Its Me

New guys have better posts. Less jaded

Albert it sounds like you handled the "post incident" well. Better than I did when it happened to me. On our second tiger camp out my son and I hooked up with another pack. Theirs camped our pack did not. The booze flowed like water and the loud campfire talk lasted well past 1:00 AM. I was shocked but said nothing nor did we join or participate with that pack again.

At the risk of just piling on I will add the following. Its clear (to me anyway) that the bullying is a manifestation of the boys not being in control. The lack of boy lead and the bullying are linked and as long at your troop operates as an adult run troop style the bullying will continue. In a weird way the adults leaders may believe that the bullying is a form of boys leading boys. Its creating order. The BSA program is itself part of the blame. We call ourselves a boy lead patrol system but it really doesn't look that way in organizational structure. The patrols meet at the troop, camp with the troop and little in the way of program structure is there room for a patrol to be independent of the troop. I honestly believe that the den system of cub scouts offers more patrol identity than the BS troop meeting. The patrol is the building block and the PL is the core to this element. OK, let's look at how much latitude the PL has. Second guessing his every decision is the PLC and the SPL. Above them is the Scoutmasters and the committee. Finally the Charter organization has all final say in the matters. Holy-cow! Where is it in this hierarchical system where the PL leads? Troops fall into the adult lead troop systems not because the leaders are not motivated or even trained. The program is itself causing this. To look elsewhere and constantly blame the volunteer leader is misplaced blame. (this is sure to bring BW out of Exile) Finally, I think that frequent forum readers fall into a trap of believing that there are all these wonderful high performing troops out there. No doubt there are many great troops out there but often we forum readers may use an ideal troop from a composite of all the troops read about. We then measure this composite troop against our own.

If you get 9 applications the first night of sign-up a drawing could be used to choose who goes and who will be an alternate. IMHO the attending leader's kids should get automatic spots. But you didn't ask this so it must already be wroked out.

I wouldn't put too many qualifiers on the sign-up. And making a legacy list from last year seems overtly bias. Also, I will guess that the aging-out scouts won't be as interested as you might expect. Requirements: Age, Skill (prior canoe experience and or canoe MB) Deposit Those that wanted to go last year will be the first to sign-up this year. I will suggest that you announce the trip and the criteria two weeks prior to open registration. That way all scouts will have had the opportunity to ask their parents before open enrollment.

Your meeting place and storage unit are more important to your troop than an absentee CO. Meeting at the elementary school is worth a lot, maybe 10-20% more scouts and certainly a lot more more looks. I will recommend that you divide your focus. Set one group in motion to find a new charter. Get the second group focused on keeping the meeting place at the school. A monthly use fee may be the results of this. Swap the storage fee for yard work and clean-up at the school. Build good relations with the principal and suggest why scouting is a positive influence on his school. Fore instance, it gets parents at the school a little more involved. Some parents may have never entered the school cafeteria until scouts. Who knows the principal may not be the biggest fans of the PTA either.

Please post the questions you plan to include on your "form". Here's one you can use. At the campfire how close do you the hoochie-mommie plan to sit next to the scoutmaster(please check one) A His butt will be touching mine. B Six inches will seperate our bodies ar all time C One - three feet D He smells like smoke and I will sit far away and up wind.

When we had our long drawn out conversation on the donation thread I did the google thing and this little diddy popped up. Although its a description for tax purposes on how units are at an arms length from national it is curious on the terminology of how BSA sees itself and a unit. "They are chartered to partner organizations of the BSA such as churches, PTAs and civic groups. Since a unit is owned by its chartering organization, each unit takes its tax status from that organization. Units are NOT subordinate organizations of the Boy Scouts of America." Link to full document. http://www.bsa-gwrc.org/forms/bsa_unit_policy_update_2006.pdf

This seems like the don't ask don't tell policy. So the scouts need to earn their way says infoscouter. No donations accepted at his troop! BW writes, that you can take a donation but you can't ask. Would asking my company for some money for troop tents be a violation of the don't ask no donation policy? If I ask for a discount for a trip or for rental equipment is that a donation? So in this game of don't ask, no donation policy comes down to the legal definition of who talks first. But if I show up in uniform am I announcing I am a scouter? Did I speak first in that situation? But its ok if the donation jar is hidden behind the counter. It can be pulled out when the other guy first mentions the word donation.

You could be describing our district. The chair quit, the R/T chair was asked to quit then to not quit. "To be named" appears next to many positions in the district. For some reason the district re-organization of a few years ago went horribly wrong. We even had one of the professional scouters get "released" last month. Other districts in our council appear stronger with many volunteers, their own web sites, regular news letters and so forth. For some reason our district has run dry. We could use you. Want to move to Florida? (This message has been edited by Its Me)

If the Methods are the building blocks in which to build our programs and improve our abilities at achieving the Aims of scouting then we (scouters) need to address all of them and not just the more interesting one for adults. I believe these four in particular get shorted on these forums: 1. Ideals 2. Personal growth 6. Adult association 7. Leadership development Personal growth is especially shorted. I will argue that the scout will need self reliance skills in the years immediately proceeding scouting more than he will need leadership skills. Yet there seems to be little discussion on particulars of this method of development. Will dedicated forums improve discussion in these areas? Would these discussions lead to improved knowledge and better programs for forum users? I say Yes to both.

I recommend a separate forum for each method of scouting. We have some but not all. The Eight Methods of Scouting 1. Ideals 2. Patrols 3. Outdoors 4. Advancement 5. Personal growth 6. Adult association 7. Leadership development 8. Uniform

I wouldn't touch the old uniform. Not even for free. Sometime between now and the end of the year I will retire my current uniform and switch to the new. *This topic belongs in the uniform forum.

ursus snorous roarus I have done your first part. I started about a month ago dropping to my ASM's that I didn't think we were using the patrol method nearly as well as we should. That a patrol reorganization may be needed. Last week the SM's voted on changing the patrols. The CO a retired Marine Corps Lt Colonel sat in on our meeting. He voiced that we need to re-org the patrols. I then phoned the CC and mentioned the results of the SM's meeting. He agreed. So from the adults standpoint a re-org would serve the troop. The trouble is that this spooked the SPL and several of the older scouts. Your second point about sitting down with the SPL is valid. I have provided training. Three JLT programs over the last nine months. A day long intense training within a month of the current SPL taking his position. Obviously my training failed at least with this scout to demonstrate the value of the Patrol method. Really all the "training" is useless unless put into practice. Like I said this SPL was never a PL or in a POR. He had never been in a troop that used the patrol method. A power point presentation and a controlled game won't replace a real meal planning event or a campsite selection or any other patrol leader responsibilities. This must be experienced first hand.

The other issue buried in all this and may even be the root cause, is that I have a SPL who refuses to recognize the patrol method. I have made numerous attempts to get him to use his patrol leaders, to consults with his patrol leaders that it his responsibility to develop a strong patrol leaders council. He, at every attempt has ignored these pleas. On several occasions his words and actions have matched, he wants to do away with the patrol method. Do away with the PLC and have all report to him. So I have eared in my program in developing a SPL with a strong sense of the patrol method. No amount of death by power point, SPL manual reviews, one-on-ones will change this scout's opinion that the Patrol method is a flawed method. He is a transferred scout who entered my program 8 months ago as a tenderfoot at age 14 with no PL or POR experience. I am tempted to ask for a contact at his old unit to see if they actually did disband the patrol method. I am also temted to just sit tight through his tenor and see if the next SPL has a better appreciation for the patrol method.