Lisabob

I'm with GW on this one. Generations of campers have survived a week without internet access and we can too. Gimme a break! Go outside! On a nearby tangent - a few weeks back my son did a backpacking weekend with a handful of other guys and a few adults. He had a blast and is planning another one. One of his only complaints? One of the adults spent half the trek yapping away (loudly) on his darn phone!

I think it could be because when the PL is there and doing his job well, there is not much responsibility attached to being the APL. (That said - I've watched a few boys get chosen (and accept) as APL again and again, only to be saddled with most of the work because the PL doesn't show up or do his part. Those guys, I feel kind of bad for. But the solution there isn't necessarily to give credit for being APL, but rather to work on the PL some more.)

In our pack this was a paperwork job - make sure the new scouts' registration forms are completed, signed, and turned in, help run recruiting events like Round Up in fall, or spring recruiting, etc.. Some packs ask their membership chairs to be in charge of general record keeping and also tracking down any boys who seem to have dropped out. Others delegate those tasks to other people. So it might be good to see what the Committee Chair wants you to do, and sit down with him/her to figure out what you're willing to do as well. It always helps to be on the same page.

That bit is at the discretion of the MBC, but the way the process is supposed to work, is that the scout is supposed to get a blue card (assuming your council uses these) and the name of the MBC from the SM and contact the MBC prior to starting work on a MB. MBCs may choose to allow work done prior to this to "count" but they are not required to do so. Consequently, I think your SM could be correct here, or at the very least, that he's attempting to save "his" scouts from grief by asking them to stick to procedure. It might not be a bad idea to see if there is a merit badge counselor training offered by your district training staff in the near future. That way you could brush up on rules that may have changed, or been applied differently, since your youth experience. While you're thinking about it, consider doing the same for BOR training if it is offered. These are probably two of the most contentious items an advancement chair has to deal with and lots of headaches can be avoided if the adults are all on the same page.

Mark, I'm kind of surprised here. What were you looking for in terms of responses? What you posted is kind of far off from the written requirements, from the training that many/most of us have had, and from what people accept and expect as the standard. So it should not surprise you that people criticized the situation as they did. In our own unit we also have a couple of boys who don't camp much. One has been holding at tenderfoot for three years because of this. Another scout who just joined, his mom told me she won't allow him to camp for the first year or so. I'm not sure why and I don't think it is a great idea. All the most fun stuff happens at camp outs! But so far I haven't been able to convince her otherwise. In the meantime, we have made very clear to her that her boy is still welcome in the troop (we do have some non-camping activities from time to time), but that he won't be able to advance unless he meets the requirements. I am hopeful that he will realize his peers are having all the fun, and will be able to convince his mom to let him try it too. If not... Scouting is a wonderful program with much to offer. I would like to see all of our members stay with the program until they age out, and then come back as adults (maybe with kids of their own) a couple years down the road. But reality is, scouting is not for every boy or for every family. A boy who can't or won't or doesn't want to go camping might be better served by a church youth group, or an explorer post, or a venture crew that doesn't focus on camping, or the local Y. It might be better to help this boy find a niche in another program where he can be a full participant on his own terms (or on terms "mom" is ok with), rather than put him in a position where he is attaining compromised accolades that even he probably realizes he hasn't quite earned. We all have tough calls to make so I do sympathize with you. But I hope you'll keep thinking about it.

Sounds like it is time for the advancement chair and the committee chair to have a sit-down with the SM and re-explain how the advancement process works. Aside from the fact that the SM does not have the authority to make these changes to the requirements, let's consider the longer-term implications of such alterations. What will happen when this boy goes for Eagle? Is that the point at which the SM will suddenly decide the requirements need to be met? Or is he going to continue to perpetuate this fraud all the way through to the highest rank a boy can earn in scouting? If the council or district are at all involved in EBORs (as they are in many places), how will they react to such obvious fraud? Who will suffer then? Is that fair to the boy? And how does this really help the boy build better citizenship and character, whether he gets to Eagle or not? This boy is being short-changed on numerous levels. And why would any of the other boys in the troop respect either this scout, or the SM, in the future? The message here is loud and clear, and it isn't good. To say that this practice should be stopped as soon as possible is putting things mildly. Actually stopping it may be more difficult and will require someone with some backbone to help the SM understand, and then rectify, the error he has made.

