MattR

Our camporees' cracker barrels are advertised for SM and SPL. For about the past year I've asked the SPL and PLs to go. I've never had a problem with it. I just stand back and graze for food and the scouts volunteer for things. Our camporees have been mostly patrol events for a long time, so that's good. As for cracker barrel most troops bring just the SPL and a few bring PLs. What I notice, walking by camp sites, is that my troop is just about the only one where the patrols are distinct sites and the cooking is at the patrol sites. A lot of troops either have all the patrols cook in the same spot or there's just one setup for cooking. i.e., the adults are probably running it. Summer camp is a nightmare for patrol method in my neck of the woods. When I ask what activities there are for patrols to have fun I get a blank stare from camp directors, council execs, pretty much everyone. I've gotten complements from staff that see oure patrol sites. I think I've found what I want to do when I step down as SM. I've been leery of doing anything with the district or council because there's so much momentum that needs to be changed. I go on and on about training but I can't change what there already is. However, there is nothing called "Patrol Method Training", so I can offer that and write it any way I want. My DE wants me to do it.

Please don't suggest you can teach rafting in an hour, or anything on moving water. The idea of canoeing our local white water is crazy. People that end up on the wrong part of the river die every year, and they're in rafts. Getting scouts to want to do adventure is a chicken and egg thing and adults are part of the mix. A couple of years ago the campout ideas the scouts were coming up with were bad. Nobody wanted a competition or a challenge. I'd suggest it. I'd talk to the PLC and remind them of how much fun they had doing something like a tug of war competition at a camporee, but when the rubber hit the road they didn't want to compete. So I finally said every campout must have a challenge of some sort, their choice, but I'm setting boundaries. Turns out they really enjoy it and now they wouldn't think of not doing it. There's also no doubt they need help turning their ideas into something that works. Lately, anything with a disaster theme works. You were in a plane. It got shot down by Russian separatists. Here's a map. You are at A, your gear is at B, and an injured scout from your patrol is at C. Good luck. I put that one out and the scouts are going crazy with it. Motivating scouts is a subject all its own that is never covered anywhere in the training and I find it the crux of many problems. Once a scout can self motivate, when he can see where he wants to go, the adults should watch and enjoy it. But getting him to that point is most of what I should be doing. You obviously don't want to do it for the scout because he'll never learn. At the same time just asking him what he wants to do really depends on the maturity of the scout.

I agree with Stosh on this one. A scout learns what trustworthy really means when an adult can really trust him to do something that both of them knows is important. And that requires some risk. In fact a lot of scouting requires some risk. Kids fall down and stand up. This is a big part of learning trust and confidence. Confidence comes from knowing you can stand back up and try again. Some parents can accept that risk and some can't. Let's not worry about those that don't like it. The aims of scouting are character, citizenship, and fitness, and that's how boy scouts is sold. Maybe that needs to be updated to talk to parents in a language they understand. I think they'd rather hear that scouts will teach their son to be responsible and do the right thing without being asked. And one of the methods is letting their son fail in a controlled situation. Maybe if that was all updated then everyone would get focused on what scouting is really about.

I'm not surprised at the BSA's focus. Numbers are falling, the BSA has to figure out how to pay for their mortgage, right now, so they did ask the parents, and there are lots of parents that are worried about their kids' careers. So the BSA responds with more Explorers and junior explorers, aka STEM scouts. But what could they really do to help each of our units? Many people here have said that scouting is local, so maybe that's the discussion to have. I suppose some better advertising could help me out. Not too crazy on it but it would help. My council does not have enough trainers when it comes to shooting sports and climbing, as in, we have adults willing to take the training but we can't get them trained. We have climbing gear we can't use right now. That huge new HA camp on the East coast does nothing for my troop as it's too far away and too expensive. I'd much rather see some of that money spent on fixing my local camp's infrastructure. I'm not talking about fancy gear, just a water system that meets state standards. Maybe if we took that $24/scout that goes to national each year and gave it to the local council then we'd be in much better shape. Also, don't just dump stem scouts on my DE without first coming up with a plan to pay for it. He will quit if you don't. Remember, it is about the adventure. It is not about Eagle. Kids do not need Eagle if they are having an adventure. They certainly don't need to get Eagle by the time they're 14. Make sure that summer camps are about summer adventure and not just merit badges. Kids still like adventure and fun. They always have and they always will. If anything has changed it's that kids have less opportunity to have an adventure. If we're starting to not let them choose the game they can play at recess then 1) what we offer is even more important than before, and 2) these kids are starting at a lower level of maturity than what we're used to. We might have to adapt the program to get them started but it is still about the adventure. And just to make this clear, there is no better place in the world to have a real adventure than the outdoors. It's called wild for a reason, and that's what boys respond to. Look at the assumptions we've had for too long and check them. We assume that there are plenty of adults with outdoor experience. I find plenty of adults that like being in the outdoors, but maybe not the wild side of the outdoors. Maybe there needs to be a training program for them that's fun that they can do alongside their sons. We assume that there are plenty of cub scouts coming up into boy scouts. I've noticed that a lot more kids in elementary school play sports than in middle school. Maybe we should be trying to get into the middle schools to make presentations rather than the elementary schools. If so, that presentation should focus on the adventure. Either way, does cub scouts really need to be so long? My pet peeve is training. If the adults don't know what a good program looks like then they'll never create one. I'm sorry but 6 hours of slides will not describe what this is about. My proof is simple. The district training people tried to start a troop last year and it failed miserably. Revamp training. The 6 hours could be cut down to 4 and called an introduction, but for those that want to do it right, Train them, trust them, and let them be.

