KA6BSA

BSA publishes a very comprehensive manual for Roundtable Commissioners with everything you need. Your District Commissioner should be able to get you one of these manuals. It has many examples of how to plan and run a Roundtable meetings. This manual is considered an essential part of your training, which should also include district level participation on their committee where you may get specific assignments for the content of your Roundtable.

I have been doing knots for fun my whole life and in 40 years of Scouting. I have found that the ability to learn them, and have fun doing that is largely dependent on the person having an aptitude for 3-dimensional work. It is the same aptitude that many engineers, physical scientists, molecular chemists, and architects use in their professions. It is normal in a troop of Scouts to have a few kids who really enjoy knot tying and many who do not. The boys who think it is fun often don't work that hard at learning knots and "get it" pretty fast, the others may make quite an effort and never "get" a simple but more advanced knot like the sheet bend. Occupational testing organizations such as the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation founded in 1922 and well respected can measure this aptitude. They call it "spatial visualization" and have found it to be primarily a male trait inherited from the father as an "all or none" ability. If you get a Scout who is great with knots ask him what his father does for a living and you will usually hear "engineer" or some other technical specialty requiring work in 3-dimensional problem solving. With this in mind don't be too hard on the kids who just never "get it" as they are no doubt great in some other Scouting Skills subject. My own father was a physician, but a specialist in Radiology and he spent all his time interpreting 2-dimensional x-ray films as 3-dimensional diseases, and he was a knot fiddler his whole life too. Both of my sons have the skill... my Eagle Scout older son has been the Pioneering Instructor in his troop for 3 years, and my Webelos son can already tie a bowline 8 different ways (really!). Before he joined Cubs he satisfied his aptitude by compulsively making complicated paper airplanes every day. My point is that advanced knot tying is not fun for everybody, but some do really enjoy it, and it should not be approached as other general-purpose Scout Skills like cooking or first-aid. Knowing this can also help you appreciate the effort required by some Scouts to learn the basic knots and lashings required to reach First Class Scout.

Thank you for the thoughtful responses. I don't have a reference I can cite, but I heard it directly from someone I trust, a Vigil member and past Advisor of my chapter. He wasn't overly concerned about these developments and thought it wasn't the last word on the subject, but he learned about it first-hand when he attended NOAC from someone who served on the negotiaion team.

I got a different result yesterday as I stated above, so if that is corrected with them that is fine. It also did not previously note the "before 1960, or after 1960" for the two definitions. Thanks for helping with that and it is now consistent with the cute story in the beginning of my son's Webelos Handbook. So I am willing to wave a white flag and come out from behind my rock now with hands up.

DSteele you are right there is only one Boy Scout uniform. Many folks in our troop had a serious misconception about that because the previous Scoutmaster had always referred to Class-A uniform (the full BSA uniform) and the Class-B uniform. The Class-B of course is not a real uniform but just a troop-approved "activity outfit" consisting of some appropriate pants and the troop T-shirt or a BSA theme T-shirt from camp or wherever. The idea is to look civilized with no skulls with daggers thru the eyes, no mega-death band logos with dripping blood, etc on the activity outfit. They got so wrapped up in this "Class-B uniform" concept that if a boy wore some camo or a shirt with swear words on it he was "out of uniform." And those were fightin' words for the Scoutmaster... so he started ranting about camo as if it was a BSA violation of uniform. Really it was just not following the guidelines for the troop activity outfit as determined by the troop committee. Of course there are still the other issues about what looks "good" and what doesn't when all the monkeys are swinging from the trees on a campout. But they finally understood that no matter whether you call it Class-A or Class-Z there is just one Boy Scout uniform.