This has all been very helpful, thank you for your input. I was surprised to find out that there aren't more guidelines available regarding adult selection, but then I suppose it would be very difficult to pin down exactly what "future service to youth" means, too. And I was also surprised to discover that our "problem" such as it is, is not a common one.

Barry's last comment strikes a chord with me because that's what I see happening in our own unit sometimes. The sum total of the training for new BOR adults in our unit consists of handing them a cheat sheet with sample questions from some websites, and telling them to follow the lead of more experienced adults. Now, some of us have gone on to look for other resources and training, but reality is that most adults are busy people who will not actively seek out such training, especially when someone with more experience than they have, sends the message that they don't really need to anyway. Most of the time this isn't a big deal on the surface because most boys are well prepared and there is no doubt. Further, most boys have primarily positive things to say about their troop experience to date. But when that isn't the case, and BOR members aren't clear on the objectives, you get a mess.

I think Beavah has it a bit wrong at the end there. It is true that many adults don't have a lot of experience with this sort of activity, and that many adults don't know how to listen to teenage boys and treat them as equals, which in many ways a good BOR demands. (as an aside, there are also some teenage boys who don't know how to behave toward adults as if they ARE equals, either, making it that much more challenging at times. But that's part of the learning process for them.) But I don't think you necessarily have to throw up your hands. One thing I've seen is that few units really do train their committee members. They just throw them into BORs and tell them to learn as they go. Yes there may be a link to a website. Yes there may even be a district or council-wide training session (which few will attend). But why not have your committee chair do a training session at a troop meeting, or at a committee meeting? Do it at a time when the committee members are likely to be there anyway, in other words. Why not run some mock BORs, where new (or poorly performing) committee members role play both the boy's position and then also the adult positions, under the tutelage of your best BOR participants? In a lot of cases you will get some good conversation among adults about what is and is not acceptable there, that never would have happened otherwise. And you can also use this as a way to come to agreement on a common standard, on what "outside" questions you as a group feel are appropriate, etc..

Seems like a reasonable fund raising event to me, but yes, as John mentions, you can also choose to turn down the funds. I might mention to the DE or whichever professional staff member authored this message that it would be better to be clearer about the difference between fund raising and service in the future, but I wouldn't make a big deal of it.

Well this will be my last post here in this thread. Bob, let me try one more time though, and I do mean this in sincerity. The points I had hoped to make to you were that while you are unhappy with the turn this thread has taken: #1 This is how conversations work. They meander about sometimes. Sometimes this actually leads to more fruitful discussion than if everyone stayed within the confines of precisely what the originator of the conversation had in mind. A bit of flexibility is key to having a good conversation. You simply cannot control the direction and still expect to have conversation worth having. To give you a parallel, I know someone who started a blog with the notion that lots of different stakeholders in a particular community would get involved with the discussion. He encouraged people to think of his blog as a community forum that we all "owned" in common. That is exactly what happened, too. The focus of the blog was somewhat controversial though (workplace politics in one sense, responsible government in another sense), and it turned out the originator became uncomfortable with the opinions some posters expressed on his blog. So the originator of this blog changed the rules, began screening contributions in what some posters felt was a political manner, and reverted to ruling the page with an iron...keyboard (if you will). Result: that blog went from one of the more interesting and vital places to find out what people really thought and what was really happening in a quasi-secretive, overly bureaucratized environment, to a blog that is dull, boring, mundane, and frankly, now ignored by most people. That's what happens when one individual tries to control the conversation. #2: It isn't that there are limericks in the other thread that I find funny. I don't actually think criticizing the other limerick posters (good or bad - though a few made me groan!) is relevant. But it strikes me as odd that you were a willing participant in LimerickFest '08 over there, all the while criticizing people over here for not sticking to your original intentions (to which I'd add, see point #1, above). Perhaps you don't see the irony there but I do. As for WB skills and applying them - do you remember the Brown Sea games? Do you remember discussing different styles of leadership? Do you remember talking about the stages of group formation? Do you remember discussing various aspects and techniques for improving communication within groups? I see many lessons that could be applied in THIS setting, let alone, back in our units. (This message has been edited by lisabob) Typos, sorry(This message has been edited by lisabob)

Ah Bob, you seem to have missed my point entirely, which was not merely to toss about Monty Python quotes for the pure fun of it, I assure you. Actually I had written a longer post about how one cannot seriously expect to control the direction of a conversation - especially an online conversation - and about how incessant bickering was bringing the entire discussion down to a point of total irrelevance anyway. And then I thought, hey, I could make the same point using a little bit of humor and surely, surely, Bob and some other posters would get it! Alas, alack, I was at least half-way mistaken. At any rate I find it most amusing that you complain about "your" thread not being properly moderated over here, while at the same time going off on a quasi-poetic tangential jaunt into limerick-land over in another thread that has nothing to do with limericks at all.

