JerseyScout

For the nighttime, we were big into Capture the Flag and Manhunt, with an occasional game of Kick the Can. Once in a while we played a game called Ships in the Night, which is more or less Flashlight Tag combined with Run the Bases.

Ten years after I left the troop as a Scouts, nothing much has changed at night on trips.

During the day, the games of choice for us were football, steal the bacon, buck buck (if you don't know it,

Nowdays, the parents get really upset when the kids try to play Buck Buck (they heard me an another former Scout reminising), they are afraid that the small kids will get hurt. In the olden days, I was the ASPL for the new scout patrol, and we won nearly every game of Buck Buck despite going against patrols with varsity football players. Go team! Steal the bacon is also "too violent".

We do this every summer, the sky is the limit.

In the past we've:

- Backpacked and canoed through the Shennandoah Mountains

- The same through the Smokies

- Done multiple day biking expeditions through Maryland

- Gotten a houseboat in Western Pennsylvania

- Camped next to Lake Champlain in Vermont.

Our trips usually revolve around two or three "crews". The one crew goes out and does the hardest, multi-day activity (3-5 days of canoeing, biking, or backpacking), a middle crew does a mid-sized outing (2-3 days of canoeing, biking, backpacking), and a base camp crew does single day outings. Of course, nothing is wrong with just one "crew" who does everything together.

I suggest having the Scouts come up with a list of places they would want to go, then have them narrow it down to one place. Then have them do the legwork on what they want to do while their there and the cost.

This summer, we're heading to Acadia National Park if we can get the reservations on Monday. Sea kayaking, bouldering, climbing Cadiallac Mountain, walking a sand bar onto Porcupine Island, swimming in the freezing water on those lovely Maine beaches... I'm excited.

Buffalo Skipper beat me to it. If a kid is dropped off for a trip, I know he has permission to be there. When he needs stiches, the hospital doesn't know that. The permission slip gives the troop permission to seek medical attention for a boy who is hurt, but who does not have a parent there.

They also work when we need to fill out legal paperwork for something like going whitewater rafting, canoeing (when we need to rent some) kayaking, rock climbing, etc, anything where we are working with an outside organization. I feel safe signing off on the paperwork under "parent/guardian" for the boys to participate because I have a stack of signed permission slips in my car giving the boys permission to participate in that event. If I didn't have that slip, legally, I couldn't sign that paper.

Unless I am very mistaken, Daisy Scouts are 1st grade, not kindergarten, so would be on level with Tiger Cubs.

Lion Scout is a terrible idea, I also have the sneaking suspicion that they are created to increase enrollment numbers. If you don't have experience with working with groups of that age level of kids, most people are in for a rough ride. The same goes for Tigers.

Sadly, I'm also starting to think more and more that Cub Scouts is a terrible idea. Half the kids I work to recruit into Boy Scouts reply, "Oh, I already know how that works. I was a Cub Scout and all we did was get yelled at and sell popcorn." I don't know what the numbers are, but massive numbers of kids drop out of Cub Scouts, never to even consider Boy Scouts ever again. In two years of heavy recruitment, I've managed to "rehabilitate" only one ex-Cub into Boy Scouts. The reason? He went on a trip with my troop as a first year WEBLOS just before dropping out of Cubs. WEBLOS was crap, but he managed to stay excited about being a Boy Scout for a year and half.

Crossover numbers aren't great either, Arrow of Light seems to have become the end of the program for many, not a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Kids burn out. Parents burn out.

AvidSM ~ Can you come run our roundtable? That sounds like EXACTLY what I would like to see at my own roundtable.

President Obama (who serves as head of the BSA as well as some place called the United States of America) called the legislation "odious". At the "million-man march" to support the legislation in Uganda yesterday (actual attendence: about 500), they were holding signs up that said "Barack Obama Back Off, Homosexuality is Evil." Therefore, I think the BSA has it covered. Yay!

I used to get hung up on including another adult in with all of my e-mail conversations with Scouts. Then I realized that e-mail has a paper trail, so I am pretty well covered. I compromise now, older Scouts I will e-mail directly, new Scouts I will e-mail and include their parents.

Two deep on the phone is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

Great set of questions. We are still in transition from "adult led (into the ground)" to "boy led", but we're making progress (to the point where my CC wants to kill me, which I started a thread about a few months back).

The list of questions Beavah provided was a great way to check that progress. No one needs to see me type my answers out, but we are a little further on that I thought, although we still have many things to work on.

I am taking the Physical Wellness training now offered on the BSA Online Training Center (because otherwise my training coordinator will hunt me down and badger me to death), and in the spirituality section they mention Humanism as an acceptable form of spirituality. In the same section, they talk about the connections between spirituality and reverence.

Unless I'm mistaken, many humanists (most?) consider themselves to be agnostic, and none are thrilled with organized religion, when did this slip into the program?

Not that I have any problem with Humanism, Humanists are some of the finest people around.

Thanks Eagle, I'll try to find that and approach the training coordinator for the district.