Exploring Explosion, stem scouts, family scouts. What happened to fun with a purpose? Probably went the way of recess .... I guess I shouldn't be too surprised given that the efficiency of raising kids is the most important thing parents do. It's all about winning. Win all you can. Your son can win more if he has less free time and focuses more on his career, starting at age 7. How many other threads can I tie into this one? BTW, it's not a rifle approach, it's a shotgun approach. This whole document is a grab bag of ideas. Hardly a single bullet. I do like the idea of reaching out to minority communities. These communities tend to be more interested in community and less on winning all you can. But someone said they don't know the outdoors and for some it's hard to volunteer, so that is a problem.

Taps on an instrument is a simple melody but very powerful. I think it only has 21 notes. Don't touch the keys on a trumpet and it's a bugle. Have the bugler back away from the audience, where it can be heard but not too sharply. Another thing to do is walk among the grave stones. Read a few names. Do the math and figure out how old they were when they died. Some of the older scouts may be surprised. I did that when I was 17 at the US cemetery in Normandy and I realized a lot of those guys were only a few years older than I was. That's what brought it all home to me.

Welcome to the forums @@cubscoutdan. First, it sounds like you're doing a great job (15 to 20 new scouts is fantastic), so be happy about that and pat yourself on the back. Seriously, it's these successes that need to be savored to keep your sanity. Second, anything you do is good, and you can't solve all the world's problems. Remember that. Just a guess but it looks like you have a few options. 1) fix the mess you're in, 2) pack up and move across town, 3) work with the mess you're in, or 4) create a new pack. Number 1) fixing the leadership in this pack, sounds like a maalox moment, or more likely a year or 5 until your kids bridge to boy scouts. Number 2), as you say, hurts the boys that likely can benefit from scouts. Is it possible to shuttle the boys that have the hardest time getting to scouts? The den meetings don't have to be across town and if it's only once a month the boys need to be with the pack? I'm just putting up questions. Maybe there's a way to get these boys across town. 3) There is no leadership or teamwork in the existing pack, so you can pretty much do as you please. You did and you got 20 new scouts. If the Scout Oath and Law guide you, there's nothing wrong with doing as you please. Fix the tiger dens. Give them a real calendar. As SlowDerbyRacer says, work from the den up. The scouts will have fun and that's all that matters. It all depends on getting some adults that share your vision. Get some parents to go to roundtable and take the training and you're most of the way there. Number 4) is only if the others don't work.

Very sorry to hear this. It's always hard to put it in words, especially on a forum. Of course, your mom did a good job of putting down words on this forum and I always appreciated that. But tell us, is there a story behind the name Moose Tracker? Or Moose the Italian blacksmith? Stories are always a good way to remember someone. I'd make that a part of a memorial.

