIS get done?" I like the Eagle project Planning Guide (ht

"This is the patrol that has been making phone calls for a month now recruiting heavily in the Webelos boys planning on considering us for the upcoming year. 39 of them potentially could join and triple our numbers once again. " I have not heard of having the boys make recruiting calls to Webelos. The thing that our district director says is to go to their meetings and invite them to go camping at Webelos Woods with us in the fall. I am not even sure we could get a list of Webelos to call. How does this work where you are?

"If Obama fails, there won't be a nation to rebuild." What kind of crazy statement is this. I think someone took the stuff about Obama being the Messiah a bit too literally. As for Bush being the one to start socialism in this country, I seem to remember that his argument was that the government should buy the bad mortgage debt, that it should restructure the debt, and if anyone defaulted on a mortgage, at least the properties could be sold to recover the money, and he thought that 95 percent of the mortgages would be repaid, and the government would recover the money. His error

Being a scoutmaster for a year now, my heart does go out to this guy. They bearly teach you how to run a troop in SM training, and that is through videos from the BSA that more or less show you what one may look like. I have not seen anything about nature requirements, and have seen no SM training course covering this. I struggled with this stuff when I was a scout, and I am not much better now. I agree that the museum idea is a weak one. These requirements scream "Get the scouts into the woods." For me, if a scout comes back with anything from an animal (sighting, tracks, dropping

I have two black scouts in my troop, and have found out the hard way that not only is the "N" word offensive, but simply calling them "boy" causes trouble. I, as a white adult, never thought of this, especially one who grew up in the deep south and heard adults say this of all the kids. I was as likely to get a "Boy, go do this" or "Boy, get a brain" as any other, white or black. But blacks really dont like that. When one of our dads came on a campout, and sait this to one of our black scouts, wow, what a mess. I don't think the dad ment it as a racial slur, but there you go. I hate it t

You know, I read the book and saw the movie. The book was more of a "stages of life" kind of book, following the young scoutmaster from his twenties into his old age, and seeing his choices of life; single life, marriage and family, carreer, and friendships as they are affected by his passion: scouting. In the first chapter he is looking back over his life, both wondering if he went in the right direction and longing to do it all again. As I ponder the question of does the movie portray normal scouting, I have to remind myself of two things. One is that scouting now is very differen

AnniePoo, I liked this article my Mike Rowe. I liked the way he warns that it is lonely at the peak. The only contention I have with it is that he seems to be saying that it is a failure to not get Eagle. The goal of Scouting is NOT to get a boy to Eagle rank. It is to help him grow, make good decisions, enjoy the outdoors, and have fun doing these things. I think most everyone can excell at something. For many, that something may not be scouting related, but you can still exalt in an accomplishment. If a boy comes to me and says he wants to be the first string quarterback,

Asm, I have never liked the idea of withholding a drivers licence until a kid eagles, myself. This is a ploy by parents to get their kid to do something. I have always thought that a boy should do what he wants, and get awards that he wants. Not every ball player will be a pitcher, or a quarterback, but I have seen parents push their kids to excell in sports beyond their interests. It is the same with Ealge Scout. Eagle is a great goal, but it comes with a cost. The scout must expend the time and effort to earn the Eagle rank. A parent can encourage to a point, and then it be

In my town, one of the large nondenominational churches runs a royal rangers program. They will not let the BSA form a pack or troop, and settled on RR because they felt the Bible training was the most valuable part of the organization. I looked at it from the outside, and saw many similarities with the BSA program, with specific sunday school type activities added. This unit was run by the youth pastor, with church volunteers. I could not tell if there was a "boy led" ethic involved. One guy told me that the church had a big problem with Morman units, Islamic units, and just plain se

Joe, Your discipline problem can be solved in a couple of ways, and it should involve an adult. You should take no action against a disruptive scout. You would have to recruit an ASM to watch the meeting from the back of the room. Arrange this before the meeting. Then, if you see a situation occurring, signal the ASM, and he should tap the boy on the shoulder quietly, and they can have a private discussion in the hallway. Better yet, arrange for the adult to have a length of rope on hand. When he calls the boy out, he will have the boy review the required knots, as well as so

In our troop we try to get the parents to come in to teach a merit badge, something they have an interest in. We tell them, only a few weeks commitment until the badge is done. I think this can hook parents in to being more active. Just give them a way out if they need it.

If you mean a patrol camping on its own, without adults, I would probably do something like this: Book two or three campsites at the council camp. Get them as far away from one another as possible. Mabey a mile apart. Put one patrol in one campsite and one in another. (Expand this for as many patrols as you take with you). The adults camp together at the farthest campsite. Give the patrol leaders a radio and tell them to call only in an emergency. Inspect the patrol leaders menu, work crew assignments, tent arrangements, campfire program plans, and program plans in advance. Pla

You mentioned a new scoutmaster. That could explain a lot. How did the transition go? How long from the time the old SM left to the time the new one came on board. I took over as SM after a period of months in which the old SM was absent (he was promoted and no longer had time for it). It took its toll. I wonder if these guys have been given any guidance other than Form a new older scout patrol. The new SM really needs to get these guys doing something, high adventure or troop leadership projects or training of younger boys, and I bet they would like to camp on their own.