A combined ITOLS/BALOO course would be excellent, as people who have attended both in our district said the courses were very, very similar. Why not get a WEBLOS leader set all in one place?

Maybe its just me, but this whole thing sounds a bit nuts, how could one person, or even a committee be expected to do all that? And why would any Pack or Troop worth its salt leave its recruitment to a district committee?

Why in the world would a District Membership Chair run a recruitment table at events that troops attend? I was handed a stack of recruitment flyers from district for "the Scout Zone" to pass out at schools. It took about thirty seconds for me to look over the flyer and throw the entire stack out. One of my co-workers saw them and asked how I was involved in the Computer Club, and she wasn't making a joke. The signs I've seen posted up all over my town are also a joke, no kid is going to say "that looks cool!" and want to join.

Enter new recruitment strategy: a flyer with "Does your life need a little ADVENTURE?" in big, bold letters followed by a very short spiel about all the awesome stuff that the troop does. Keep it simple, simple, simple, and make no attempt to make the flyer look hip to the Internet generation with graphics or attempts to appear modern. The internet generation laughs at you when you attempt that, and they can do much cooler things in that vein at home. Instead, hit on what they can't do or won't do on their own - climbing, canoeing, backpacking, hiking, whitewater rafting, long range cycling, wilderness survival, etc. These are timeless and still very much awesome, is there really that big of jump between the Western trappers, Tom Brown, and Bear Grylls?

As for all of those events that a troop attends and wants a recruitment table, all you need is a) flyers with how to contact the troop complete with e-mail, phone number, and meeting location/timn b) a huge fold-out display like the kind that you see at science fairs plastered with colorful 7" by 5" pictures of your Scouts whitewater rafting, hanging out of trees, shooting guns, backpacking up a mountain, etc (GET YOUR SCOUTS TO MAKE THIS! THEY KNOW WHAT KIDS THEIR AGE WILL REACT TO) c) a list of all the awesome trips that are coming up and d) two or three Scouts with big mouths to stand in front of the table pulling people in. If you have the space and time, also include e) a 10-15' high tower with your troop flag and American flag lashed to the top, backpacking equipment strewn about the place, an area set up where kids can cook something, or, if you are insanely lucky, a large fire. End results of year 1 of new recruitment strategies- last year we pulled in the same amout of "new to Scouting" scouts (8) as WEBLOS crossovers (8) with a transfer from another troop to boot after years of awful recruiting "efforts". My next goal is to save money for one of those tiny digital camcorders and start collecting footage of Troop events. This is what TROOPS could be doing.

Looking at the issues that you poor District Membership Chairs face, and placing myself in your shoes for a moment, my priority would be getting that information website going and online(ScoutNet is no good). The site should ideally link potential Scouts and parents to troops/packs/crews through e-mail, phone numbers, and websites, perhaps even including meetings days and locations, and decorated with a colorful array of awesome pictures from local packs/troops/crews doing fun things so that potential Scouts feel encouraged to join.

The next priority would be to find out from the troops who recruits well and find out what they do. Then share that information with all the troops and tell them that you will photocopy as many recruitment flyers as local packs/troops/crews might need. The DMC (especially committees of one) should be enabling and pushing units to do a better job recruiting themselves, not taking it on themselves to micromanage.

Guh, that means that local better start announcing schedules for ITOLS more than a month and a half in advance. ITOLS conflicts with our camping trips every single time, and dates get thrown out way too late...

That's the last bit of training I "need". In reality, I teach a camping course myself (outside of Scouts) that covers almost all the same material, my time between "Scout" and "ASM" was less than four years, and I never stopped camping on my own, thus the skills never had time to get rusty. I very much understand training requirements, but I long for a get-out-of-jail-free card on this one...

Sounds awesome.

Been here, done this (although not quite that bad).

After a few ridiculous camping trips with more adults than Scouts (and these were not "busy, sit back and let the patrol system work" adults, they were "the patrol system is not effective enough" adults), some of the young guys banded together with the very old leaders and put a cap on it, because the troop was not-so-slowly dying because of it. The kids that were in the troop didn't want to go camping anymore, because it was easier to stay home with only two adults yelling at you then to go on a trip with 10 of them doing so.

New rule: Adults on trips = Scoutmaster and his two Assistant Scoutmasters, that's it. This was presented to and somehow approved by the Troop Committee despite heated arguments. If we needed somebody else (our attendence on trips was 4-6 boys at the time), we would ask for volunteers, doing our best to rotate so that everyone who wanted to could get on at least one trip a year.

This, along with some other major policy shifts, have led to more kids wanting to go trips, as well as better recruitment. So the rule is now 5-6 adults on a trip, because we need the extra hands and cars.

For the record, most of the "too many adults" before the rule change were almost entirely people whose Scouts had long since aged out of the troop, but kept coming to trip after trip after trip anyway. The adults that go now are the parents of our large crop of new kids. It was probably the most awkward situation I ever had to deal with as a Scout leader, but the results have proved that limiting adults was the right choice.