You should consider making sure you have good coverage in the troop for your boys to have access to Merit Badge counselors for the Eagle Required badges before you spend time establishing the many others. Of course don't turn down a volunteer qualified to counsel for something like Textiles, or Collections, because they are fun and you never know where that volunteer will lead to in the troop. Recruit counselors from the registered parents at Courts of Honor... everyone can counsel at least one merit badge, no matter what their knowledge is. If you can't cover all the essential Eagle Required's talk with other Scoutmasters in neighboring troop to exchange lists of counselors to get what you need, and see what you can offer them. Set the example for other adult troop leaders and troop committee members by doing substantial badges like the Citizenship series, Camping, or Emergency Preparedness yourself.

(This message has been edited by KA6BSA)

There is no single complete reference to find out all about what you need to know in BSA. I think it would be very useful for you to go find the monthly district Roundtable and get an informal forum going there to answer some of your questions. It will save you lots of time in the long run to go to that hour long meeting and have real people tell you what it took them years to figure out. Those answers will only create more questions... so keep going to Roundtable each month to keep up!

For the Tiger den it is not unusual to have 10 new boys start each year. A big pack like my son's manages two new Tiger dens of 10 each every year and they still need to send excess boys to other local packs to join. Each Tiger Scout has a "partner" (parent or guardian) doing everything with them so the supervision is not a problem, and with kids always dropping out you usually get 7 or 8 kids left by the time they are ready to be Wolves.

You already have lots of good advice here. I might just add that more than 90 years ago the founder of Scouting Lord Baden-Powell said a First Class Scout is a 100% Scout. The Merit Badges are just there to allow a wide range of new interests and keep advancement an open-ended game for the older boys. This can be a big distraction for the new Scouts who should really be focusing entirely on the basic Scout Skills of camping, woodcraft, cooking, first aid, map and compass, etc, exactally what it takes to become 1st Class.

As a parent you should get registered with BSA (only $11 the application is easy... we ask all our parents to register in our troop) and start attending some of the monthly troop committee meetings. You can volunteer to help the Advancement Chairperson keep track of rank advancement in your son's patrol, and that will reduce your worrying when you have more information on all the boys.

Ahead of time at the patrol meetings you can come a little early at pickup time and talk to the patrol leader and his Asst. Scoutmaster about the advancement of all the boys. Make sure they always have plans to work in some 2nd or 1st Class advancement progress on every outing to keep checking the requirements off.

In Boy Scouts each boys moves at his own pace, not like one rank per year in Cubs, and the Scoutmaster is charged with the duty to never give up on any boy. So what is the rush? So get involved as a registered adult volunteer and stop worrying. And make sure the FUN is there in the activities along with the advancement so your son and his friends won't ever consider quitting.

My son's pack has given up on the BSA red felt vests because they are too hot most of the time here in So. Calif and they don't wear very well either. You risk making all the patches pink by putting it in the washing machine. So the pack committee came up with an alternative by making available to all the boys a tan fisherman's vest made by Orvis. It comes in kid's sizes and can be easily "takin in" with a few stitches in the sides for small kids growing rapidly. There are pockets on the front to sew patches on and lots of space on the back. Since it is Boys Scout (or Webelos tan) color they can keep using it after they bridge into a troop. And all those pockets are useful for all that stuff they need at activities!

And the policy is not negotiable, it is BSA National and can't be ignored or changed. It has consequenses even doing the job the way it is supposed to be done... I was on staff at our council's Webelos Weekend recently and we had to ask several groups of parents and boys to leave the event because they could not meet the rules, and the site being 50 miles from home there was no easy way to call someone else to come take over. Despite our polite explaination and the simple truth that there could be no exceptions, the boys were in tears, the parents angry, and they had to leave, giving up the fee they paid and the opportunity to have a great weekend doing all kinds of fun Scout stuff. Of course they should have known better but that doesn't help either. The problems even get more complicated with Venturing Crews where one trained leader is a woman and the other a man. But of course we must do it right despite all that. If your are going on an outing really far from home, or in the remote backcountry, two leaders is not enough to cover the necessary practical safety contingencies even for a small group of Scouts.