"Look, I came here for an argument!" (no you didn't.)

Cool! Work hard, play hard, have a lot of fun. And think about signing up as a volunteer for a scout group somewhere on down the line.

There are some websites that include a listing of requirements for the loops and pins. My favorite is the Virtual Cub Leaders Handbook, found here: http://www.geocities.com/~Pack215/ There's lots of good info in there. You can find the loops under the heading "The NEW Academics and Sports Program!" Click on that and then scroll down to the bottom of the page to find a drop-down menu of all the loops. When I was a cub leader I shared this freely with any adult who would hold still long enough to hear about it - den leaders too! About this boy - I agree that the parents ought to have gotten the list to you by your deadline. And if it now requires a special trip to the council store, out of your way because they missed your deadline, well then that's pretty inconvenient and maybe you can't accommodate them. But if you want to come down hard on this particular deadline then I hope you've been very consistent with all of your other deadlines this year, because any wiggle room will likely cause this parent to complain that you are treating her family differently than you have treated the rest in the past. In short, you have to decide whether you really need to go toe-to-toe on this one. Sometimes it isn't worth it (even when you're right) and besides, the rest of the committee will know that this parent is goofy even without you pushing the issue much further. If it were me, I probably would hold my ground on the ones that specifically require a den presentation, if the boy didn't actually do the den presentation. I would "trust Akela" on the others. And I would be more explicit about expectations in the future to try and head off such future shenanigans.

Yes scoutldr, I expect that is what will happen, leading then to a situation where personalities (the eligible individuals' and the committee members') come into play. As we have a large committee too, I am not sure this is to the benefit of anybody. Trying to think about how to forestall such a situation. Thanks for people's input into the matter.

Congrats to your son Kittle! I'm so glad he hung around long enough to get to this point. I think after three years, as a kid I might have given up. Good for him that he didn't.

Like someone said in the other "game with a purpose" thread, I really don't care whose quote this is, it sums up a lot of what scouting is about. So: what are your favorite games with a purpose? How do they work, what do the boys like about them, what do they learn in the process? I'll start. My son's troop has a tradition of doing what they call "GI Joe" camp out in the spring. From the boys' perspective, this is a combination of tag and hide & seek. They have a series of tasks (usually related to T-2-1 scout skills) they have to accomplish and are given locations they have to reach, in order, to do those tasks. Along the way, they are being "chased" by adults and recently aged-out scouts (they come back to help more often than not - it is a troop tradition). Stealth, speed, a little luck, and proper use of a compass to find their way points will keep them from being "caught." The boys have an absolute blast running around in the woods playing at espionage when what they're really learning and practicing is orienteering. This is always one of our best-attended camp outs of the year and the boys put it on the calendar again at every annual planning meeting.

Amen to that Fscouter and Eamonn! I've noticed in our troop that there are peaks and valleys in terms of when the older boys(11-12 graders) are most likely to show up. This spring we have 3 camp outs in a row that the older boys are pretty excited about. One is a giant game of outdoor hide and seek (really an orienteering event in disguise). Another is rock climbing, and the third is aviation. On the 1st of those, we saw a couple of boys who have been to hardly anything all year long. Now some adults are grumbling, saying those boys shouldn't be allowed to do the "fun" things if they aren't going to be more regular participants. And to some extent I do understand that attitude. But...if, after an absence, we punish the boys for coming back? I don't think that will work very well either. Why would they come back at all in that case?

OK thanks, that is all in line with what I thought I knew. Now for a troop, supposing that there are more adults who meet the minimum requirements than a troop is allowed to nominate, are there additional selection criteria that troops can suggest? For example, can a troop suggest that in choosing the 1-2-3 adults allotted to them, that committee members use a rubric made up by a committee chair (or SM, or someone else) to rank the candidates? Is it entirely at the discretion of the committee members to vote for whomever they please for any reason at all (again assuming all the candidates meet the minimum criteria)? These are all hypothetical questions at this time and I am just asking to seek clarification on how troops typically handle this when there are more qualified adults than the troop has the authority to nominate. I know that this will be the case for our troop, owing to a large and active adult scouter corp, several newer committee members with no prior OA knowledge, a weak OA lodge that is trying to rebuild, and a lack of OA elections at the troop level in the last few years.