I'm amazed, apparently none of my crossovers from last year (11 of them from two different packs) earned their whittlin' chip. It seems that the parents didn't think it was safe for them to have a knife.

This only came up because a mom came to me concerned that her son had come home excited that he could learn this next camping trip, she thought it wasn't right for her son to use a knife, let alone a saw or ax. This boy is now 12 years old!

Is paintball now an sanctioned Boy Scout activity?

I know that it was not sactioned when I was a Scout. I had heard through a District fella last year that the new head honchos at National were considering sanctioning it, but never heard anything more. I assumed that, like it is with anything National considers (other than medical forms), nothing had changed.

Anyway, the Girl Scouts challanged the troop to a day of paintball. I told the girl scout boss (Scoutmaster? I'm not sure what her title is) that Boy Scouts did not allow it. The Scout nearest me (our ASPL) overheard me and gave me a strange look, saying that he had seen paintball in a recent issue of Boy's Life, which would be quite odd if it was not allowed.

Anyone know or know what my ASPL is talking about?

Rebels of Boy Scouts here, we're going to New England to camp by the water with only the patrol method to guide us. No sign-ups for merit badges, no "rush to 1st Class programs", just hiking, swimming, kayaking, with whatever else the boys come up with. The advancements and merit badges will come when they come.

You have to love filling in another adult application FOR EVERYTHING.

That must be some Cub Scout pack that they can afford to turn away two volunteers. 'round here its nearly impossible to find anyone - straght, gay, or otherwise - to volunteer.

Not much one for giving out that much information online, but I can answer the general info here:

Our current troop site was built by a boy in 7th grade who acts as webmaster (he did this before there was any such leadership rank). He was not elected, he volunteered for the job. I'm not sure how you would elect a troop webmaster.

We mostly use the council site to get access to the training pages from national. Its won an award for one of the best sites in the country, but its still a pain in the neck to use.

We do use meritbadge.com

Troopmaster is swell.

Thank you both for passing these on

Summer camping! Canoeing, swimming, backpacking, swimming, mosquitos, manhunt, swimming...

On a personal level, I work a different schedule in the summer, so I can go camping every other weekend if I want to. When it comes to Scouts, the summer is the time that we get to camping for a week straight. When I was a Scout, I couldn't wait to escape my parents for that week and (if we had an extra good trip) be somewhere that the leaders would have trouble finding us too. Now that I'm a leader, its great because there are no sports excuses, no "its too cold" excuses, and even though I'm older I still get that week escaping from the world.

Alright, here is the background for this one, I could use the advice of some folks who may have been here before.

I have a mother in my troop (her eldest son is most of the way through his first year of Boy Scouts) who wants to jump her son from being a first year WEBLOS right into Boy Scouts. I had pretty much ignored this when it was mentioned a few months ago in passing, as it was maybe two or three sentences ending with a half-joke that "it would be nice to simplify the kids schedule some!" I feel for the mother, who has three sons and a husband who travels for bussiness most of the week, but I didn't feel that was a really good reason for having a kid join Boy Scouts early.

She approached me again this weekend, this time more serious about it. It turns out that the second son was held back a year in school, and is turning 11 in a few weeks despite only being in 4th grade. His WEBLOS group is full of bums (they have had three meetings since September and one outing, which was a joint camping trip with my troop that we did all the lifting for). As she has served as an "involved volunteer" for both of her older sons dens and is the Den leader for the youngest son, she knows the program and has worked very hard with her middle son on her own and by using resources outside of her pack to complete most of his Arrow of Light requirements (he needs just two more pins).

From my point of view, I'm now fine with this. The kid has been on four outings with us (including a camping trip) and already lumps in with the troop when they are running around waiting for meetings to start. He's old enough, has the proper requirements completed, and (I feel) is at a level that he could handle Boy Scouts, even if he would join at the beginning of 5th grade instead of 6th grade. I also know, since there is already a sibling in the troop, that the mom is not trying to jump her kid into Scouts so that he can rush to Eagle by age 11 1/2 or whenever parents are pushing for it to be earned now.

The problem is that his Den leader has told the mother that there is no way that her son can join Boy Scouts. She was told WEBLOS is a two year program, and that her son could not have earned the pins he did because they were not earned with the entire den.

The two year part is balony, but do pins have to be earned with the den? Is there a way that this could have happened? Any ideas on how to handle this without upsetting the den leader, who also happens to be Packmaster (although the Pack is severely hurting, its a miracle it hasn't folded yet)?

Oh, The Onion...

We brought this up at our Committee meeting tonight (I sent out an "Anybody interested?" e-mail two days ago) and managed to get adults on board to be counselors for three of these merit badges. I guess I'm learning morse code and semaphore!

One of the men who volunteered to do Pathfinding (he already does Citzenship in the Community, so its not much of a stretch) popped over to the council office to ask some questions about the program ("do I have to fill out a whole new adult application again to do this badge, or can I just fill out the easy paper?"), no one there had any idea what he was talking about. Way to be about ten miles ahead of the curve here guys.