You can now do your YPG training online in our council and get the required certificate without waiting for a meeting to be organized to watch the BSA YPG video tape.

JimmyD- What is "playing hides"? Sounds like a game of beating on a drum or something. And with no shirt on, that is a real Normal Rockwell Scouting image! Maybe the camo would be an improvement?

Yes, I have a pair of those great zip-offs for Venturing too! The REI color for Venturing pants (Sahara Convertables) is called Carbon. That sounds like black but it is the exact same grey as the ones you would spend more money special-ordering at Scout Shop, and then have to hem the legs too. Actually the BSA Venturing pants have bigger pockets, but not the necessary Velcro, and anyway our San Diego Scout Shop says they hardly ever sell them so the special order status. Yes, the cotton cloth might look good at a Court of Honor, but it is completely against the technical advice of the BSA High Adventure Team here teaching all our Trek Leaders. In fact they have a chant they have drummed into us for hiking in the local mountains and deserts: "Cotton KILLS!" No kidding, including blue jeans too, they are serious.

Your "known facts" on the camo issue have me chuckling! We recently beat this topic to death in our troop commmittee meeting for several months. The Scoutmaster was taking a hard line on camo, even on just an immitation boonie hat that could keep a Scout from getting a sunburn on a hike, and there were a few kids that regularly wore everything camo. They were otherwise fine Scouts and great attenders on all the outings. Camo was the only clothes they ever wore, to school, to church, everywhere, and now they were going to be excluded from troop campouts because of it.

Throughout this entire beating of this topic by our committee lots of people did research on it and only found the one wimpy out-of-date reference to it in the front of Insignia Guide: Protection of Uniforms (b) "Imitation of United States Army, Navy, or Marine Corps uniforms is prohibited, in accordance with the provisions of the organization's Congressional Charter." I think that is already part of your known facts so sorry it doesn't help. Mike Walton has a whole gory section on camo even to the point of how to document throwing someone out of a Camporee for wearing camo (have the DE write a letter of revocation of membership, and then they have to get different pants and beg to come back and pay their dues again). When I was a Scout in 1957 we relied on cheap plentiful WW II Army surplus gear for almost everything in Scouts and nobody cared then: canteens, tents (with no floors!), shovels (to dig those big ditches around the tents), backpacks, flashlights, knives, hatchets, etc. The hatchets and that stuff were not really camo, just mostly green, but still official military US issue... and very important because us boys knew the real difference between 2nd and 1st Class Scout was another whole loop throwing your hatchet into the big tree in camp.

Our committee finally settled the argument by having a big-shot at our council email us they had a council-level policy of everybody trying to look like Boy Scouts not the youth liberation army. It was pretty flimsy just a memo written from one big-shot to another across the room in the office there. The boys with the camo got some new pairs of black Dickies pants and got to go on all the campouts, and the Scoutmaster is happy he gets to still say no camo.

I still find it very amusing (I am laughing right now!) that the troop committee chair is a woman that likes to always wear sophisticated colorful floral-pattern blouses to the meetings, just like the glamo-camo that is marketed to teenage girls at Nordstroms. When I meekly pointed that out everyone was quick to disagree with me. Even the Scoutmaster would not touch that one!

Sorry the flooded cave ruined your adventure but glad you were not down in the hole when the water came in! One male and one female is good, and make sure they get some Venturing training and set a good example... no holding hands unless you are about to drop off a high cliff!

I started a regular Venturing Roundtable (RT) in our district after being Boy Scout RT Commissioner for three years, and then attending a Powderhorn course and helping found a new crew that includes my Eagle Scout 15-year old son, 7 other boys and 8 girls. I agree that RT is for the adults... the same reason the Boy Scout RT is for the adults, but I also welcome and encourage the all crew leader "young adults" (and aspiring leaders) to attend. They can come in a forest green class-A uniform or not, I don't care as long as they participate. It is a good opportunity for them to get credit for "table top" teaching demonstrations they need for their advancement. It also helps the Advisors there understand the balancing act of running crews by the young adults. They can actually talk about these problems from a discussion topic designed to facilitate that interaction.