This is a newbie sort of a question and I am looking for information rather than debate. Can someone help me understand how adults are chosen to join OA? In particular, who chooses them and based on what criteria (supposing that there are more eligible adults than OA nominations allowed) It was mentioned recently at a troop committee meeting that our troop has some eligible adults but because our OA lodge has not been in good working condition in the last few years, there is some confusion about how exactly this works. Thanks for your assistance.

You're right that the requirements for the beltloops are not rank-specific. I was wondering because a few of the beltloops you mentioned (citizenship in particular) are likely to be re-done as webelos and if he were a Bear right now, I would have suggested you talk to his parents about fulfilling the requirements and point out that he'd need to re-do the beltloops next year again anyway. I would not be inclined to "count" activities that have a specific "show your den" element to them, unless the boy showed his den. Parents who get upset about that really have no ground to stand upon. But it would also be courteous and kind to attempt to give them some forewarning so as not to embarrass them at the award banquet. And Oak Tree provided some good suggestions for how to do that, I think.

Beavah I know it can be done but I also see that the patrol method appears to be more of a struggle for many larger troops. There are economy of scale issues to overcome (bigger and more centralized isn't always better but it does often win out in adults' minds), adults' predilection for organization to overcome, and the need to promote buy-in to a common vision among more people too (which isn't always going to work). And then as thebigguy says, most larger troops I'm familiar with are highly unlikely to turn away new boys, whereas smaller troops seem to have an easier time enforcing stricter membership standards (and this is true of adults too - if we tried to do what Brent says he does with ASMs in training, I think we'd have a mutiny and a great deal of muttering about "ungrateful snobbish leaders who can do it themselves if they don't want help..." not to say Brent's method doesn't have some serious benefits, I just don't see it working everywhere) And my take on the higher percentage of less-dedicated folks in big units could be wrong. I base it on my experience teaching very large, and very small, first year college classes. In the very large (100+) classes I find that no matter what I do a certain % of students who register do so with little intention of being actively involved. They chose a big class for reasons that were directly related to the experience they expected to get in a large group setting, where little attention would be drawn to them as individuals (or so they thought, ha!). In contrast, people who consciously choose very small classes tend to WANT to be highly involved in a tight-knit group, and they expect to get more time in the spotlight. In scouting terms, in our larger troop we get parents all the time who tell us they chose not to join the "small" troop in town because they didn't want to be heavily involved as leaders, which small groups tend to require in order to function - it is a draw of a bigger group that, if they so choose, they can drop their kid off (though we actively discourage this, it is still a common attitude among some new parents). So I guess I'm arguing that there is a degree of self-selection going on here that has less to do with Brent's expectations, and more to do with what people perceive their role to be in a large vs. in a small group.

I like John's and Oak Tree's advice. I would go on to add that yes, it is appropriate to ask the boy/parent about posters and presentations that he was supposed to have done in his den, if you are the den leader. If you know for a fact - because you were running the den meetings - that he has not done these, why not give him the opportunity to do it? Perhaps he made the poster at home and just was shy about asking to present it. But, no poster or presentation (if that's the requirement), no beltloop in my book. Can I ask what age/rank we're talking about here?

Brent I want to congratulate you on getting off to a fine start with the new troop. It certainly sounds like the boys and families you are working with are thriving in the program you (collectively) have created. I also think there's an element of size involved here. It is much easier to get very high attendance rates with small groups, than with large ones. It isn't just that larger programs are more likely to allow a boy to slip through the cracks un-noticed (not all do, mind you, but I think it is a lot more prevalent because 1 boy missing out of 30-40-50+ is just not as big a hole as 1 boy missing out of 5-15 boys). It is also that larger troops by virtue of size alone, will have a higher number of boys who are involved in a wider range of activities, and that larger troops will have more families who have difficulty getting Johnny to the meetings on a regular basis. Those folks may not stay involved for very long but it just seems to me that is part and parcel of working in large groups - it attracts people who wouldn't have ever joined a smaller group to start with. Hangers on, if you will. So yes absolutely, I agree there's an important role for expectations to play. But I think small troops have some advantages here by virtue of size as well. Again, congrats to you and "your" boys on what sounds like a spectacular first year.