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highcountry

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Everything posted by highcountry

  1. No they won't listen, waste of time and energy. Just hang it up and maybe....someday they will wonder what happened. Of course blame for it will be deflected far from the real problem.
  2. I looked at the BSA/OA provided scripts.....I didn't gauge them as more lame vs less lame. I viewed it as one more detail, one more corner where the BSA is micromanaging how troops and volunteers do, say, plan and carry out even minute parts of the program. This is very sad, I think I need to watch Follow Me Boys again and get a sense of why I did get involved when I was between 2003 and 2011. Mandating how old kids can be to use a wagon, no squirt guns, must use scripts, my replacement at Scoutmaster got into an aguement with some woodbadge dude at IOLS about proper dish washing procedur
  3. Eagle 94 lamented in the other thread on a WDL who was disappointed her younger scouts would not get to have the same crossover experience as her old scouts got to enjoy. There is a solution for this...."hire out" the ceremony. Our local pack used 2 types of ceremonies over the years that I saw it, sometimes thy brought in a local guy named the Mountain Man"....he was not a member of the BSA but did a fine crossover ceremony the cubs all enjoyed. Sometimes they had the OA chapter come in and do the crossover with all the Indian Regalia. So I suggest a pack that wants the OA style cro
  4. With my experience with BSA, I don't trust them enough to lay confidence they would cover someone in the event of a serious issue coming up. At least I would never put myself in the position of finding out bad things the hard way when I should have sided on being cautious. I believe comments before are right, BSA might try to get you or the CO to cover first on your insurance and then back you up unless their lawyers could find some detail to be a reason to not cover you. I witnessed a serious event in my community involving another church and one of their volunteers late in my scoutmaste
  5. To the original OP. You are involved with a bunch of lazy, selfish, self centered and some dysfunctional parents and the mess of a pack they created. The previous CC did NOT fix the issues, they told you that as they were burned out and fed up. You inherited a bunch of adult babies who are completely used to someone else doing everything for them, complain when everything is not just so, complain that you don't send them enough reminders....on and on. These people will not change. The only way to fix it is to eliminate (Don't allow them to recharter) all the deadwood adults and complaining par
  6. Not entirely Jblake. We know he wants Eagle and we know he intends to drop at the end of February. We discussed all the short comings and the need for him to grow up and do things outside mom's cover, that actually working hard at and completing things neeing to be done and not waiting for adults assigning it to him is where he needed to go in his route to becoming a young man. We gave guidance on exactly what things he needed to be doing since over time he has become so detatched from any commitment, leadership or responsibility that without the guidance he would be bewildered. We laid o
  7. What to do regarding older scouts seems to be a very common theme, but I don't agree it is as easy as blaming the adults for not having a good program or allowing the scouts to fix the program by what they put on the schedule, I have seen those scenarios play out and it doesn't fix the problem for the most part. Our scouts put the annual calendar together from suggestions made by scouts and adults during the course of the year. We also encourage scouts, particulalry older ones to add events to the calendar that they plan and run entirely on thier own to develop planning and leadership (Skiin
  8. Although we are relaxed a little on uniforms (we encourage the scouts to wear as much as they can afford or desire) we expect scouts who are going to be at an Eagle Board of review to wear as much of the uniform as they can. We don't greatly care if they wear scout socks, pants, belt but if they do it is favorable. We at least expect Class A shirt that is clean and does not look like it was balled up in a pile producing a huge wrinkled mess, tucked in with necker and slide, clean pants or jeans and decent shoes or dark colored hiking shoes or sneakers. Clean grooming, no goofy hats, ripped pan
  9. "Skin in the Game"......I hear that one. We have about given up on getting kids to fund raise, folks get tired of tying to motivate kids and families to do this, we have tried all kinds of methods and coaching and motivation and different fund raisers, have begged the scouts to come up with new ideas that ar workable for fund raising and other than a few exeptions nothing happens. I can't make roundtable (I have Fire Dept Trainings on RT nights so my CC and Treasurer attend) and they are hearing that it is becoming more common for troops to toss in the towel on most of fund raising and just
  10. There is comfort in knowing you are not alone, I have this all the time but it is not quite as bad as it used to be. Being SM for 3 years now the scouts and parents know what the expectations are, in addition we have created some rules and implemented them. Some folks never learn though. Some things helped, others didn't work. I too am amazed at the parents who have given up on this battle, people's attention spans are short and with many, it is apparent they will change their minds and do something else when something "better" appears on the radar screen. I have tried to illustrate to pa
  11. Horse manure to you too John, sorry the kids in my trioop/town are not jsut like yours, bbut that is the way things work and the way kids are wired up here. We are in a somewhat remote town, nearest next troo is 20 miles away. I can tell you it is hard enought o get parents to drive to campouts an hour away, gettting them to drive kids to merit BAdge Couneslours isn't going to work. The kids in my tropp WITH EXTREMNELY RARE EXCEPTION don't have it on their radar screen to look up and call MBC's from outside the troop. As I noted without MB Colleges and Summer camps we would rarely have anyon
  12. We have no problems with a parent being a MBC for thier kids so long as other kids are doing the badge with them at the same time. I am SM and I am also listed on about 8 MB's to counsel. The only times I do MB's is with a sign up sheet and the badge is done outside scout meetings, each scout is tested and engaged and we watch to see each one is actually learning the skills, not just sitting through the sessions and getting a checkoff for having had a pulse and sitting there. The only other time a parent signs off on their kid's MB requirements for which they are a registered is when they send