Capital Gymnastics' point system was one dollar earned equals one point earned equals one dollar donated. That's pretty clear that each parent gets a reduction exactly proportional to the amount of money they spent at the grocery store. What I'm talking about is based on participation. Just to pick numbers, say every $10 raised is 1 point, as is going on 1 campout, and a service project is worth 2 points. One scout raises $100 and goes on 2 campouts, and a second scout raises no money and goes on 6 campouts and a service project. Do the math and the first scout gets $60 and the second gets $40. If the first scout had not gone camping then the two would split the money evenly. Throw in 50 more scouts and a lot more events and nobody knows how much money they'll get. The benefit is based on participation, not just fund raising. This would also handle the problem of non participants getting no money. The fact that the money has to be spent evenly is a real problem with a boy scout troop because everyone is doing different things. We can't say we are just going to have a fundraiser for Philmont, especially with the Kroger cards. In all honesty, nobody will ever look at our books. We asked our CO if they wanted to look at them and when we told them the numbers they said no, it's not worth their time. So the IRS will also never see them. The real questions are what kind of lessons can we teach the scouts and how do we best support the troop? For scouts that go door to door selling popcorn or camp cards, I honestly would be fine giving them all of the money. That's a good lesson for the scouts and most parents explicitly tell their kids, you want to go on a high adventure, pick one you can pay for because you will. For grocery cards and events where the adults are doing a non trivial amount of work, I'd rather distribute it based on participation. We have scouts that can't afford to shop where the grocery cards are so they aren't getting that money. When we hear about kids that can't afford camp we pay for it, whether it's the general fund or just passing a hat, but some parents won't ask.

I read that gymnastics document and it's kind of like reading tea leaves. Trying to compare it to a troop is a bit of a challenge. On the one hand, it did say that because all the members of the fund raising organization got a benefit there was a violation. So does that mean, since all the scouts are a member of the fund raising organization, that we can't pay for anything for a scout that a parent could pay for? But there was also the comment along the lines of "unlike a church youth group, where the primary purpose of the organization is not to raise money, it's okay to have bake sales and the like." Read what you want. One thing that brought up a huge flag for me was the comment about the grocery store coupons. Kroger stores have these, we use them, and make a lot of money on them. That's going to be a topic. Where a scout actually does the work for the fund raiser I have no problem giving them most of the money but the boys are clueless about grocery store coupons. I'd rather see that money go into a big pot. Here's an idea for how to divvy money up. Scouts get points for participating in any activity (outings, fundraisers, service projects). At the end of each quarter all the raised money is divided by the number of points handed out and payed out by the number of points each scout has. It's not a one for one payment and it benefits those that participate the most.

Just a story... I had a SMC with a scout last night. Long story short is mom won't let him go on a campout with water because of some fear she has that he'll drown. I talked to her afterward and she knows it's irrational. I told her she needs to get over it because his son shows huge promise that will be wasted if she doesn't. What I didn't tell her is she needs to start letting go or her son will suffer. But this is just one kid. Maybe 10% of the parents are like this. Just an observation... The title Eagle scout does not mean a parent understands scouts. It likely means he understands the outdoors. We created a survey for learning about the parents, what they need, and how they can help. There are a number of parents with outdoor experience that we need to make a relationship with. I don't need half the adults like that. 20% would be fantastic. 10% would be fine. It used to be they just came out of the crowd and started helping out. That is no longer the case for our troop. I do have hope for my troop although I was getting depressed a month ago until I started seeing some of the results of the survey. But absolutely, training these adults is important and non trivial. I get no help from the council.

When I was a boy I'd just put that big ol' knife twixt my teeth, jump that boar, and we'd have us some fun. I don't know, it just sounded fun to say. Actually, scouting always was, in my mind, really good at training safety and then letting the scouts do things that others would not. When I was a kid the guy at the rifle range was not to be crossed. He was a crusty old coot and he was very serious about safety. I'll never forget that guy and many years later, when some idiot was showing off his gun by swinging it around, that old coot jumped up in my mind and I told the idiot to put the gun down. When he said it wasn't loaded I said it didn't matter, always treat it as if it was. He opened the chamber to prove to me it was okay and guess what, it had a bullet in it. "wow man, I didn't know that." That's what scouts does well. I let scouts play on rocks over their waist, but we always have a talk about not screwing around, respecting nature, and looking out for everyone. That and if I see anyone break those rules it's over for everyone. They're good with it. I don't think the solution is to just say don't worry about it. I can't impact national, but I can make a good program for my troop and hopefully people will notice. The squirt gun thing is something totally different. If the ex secdef/ head of the CIA is in scouts, can't someone just say hey, let's stop being stupid?

I liked this lesson because it got to the truth much more readily than all the other activities. Competition gets the blood going. Conflict is a big part of being human. Leadership is a lot about working with personalities within conflict and competition. This game brought all this up so much better than a floating hydrogen stick game. I've been talking to each of my patrols about problems and personality conflicts are one of the biggest issues they have. The scouts can read the personalities of the other scouts just fine. The challenge is how to deal with those problems. The first thing I tell them is to cool things down. If they try and win they will lose. So I see a benefit to this lesson even if it could be cleaned up and better tied back to a purpose. Some of the other sections were not too helpful. The {f,st,n,perf}orming sequence has more to do with personalities than arrows on a chalk board.