It is simply unrealistic to think the kids from the crews are going to plan all the main RT speaker presentations. So with my Venturing RT staff of two lady Advisors we do most of the work arranging main topic speakers based on the Ranger award core requirements and electives just like the resources at Powderhorn teach. The goal is to tell the crew leaders, young and old, how to plan and manage fun High Adventure activities and outings that promote advancement to Silver. It is not a fixed RT theme like the 3-year cycle of 36 standard topics Boy Scouts use. Instead we ask the crews to tell us they are actually interested in and want to learn about based on the Ranger requirements. We are not pushing earning the Ranger but it is a real solid foundation to work from and we have the detailed resources from Powderhorn.

I also encourage Scoutmasters and Boy Scout troop leaders to attend since the High Adventure presentations are of great interest to most of their older Boy Scouts (there are a few exceptions based on the Guide to Safe Scouting), and that helps break down the barriers and misconceptions between Boy Scouts and Venturing. If there aren't enough crews and Venturing activity to support an RT every month it is better to have a really good one less often, but on a regular schedule. Make an effort to promote it and they will come when they realize the benefits. Another approach that we know is successful is to replace a regular Boy Scout RT in each district with a Venturing RT on a regular rotational basis, so there is one available somewhere in the council every month. That also gives a ready-made mix of Boy Scout leaders to help give the meeting some momentum. These methods really work, so go to Powderhorn to learn about how to use the Ranger award resources and then get started doing Venturing RT!(This message has been edited by KA6BSA)

Just to cover the basics... if I understood you to say you are a coed crew: to avoid those kinds of problems you need to have a female adult (over 21) present at the outings, not just the YPG required two leaders. And have scouting buddy pairs assigned as 3 kids not 2, which will help avoid the possibility of hanky panky. Another basic is to have read and carry a copy of the Guide to Safe Scouting, and follow the rules there for high adventure outings the "young adults" plan. With caving it could be more dangerous than you think and you might be in violation of the rules and not know it. In which cas BSA won't cover your insurance and you could be the first name on the $10 million lawsuit. My other last advice is that it is the "young adults" crew (croo? did I miss something there?) not the Advisor's and they need to learn how to plan and manage the activities with a minimum of help from you. You are there mostly to keep them safe in the activities. Make sure they plan something everybody will have fun doing... the caving might be too hard and scary for some of the kids and they might just quit later leaving you with no apparent reason.

In our crew we have a wide range of skills and experience with outdoor cooking... from boys with Eagle and 150 nights camping in a tent, to girls who have never prepared their own outdoor menu. So it is interesting to see them together skipping over the usual plateau of learning a Tenderfoot goes through with peanut butter-and-jelly or the no-protein meals of top raimen. It is really important that the "young adults" be allowed to do the planning and reach their own conclusions on the success or failure of a meal on the trial, teaching each other. Anyway they don't generally pay much attention to us Advisors and we are not there to be their surogate parents cooking and cleaning! Whoops, I think I started a whole new topic!

I attended the first Powderhorn course in San Diego at Lost Valley Scout Reservation (Orange County council) in 2002. It was lots of fun in a different way than Wood Badge, and no ticket to work on later, but very practical in its application. It especially helped me found a new Crew right after that. And with the help of another Powderhorn graduate (from the same course) I have started regular Venturing Roundtables which have never been possible before. The Roundtable topics are taken directly from the resources for the Ranger award as taught in Powderhorn, telling crews how to plan and do outings that are advancement oriented and fun for everyone. So when you guys finish the course, instead of working on a Wood Badge style ticket, use the new knowledge to set your own goals to develop something that really helps Venturing in your area. Many of the people taking the Lost Valley course went on to staff another first Powderhorn course at Mataguay S.R. here at Desert Pacific council in 2003... so the momentum from Powderhorn is building for new success here in Venturing!