  13. I'm experiencing what GB and Lisa explained earleir. I had on of our Eagle Scouts (Now in College) tell me he really didn't get the leaderrship, reposnibility palnning picture until after he was 18. He is one of our most exveptional scouts too. I ahd a parent who is tiuned into reality tell me the same thing independently, that they are only ready for so much at scouting ages, they get better as they move from 12 year olds to 17 year olds but there is only so far you can go in general. I thin k short attention spans, instant gratification, narrow mided focus and other factors make this the nor
  14. We are dealing with one of these scouts right now. The Scout in question is reaping what he has sown. He is working on his Eagle Project and it has been dragging on for months, the reason, almost no scouts in our troop will help him on the project as they have no respect for him, leaving campouts early (And sometimes showing up late) is one of his hallmarks. He will be having a friendly chat from several adult leaders soon regarding his poor attitude and lack of participation or leadership. He will be informed that no SM or ASM in the troop will be signing off on his SM conference until he sta
  15. I don't see a seperate signature line for the DRP. Reading the DRP (It has been years since I filled out an application so I have forgotten the wording since) I see nothing that requires the unit to provide religious services. I make it convenient for each family to provide the service of their choosing so I support it in that way. We are normally back early enough on Sunday and can accomodate everyone. The problem I had was one demanding parent that had to have something custom for his kid, and I tried a couple ways to accomodate. That wasn't good enough and he remained demanding, I was glad
  16. http://www.wilderdom.com/games/InitiativeGames.html This is a favorite bookmarkj when we need patrol team building games. Many of the BSA directed ones have a high percentage of games that are more appropriate for cubs. Scouts get bored and complain fast when you try to get them going on games below theri age level. Lots of good ones on the link I provided.
  17. To and from Summer camp, to Camporee or to Klondike yes. On our local campouts (just our troop ) no. Our scouts that go to MBC's tend to go on their own driven by their parents, only one or two ever wear class A. From theMBC's I have been to, 1/4 to 1/3 of all boys there are in uniform, the majority are not.
  18. I agree MBrown, there are much bigger priorities, and it is the adults who are concerned about full uniforms, the kids never raise the issue. I think Beavah has some good points to root issues with his response. In my experience, the uniform can drive some kids away and has in some instance I have seen the past 3 years. I have 2 boys in my troop that left another area troop for the stated cause of too strict adult expectations. They were not having much fun and these scouts and their parents very quickly got sick of the must and you shall expectations of that troop (They have a 72 page tr
  19. Good to at least know the rumos anyway, I have 3 Life scouts all well along toward Eagle. One is under the gun age wise and already has his foot on the gas, but the other 2 are just 15. I am going to urge them to step on it a bit to make sure they are complete before year's end just incase requirements change up.
  20. Yes, agreed, some people have nothing better to do than to stir up trouble. I see GW and at least one other poster on the uniform thread have gone to insulting other posters in particular a scout hwho has posted some well thought put additions to the tread. Both GW and at least one other "Scouter" have demonstrated a ttoal misalignmnt of priorites, attacking others and clearly being a Poor example of what scouting is about in their Rabid, foam at the mouth pursuit of obeying every rule they can find. Both GW and (edited part 'another scouter") are on my ignore list as Bob White was before as
  21. I have 2 ASM's who have an Eagle patch on one of their uniform shirts and I am not going to mention it to them, in fact I had a UP scouter at a camporeee bring it up a year or so ago. I told him that if he had ASM's that were half as good as these two individuals are with helping out and helping provide an excellent program as these 2 men to he would be fortunate. He tried the "it's agaisnt the guidelines" line and I told him to mind his own business running his own troop. One of these ASM's is in the program for the love of it and the pride he has in making Eagle in the early seventies, he
  22. We had 5 "challenging" scouts last year at our summer camp, in addition I had to deal with several challenging parents that made the experience so bad, that I am not going to go to summer camp myself this year. One scout has considerable behavioral issues and we told the parents he could not go to summer camp this year unless a parent went along. The fatehr is a problem too so the mother agreed to go although I was not thrilled with this (The kid needs to have the apron strings cut as a piece of his problems). In April she informed us she couldn't go, we were aboput to tell her the son
  23. My last post on this as Brent clearly doen't get it. 2 Boys, one showing to be a PROBLEM (Negative non scout behavior) the Other leading and teaching others (A postive behavior we want more of in out Units). You have stated they are both paricipating equally. That illustrates you absolutely don't get it. You give an equal rating to unequal behavior and you go straight to the uniform which is a minor, nearly unimportant factor. You certainly have your priorities in order (NOT)
  24. Hal, They are both doing the same thing - attending a weekly Troop meeting, learning a new skill, participating in a Patrol meeting, playing a game. The only difference is what they are wearing. Are you saying their actions are equal but the use of uniform is more important than actions ? One is showing character and doing the things we try to teach and develop, the other is doing the kind of things we try to discourage, but based on your response, that is of no matter, the uniform is more important ? Is your priority to get after the kid without the uniform and see no value in h
  25. I find it somewhat amusing at these types of threads where the Uniform Police are the ones getting upset that other units aren't anal and hardcore about uniforming. Seems the units that don't put uniforming as a high prioity seem to be less bothered and probably busy having fun from the posts I have witnessed. As I stated elsewhere when I took over there was no use of any part of the uniform, we have gotten much better, but not nearly perfect. I don't let it upset me and I don't nag the patrol leaders and scouts. If it bugs some Uniform Cop who is not even a memebr of my troop, it's their wo
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