Take care, @@skeptic.

I took that class about the same time this thread started. I remember that game and I just sat back and started to stew about how at a scout training function people were just getting so greedy. It was so much against everything we had been working on. I was disgusted and refused to get involved. The guy leading it was just a slime ball. Very good acting and he sucked a lot of people in. The difference with what you seemed to have run into and my experience is that your trainers just kept going with it. At one point our staff just stopped everything and said okay everyone, look what happened. I went from being pissed off to embarrassed I didn't catch on earlier that they had me hook line and sinker. In all honesty this game had the biggest impact on me than anything else all week. Everything else was bland-vanilla-we've-all-seen-it-before-kumbaya-acronym-hell and this game got down to the grit. Anyway, Mr Ed, hang in there.

@@Eagledad, I think the condescending remarks being referenced are along the lines of "Do I look like your patrol leader?" when a scout comes up to talk to you. It's not something here that anyone said, it's how we work with the scout that has an honest question.

Go for it! Just from my own experience last week, take it for whatever you want: New PLs that haven't seen this work before seem to have a much easier time leading a small group of scouts. All those adults that want 12+ kids in a patrol create a nightmare for a kid. Even 6-8 scouts is hard on a new PL. They could easily handle 4. An older scout said he'd like to be SPL some day so I asked him to camp with a younger patrol and give some tips to the PL. Given the lack of focus of the older scout he did not get in the way. In fact the PL said it was great. This is the same PL that really struggled at summer camp.

I took a "wilderness first aid" course from an EMT and he told me there is no standard for what such a course should be. He just did more training than the standard red cross. So I doubt there will be a requirement. It was a really good course and our troop paid for half of it. The training we got included quite a bit that is not in the first aid MB. Things like checking for spinal injuries. About epipens, those are by prescription only and dosed by the weight of the person that needs it, so you can't just carry an extra and give it to someone. Give one to an 80 lb kid that is set for a 200 lb adult and you could get sued, not to mention kill the kid if you give it to him incorrectly. Epipens are only good for 10 to 20 minutes anyway. Benadryl is what you want in your first aid kit. Another important item they taught us is that we can not get in over our training. If you don't know how to reset a dislocated shoulder than don't try. Given how painful that can be I can see people trying, especially if they're days from help.

We have email lists but in all honesty, I don't think they do much. My email is certainly ignored so I've been sending out less. Sure, kids and or parents get the information but it doesn't register unless it's close to trivial information. By trivial it involves something like a number. The meeting time has been changed from 7 to 6:30 so we have more daylight. Asking someone to help at an Eagle project or sign up for a campout is too complex because the person will need to think about it. What does work is a scout explicitly talking to another scout one on one. I tell scouts to call scouts and ask them if they will come and help at their Eagle project. Not text or email, and preferably not even voice mail. When we have scouts push the campouts at the meetings then the attendance goes up. Not even text messages help. Whether we want it or not, the communication in our troop really is boy led. I want it that way but there are other adults that aren't so happy with it.

Update: The crew adviser and one of the girls had a meeting, that was prompted by the girl saying she was not going to recharter. The girl said only the one adviser was allowed to be there. She talked about how too many parents are sticking their noses where they don't belong. The adviser was shook up about this. He didn't deny it, but honestly felt bad about it and would like to make it right. The girl, and all her friends, asked me to come to another meeting and they asked for my help in fixing this mess. So they don't want to start a new crew, and this is a relief to me. Now comes the delicate part where I need to talk to the adviser and tell them what I told the scouts. All I did with the scouts was explain to them how scout led is supposed to work and we went through examples. We talked about growth, problem solving, reviewing how things went, developing leaders and helping people out, adult/scout boundaries, and how to come up with a calendar. They ate it up. The first week in November they're having a planning campout and October is to get ready for it. Other than training the scouts and adults how it's supposed to work my other job will be hit man for adults that don't get it. So far it's fun.