I agree with Lisa that the quality of the character of our scouts seems to be slipping a bit. But we have the requirements spelled out for us in the book, and we are not allowed to add to or take away from those requirements. The kids do this many merit badges, and serv in a POR for this long, and do this many service hours. There is no requirement to prove your "Character" in any way. Now, if some kid has a mediocre POR, or does a poor job of doing filling the position, then we must look at the SM and staff as to why we let someone slide. In this, I have some control, since I am th

I see two groups represented here: boys who drop out but remain registered, and boys who drop out and do not re-register. Of the first group, boys 15 or under may leave for other activities such as sports or other youth programs (4H, ROTC, marching band, church youth group) and they may come back when the season is over for the other program. Boys over 15 may come back to finish Eagle rank before their 18th birthday, eyeing college admissions, scholarships, and higher ranks in military service, where Eagle would be helpful. I think this group would consist of boys very active at ag

Our council did last year for camporee. It seemed like the right hand might not have known what the left hand was doing. Say, how do you email a signed signature form? Do you use a scanner, and do all your adults have scanners they can use after they sign the forms? We have to fax ours. We cannot do it from our troop meetings (no internet), but next day is ok.

On our last backpacking trip, I used info from the site "www.freezerbagcooking.com" to prepare my menu for my evening meal. It turned out just fine, althought some of the recipies called for stuff I could not find at my local Wal Mart, and had to find substitutes for. On that web site, they call for combining all the ingredients in a heavy freezer bag, not a sandwitch bag, and pouring boiled water from a kettle into the freezer bag. You let the meal cool for 20 to 30 minutes; during which the water soaks into the rice or noodles, and then pour it in a bowl, or eat it out of the freeze

I asked this question once, to find that we do not have a unit commissioner assigned to our troop, because our district cannot fill the unit commissioner positions. No one volunteers. We only got visits from the Friends of Scouting guy and the OA guy, when it was the season. I ended up calling the district professional, the District Director, to get stuff. I found that in this case, the squeeky wheel gets the oil. If you never go seek out the help, and keep calling until you get a response, you will not have any. I could use help with recruiting, getting into schools, getting the

Our troop has a web site, mainly for outside visitors, and then a Yahoo Groups site that all our adults are registered in. The message board in the Yahoo Groups site will let you post messages to the group, and these messages are then emailed to all the members of the Group. I put announcements and SM minutes there, and store documents like tour permits in the Files section. All the adults know to look there for postings, and they also get the emails, although these usually come a day later. It is their fault if they do not log on and read the stuff. In general, I would say that most do g

I signed up to be a MB councilor for Environmental Science, mainly to help scouts in our troop get the badge. Since this one requires boys to do stuff outside in the field, I never had any of our scouts finish. (they took the badge later on at summer camp). I have never been contacted by any scouts outside the troop. Should the council maintain the MBC list and give out my name and phone number to interested parties? I am not sure how that works. I have never gotten a call.

"Is it normal to have parents (one or both) along on a camping trip who are not part of troop leadership? I don't know if it happens every camping trip in the troop I'm involved with, but it is happening this month." It is a troop by troop decision about parents camping. I would never tell a parent they can not come. But I would tell them they must not interfere. I in my troop have two issues. First is with parents not registered as adult scouters. They usually come once or twice, and either stop camping, convinced the troop will care for their kid just fine, or they join as a

"Specific ideas of outings, ideas, (new) songs, skits, crafts, projects, fundraisers, etc. would be tremendously useful to me and other pack members who are newbies to scouting. " Quoted from above. As a scoutmaster with a years experience, I can ditto the above statement. I have been through the training from the 90's, including woodbadge (for the 20th century), and I have been to the scoutmaster specific training now. What do I need? Program ideas, where to go backpacking, where to go canoeing, how do I meet the current webelos den leaders to establish a troop to pack relati

I will probably buy a new uniform, and wear it every other week to be an example. But, I will let the boys wear any official uniform to troop meetings. I was told by someone unoffically at round table that the BSA wants you to wear a whole official uniform from any given period. Therefore, wear the new shirt with the new pants, or wear the old shirt with the old pants. But I have been correct by a district director. You can wear a new shirt with a pair of old pants. They do not care. I am not sure about just bying the shoulder bars. I think that is part of the shirt. I w

I will probably buy a new uniform, and wear it every other week to be an example. But, I will let the boys wear any official uniform to troop meetings. I was told by someone unoffically at round table that the BSA wants you to wear a whole official uniform from any given period. Therefore, wear the new shirt with the new pants, or wear the old shirt with the old pants. But I have been correct by a district director. You can wear a new shirt with a pair of old pants. They do not care. I am not sure about just bying the shoulder bars. I think that is part of the shirt. I w

I can see two reasons for philmont to do this. The first is that many campers will not use tree hugger straps and will damage the trees by tying bare ropes to them. The second is that you must often position your tents to discourage the local bear and other wildlife population. Hammock campers often must be separated due to locations of suitable trees for hammock use. When we went to Philmont in 2005, the ranger taught us to clump the tents together so a bear would percieve them as being a big massive thing, to be avoided. Not going to happen with a hammock camper.