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Its Me

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Everything posted by Its Me

  1. New guys have better posts. Less jaded
  2. 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.
  3. 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
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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 insta
  7. 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.
  8. 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://
  9. 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
  10. 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)
  11. 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
  12. 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
  13. 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.
  14. 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 th
  15. 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 metho
  16. We have about 22 scouts in our troop. About half came from the same pack but these scouts are on the young side, 12 years and below. The rest are from various other troops with a large contingent from a single troop that folded. The four patrols are all by age: Patrol 1 (15-16 years old) seven scouts Patrol 2 (13 years old) three scouts Patrol 3 (12 years old)seven scouts Patrol 4 (11 years old)five scouts The scoutmasters have observed strong cliquish behavior. The older patrol pretty much calls all other scouts "the little one". When the duties are dived up the older
  17. Stosh I couldn't agree more. Too often the replies are over simplified "go talk to your CC, COR...". Gee don't you think they would have tried the obvious if it were open to them. When a five post user name comes up and they ask how do I change this in my unit, sending them to page 29 in the manual is of so little value that it will likely just frustrates them even more. Most of the replies on these forms are really good. This forum is a great service to the scouting community.
  18. Bob you didn't post a procedure. You posted to facts about the program and then made a comment. Our collect forum response to the newbie poster should have been. "There is no written procedures for removing a SM. However, this is an approach you could take...." I think what gets me about your post is that your reply was reckless and curt to what is likely a big issue for the original poster's troop. Hardly a thread can found without at one and sometimes many Bob's matter of fact replies.
  19. They must not read scouter magazine as troops have crossed the US on bikes and done other extraordinary events. Your rim to rim sounds more doable than many of the celebrated events in scouter magazine.
  20. Your two statements aren't completely true. This Statement: As an ASM you have no say in the matter. And this statement: But determining who the Scoutmaster is is not your role or responsibility. Don't entirely match this statement: You are welcome to give your opinion to the Charter organization representative and the Committee Chair. You were wrong because if he has no say-so and as an adult leader and has no responsibility for the program than he shouldn't even talk to the committee or CO. You were wrong when you said: "you have NO; authority". Bob even you
  21. Here is where BW is wrong. BW Wrote: As an ASM you have no say in the matter. You are welcome to give your opinion to the Charter organization representative and the Committee Chair. But determining who the Scoutmaster is is not your role or responsibility. This is an extremely harsh language and a very black and white approach to scouting. The posters is all at one a consumer of the BSA program, a volunteer supporter and a youth leader. To put this person in a box as if a paid professional in a divisional labor force is an overly simplistic view of the volunteer youth organ
  22. Wow! what a great learning experience for the scouts to watch one set of moms and dads sue their SM or CO for dismissal of the SM. The scouts could go to court meet lawyers, give depositions, "yes sir, he yelled at me in front of other scouts (sniff) for throwing an empty water bottle into the fire, I believe I am damaged for life". They could look up precedence, Biloxi Church of Christ Vs Samuel Gibson Scoutmaster 1979, failure to properly train the boys in the art of pioneering skills. And we reached "its a liability issue" by post 18. No record but pretty darn good. BW is wrong
  23. July 26, 2008 Dear Parents: Please Relax, Its Just Camp By TINA KELLEY HONESDALE, Pa. A dozen 9-year-old girls in jelly-bean-colored bathing suits were learning the crawl at Lake Bryn Mawr Camp one recent morning as older girls in yellow and green camp uniforms practiced soccer, fused glass in the art studio or tried out the climbing wall. Their parents, meanwhile, were bombarding the camp with calls: one wanted help arranging private guitar lessons for her daughter, another did not like the sound of her childs voice during a recent conversation, and a third needed to know prefe
  24. Last year our Pack lost a lot of tigers. One proposal was to help develop the den leaders by encouraging training and using a one night a month for 2-3 tiger dens to meet. The idea is to encourage Boy scouts to take den chief positions and offer to the new tiger leaders to hold a combined tiger den meeting at the Charter hall. Go-see-it'S could be coordinated or held independently. Anyone have experience with type of arrangement.
  25. Funny I was thinking at the last RT how it would be better if my district were smaller. I would rather sit down and coordinate some events with the four or five troops within 15 miles of my charter. Instead the district is gerrymandered just like a political district so that it stretches far north and south to capture the right demographic make-up. When cub camporees are held either the south or the north siders complain that its too far. I don't know maybe a Council wide Round Table will be better than the lame things we have now.
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