There are a lot o layers to that story. It's in the Talmud and it's about Rabbi Hillel. A non Jew tells the rabbi he'll convert if the rabbi can explain Judaism while standing on one foot. So the rabbi replies "What is hateful to yourself, do not do to your fellow man. That is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary. Go and study it." The go study it part is key. How to treat a neighbor is just the start. One has to study the Torah to learn the rest and that's a really big deal in Judaism. Of course, there's another layer above this because there's another rabbi that previously smacks this guy with a rod when asked the same question. So this story is also about the right way to bring people closer to God (start easy and don't smack them with a rod when they ask a silly question). The next layer is that each rabbi corresponds to two diverging views of interpreting scripture. Hillel's side won that argument and was more lenient. The losing side, Shammai, was more literal. This part was true. Also, Hillel was real. He lived a few decades BCE, probably Jesus knew of him. Nobody knows if the story is true. The fact that there is lots of commentary -- very true.

@@ghjim, a lot of rabbis, non fictional at that, have talked about the balance between selfless and selfish. I saw one that says you've hit the sweet spot when you see no difference between selfish and selfless. I have a long way to go on that one. But in my defense the rabbi's example was Moses.

Scouts and sports complement each other. I like them both and liked them both as a kid. But times have changed. Everyone knows horror stories like the kid that couldn't go to Philmont because he was going to miss 2 days of 3 weeks of band camp. But maybe we aren't so innocent. Unfortunately sports and scouts are similar in one way, the drive to succeed (win or get Eagle) is watering down the program. I ask scouts why they're in scouts and most will bring up the fact that having Eagle is good for getting a job or getting into college. I usually want to puke right then. I've yet to hear a scout say "I hope to be a better person." I use their greed to encourage them to do things they normally wouldn't do. If they're afraid to lead and I tell them lead or forget about Eagle then most of them will suck it up and try, usually with good results. In all honesty I'm not proud of it. I wish I was charismatic enough to convince a scout to try with no award, no threat, just a you can do it. But my talking about being a better person is just that, talk. Spread that over 60 kids and it's a lot of hot air. I guess I'm really no different than the coaches.

The thing with the older scouts dealing with the change has been one of the biggest surprises to me. Before I was SM I offered to help any scout that wanted to organize something fun for the older scouts. Just ask for help and I'd guide them through the rest. Go hiking, mountain biking, backpacking, anything. I told them that even if they didn't know what they wanted to do I'd help them. I got nothing. If I just told them the date to show up they'd be there. We went caving, rafting, biking and something else before I made my offer. Zoom forward to about a year ago. The older scouts that stepped up and started getting involved were the ones that wanted to work with the younger scouts. They're doing a great job. Nobody wants to organize something for the older scouts. I think it's a combination of poor planning skills, peer pressure to just fit in and not lead, and being lazy. The only thing that seems to get them over that fear is the fact that they now have to do some leadership to get POR credit. A scout came up to me last week and said he'd like to plan the December campout. I told him the SPL would certainly like to hear that, but thanks for telling me. This is a first. Now I have to get all those adults that spend time teaching Life scouts how to do an Eagle project to do that exact same thing with Star scouts that want POR credit.

Try this. I'm not the scholar, I just looked it up and condensed it. The 3 letter root of the verb used in the 6th commandment is R-Tz-Ch (you can't pronounce it without the vowels). It is used in numerous places throughout the Bible. In Numbers 35, Deuteronomy 5 & 19, and Joshua 20 & 21, it refers to accidental deaths but the word accidental is explicitly put in the text. In Deuteronomy 22, Judges 20, 1 Kings 21, 2 Kings 6, Isaiah 1, Jeremiah 7, Ezekiel 21, Hosea 4 & 6, Psalms 42, 62, and 94, Proverbs 22, and Job 24 there is no modifier and the deaths are willful and premeditated. There are a few other words used in other places that describe killing someone. I didn't get into it deep enough but the meanings of these words are vague when it comes to accidental or willful. So, murder it is and not kill. I hope that helps. @@cyclops, you say that the churches have not removed any homeless from the streets in your town. That sucks. My temple along with a number of churches in our town have done just that. We take turns providing a place to sleep, food to eat, and time to talk. We haven't removed all the homeless but we do what we can and focus on homeless families. I don't know of anyone that has the resources to do this on their own. It takes a community that is intent on doing it. Back to my comment about motivation, where does the motivation come from for any community to attempt this? For me, it's Torah. I don't care where anyone else gets it. Sit on a rock and watch the sun rise, that's fine. I'd just like to see more people get it. It's just very impressive to me that some 3000 years ago someone said "to leave the unreaped corner of the field or orchard for the poor." This is about the time the bronze age has replaced stone tools with metal in Egypt.