I was not finished with the post when my Windoze froze and apparently submitted the partial entry... to continue: I really did like all the great suggestions M.Warrior had, and with some hard work they might work. But the older kids are not going to be influenced as much by their parents expectations and reasons for joining a crew. They want to join to do fun activities they couldn't otherwise manage (our crew is planning a trip to the Grand Canyon, another crew in our district just came back from Hawaii!) and they want to do them with other kids they already know. So it may seem a cruel reality but a large gap in recruiting by the "young adults" can easily irreversibly damage a crew.

I was one of the founders of a new Crew and have some experience with recruiting. After the initial boy input from my troop, and the initial girl input from a local Girl Scout unit, there hasn't been much sustaining help from those directions. We found the best recruiting is done by the "young adults" themselves from their school friends. Whether they have previous BSA camping skills doesn't matter that much because the emphasis is on teaching that as needed. If your Crew has reached the stage where there is a year or more gap of recruiting from the kids friends and it just isn't going to happen, then I would not be surprised if the Crew will simply fold as the last ones leave for college. Sad but it happens and you may not be able to prevent it.

You guys have this old Scouter crying tears of laughter with these posts! Actually, I have now understood why in its infinite wisdom the BSA has designed to confuse us all with the difference between a Venturing Crew and a Venture Patrol. Since the boys have decided not to let the girls in (and save themselves many expensive lawsuits for harrasment) they can just consider themselves in a Venture Patrol and keep wearing the same old uniform and doing the same old Boy Scout stuff, including the knives and threats of killing each other, with no problems of answering to the higher purposes the girls would bring with them. Really, just forget about a Crew, they are not even having separate meetings! It is just a poorly organized Venture Patrol at best.

No, by doing that you are making it sound better than it actually is. In making the acronym the "We'll" is really "We Will" which comes out WEWBELOS or even worse a stuttering WEWIBELOS. Anyway no mater how you like it to sound the rest of the world thinks it means "We Be Loyal Scouts" since an authorative source of acronym information (www.acronymfinder.com) says it does. Go check it out!

You might be surprised when you get back into OA there are opportunities to collect vintage pocket flaps and your old one might be a sought-after edition. If it was my uniform I would save the old flap for my patch collection and wear the one they give you when you pay your dues... at most it might cost $2 and the old one could be worth $100 if you are lucky! Sewing it on and puting it through the wash is going to reduce its value. Still it is normal for OA Scouters to wear all kinds of different flaps even in the same lodge, because there are various fund-raiser flaps, memorial flaps, NOAC flaps, Jamboree flaps, regional flaps, anniversary flaps, etc. so don't worry about being different with a flap. As someone else stated, it could start many interesting conversations about your Scouting history.

It is difficult for boys to get recognition of these special awards like snorkeling, mile swim, and even BSA Lifeguard, with such a narrow rule for wearing the patches. The boys I know also think (rightly) it is too much to ask them to wear a BSA patch on a swim suit they selected on their own... I mean not an official BSA swim suit. Seems like it is a kinda of a dirty trick for the old guys at BSA to force a patch onto "civilian" swimsuits since they couldn't muster the power to get them to wear an official BSA swimsuit! Seems like I remember wearing an official green BSA swimsuit when I was a Scout in 1957 but it might be just my imagination at work, or something our troop worked up along with beret hats. If anybody else knows of an official swimsuit from that era I would be interested in hearing about it. So how can the boys display their hard earned (almost drowned getting them) patches? A very narrow rule is going to get a varied response with some inventive adaptations. I have even seen Scouts with otherwise inspection-perfect uniforms wearing the BSA Lifeguard patch above the right pocket where the Jamboree patch should go! My son put his on the back of his MB sash and feels that is way more in line with "official" and he already had a Jamboree patch anyway.