andrewcanoe

Padre,

Maybe the men you interviewed about Wood Badge attended the "old" Wood Badge because the Wood Badge for the 21st century that I attended was very business oriented.In fact camping/scouting skills played a very small part in the whole program. That stuff was covered in depth in earlier courses. As far as tickets are conserned what businessman is not expected, if not required, to make and carry out goals?

The pack my son graduated from presented all of the 20 pin Webelos 2's a plaque made with their own pins on it. The whole thing cost the pack between $5-$10 a piece.

Born during the summer of 1964 in Dubuque,Ia

Thanks for all the replies!!

One campout were canceled due to weather, freezing rain and most roads including the one into the campsite were undriveable.

The campout this weekend was canceled because of not enough adult leadership(valentines day probably had something to do with it)

We do have a troop that has expressed intrest in being sister troops but I feel That the troop that planned the event should at least be able to provide 2 leaders(I would like a total of 4 or more adults) in case of emergency that would force a scout to have leave to prevent any 1 on 1 contact

I'm with my fellow posters here if you can't play by the rules or don't like the rules of the game, find another game to play and let the rest of us have fun.

The troop I serve as Scoutmaster has had to cancel the last two campouts that were scheduled. This has led to scouts not having the oppertunities to fulfill rank requirements and advance before the next COH

What do other troops do to help the scouts recieve advancements in a timely manner(FCFY), when unforseen speed bumps prevent the progam from getting presented?(This message has been edited by andrewcanoe)(This message has been edited by andrewcanoe)

I'm onboard too.

IMHO the 21st century woodbadge training was worth twice the price of the course. The ticket is the final test of how well you learned what you were taught. If properly written out and carried out the ticket should help the unit as much as if not more than the woodbadge canidate.

In my course we had a month-long break between sessions and another two weeks or so after the post course meeting when tickets were due that provided plenty of time to think what the unit and myself wanted to acchieve.(This message has been edited by andrewcanoe)

Suspenders

The point of the story to me seems to be don't sweat the small stuff and just focus on presenting a well rounded program and don't get hung up on only one particular method, whether it be uniform or advancement or any of other methods.

That being said there is few better feelings than the one a leader get when a scout come up to them in order to show off his new uniform with all the patches in the right spot because he showed Mom the handbook and made sure everything was perfect.

If the shoe fits wear it (unless it belongs to someone else)

What I am getting from this discussion:

If you think the original post from johnsned was funny, you think SOME scouters focus too much attention on the uniform.

If you don't think the post was funny, You are under the impression that all 8 methods must be accieved in full for the program to run successfully.

I thought the 8 methods were a goal that could never be acheived( no program is perfect,there is always room for improvement) Although uniform is very important, more so is the scout oath and law(help other people at all times, A scout is friendly,courtious,kind,)

I wholeheartedly agree with the poster's idea. For those of you who didn't get it uniform is only 1 of the 8 methods to achieve the 3 goals of scouting.

Way too much time is spent finding fault in scout's uniforms when it could be spent more constuctivly on making a better person out of them. Some of the best people on the inside are often the worst apearing people on the outside.(I don't trust people who's uniforms are with out faults,I think they are aliens from outer space intent on sucking the fun out of the program)

Way to go Irons!!!

Most of my ticket items are due next Oct. which will give me another 6 mo after that for the 18 months in case of any problems or changes.

I used to be an Eagle ...

A boy in the troop brought up that his stepfather(An eagle scout)had done high adventure in the Porcupine mountains. It was decieded that this might be a welcome change from the Boundry waters-canoeing/Colorado- mountain hiking rotation the troop seems to be stuck in for High adventure trips.

I was wondering if any of my fellow forum members could advise a good troop run program in that neck of the woods.

We would be starting from the Iowa,Illinois, Wisconsin tri-state area

I got to thinking, I hope I haven't upset any one who trys their best but the only fun they can muster up is Fabric and weaving jokes:) The average trainer is not an entertainer so the "fun" must come from somewhere else maybe a skit between sessions or a drawing for grab bags of meeting programs. I guess I'm just lucky all the training I have recieved from Cubmaster basics to wood badge have been put on well and left me feeling like I wanted to get even more training.

The trainers out there deserve a lot of respect for what they do , some times because no one else will do it.

When I said that training that was fun would bring more applicants , I thought it went without saying that any training should teach the skills needed.

Maybe a better improvement might be to ask what the leaders want to learn and make sure that gets in along with the other "not so fun" stuff. Bottom line if the leader doesn't think they are going to get what they need of the experience either in learning how everything fits together or how to have better run fun to go to meetings or even remembering how much fun this scouting stuff really is, they are not going to sign up and go.

The prevailing message I'm getting is that the Over 35 crowd with a few exeptions prefer The formal title and the rest goe with a less formal title for your own reasons whether it is to remove barriers or to make yourselves more accesable to the scouts, or even because you think of Mr. lastname as your father.

AS some one brought up what do we call the scouts and those scouts that are now in the 18-21 range of ASM?

I call the boys by name in personal conversations and most times Mr. Youngscout when I am refering to them to a group. The Problem arises if you have two billys and one of the Billys has a brother Joe. what the then ? Mr. Billy Lastname, Young Mr. Lastname,Billy Lastname all of these go against at least one posters preferance.

The first step would be to go to district roundtables and ask the leaders there what they want to see at camp next year.

Second step mail a survey to the parents in the council and ask what they would like.

Third step take all this information sift though it take the best and brightest and implement a program that has what you would have wanted from a scout camp program if you were a scout.

Kudos to your Powwow staff and training commitee. I had a simular feeling after Woodbadge this past fall. If all training left the participants feeling like you are more people would attend and the whole program would benefit.

Making leaders get "trained" would not be an issue if they really wanted to. How is this done? ,you ask. In a simular way that you get a boy to join the troop, MAKE IT FUN

If all the trained leader relayed the positive experience they had at training or as a result of it the untrained leader would be forming lines to get in on the adventure and the training commitees would have to worry "How can we possibly train all these leaders?" instead of how can we get some leader to take training.

When I started as a Cub leader, I asked one of the other leaders at one of my first roundtables were they got the neat neckerchef slide, when they told me I could only get one by going to Woodbadge ,that became a goal of mine it took 4 year but I got there and now I can't stop telling other leaders all the fun I had and I think one or two will be at the next one because of my word of mouth.

It's kind of like Bob says "If you have a quality program, the people will come"(not an exact quote)(This message has been edited by andrewcanoe)

I would think it would be appropriate to do the everyone stand up and sit down as 5,10,15,20,... years in scouting are called out. You could even give some sort of prize (gag or otherwise) to the "winner"

You might also want to have all alumni that are current or past scout leaders for other troops stand up and be recognized.

Irons:

My son and daughter call me Dad at their respective scout activities as do my "adopted" son and daughter(a brother and sister who are good friends of my wife and I)

I didn't mean to start a philosophical argument here, just wondering what the prevailing method was. In the troop I'm involved with both meathods are used If the scout is comfortable with it, first names of leaders and parents are used and formal title if thats what the scout prefers. I usually refer to the other adults by title but some prefer first name and one I had to ask what his first name was because EVERYONE calls him Griz. I prefer the Mr. but the older scouts call me by first name and I have no problem.

To those who think use titles are a power thing : How would you address the president of the united state?

I'm assuming none of you know him well enough to call him George or W.

You might be spending too much time with scouts if you were to refer to your fireplace as the cooking area and dutch ovens as end tables