MattR

Following on to qwazse's comment, and also trying to get this back on the rails: Different scouts want different things and they have no idea it's okay to seek that. So another responsibility of the adults is to get the scouts to open up, find out what they're thinking, and give them some feedback at a wider level. It's not thinking outside the box, it's realizing how big the box is. In the case of patrol makeup some scouts think whatever is being done is the only way to do it. When it comes to campouts many scouts don't know what they don't know about what could be done. Unrelated to this

The discussion on patrol vs troop and what patrols do is good, but way beyond what I'm interested in. I'm not writing a book. In my wild dreams I'm thinking of some sort of weekend training for adults and scouts to fix their troops. I want a simple set of ideas that people can focus on to get them started in this but with enough detail that they will make progress. I'm looking for one page. Succinct and tight. That said, I have another question about adult responsibility to the Patrol Method. In particular, the SM. The SM has to set the boundaries and create a framework the scouts have ful

Julia, a fun activity is a repeat-after-me song that gets harder and harder. The leader starts with a simple phrase, the scouts repeat it, the leader adds something to make it longer, scouts repeat, and this goes until it's a huge long tongue twister. It's not really a song but it is fun. Here's one example. http://www.ultimatecampresource.com/site/camp-activity/one-fat-hen-a-couple-of-ducks.html

I use these idiotic rules to my advantage. I go to my scouts and say something like "Hey guys, the BSA doesn't trust you to climb on rocks above your waist, but I do. Just remember, if any of you give me reason to not trust you then I will enforce BSA's rules for all of you." Then they go explore the rocks, without adult supervision, and they think I'm cool because I trust them. win/win. My scouts recently spent a meeting shooting nerf darts at each other. They had a ton of fun. Real weapons are about power. Squirt guns are about fun. Too bad National can't see the difference.

I wish we could gather at a brew science establishment and talk about this. I do appreciate everyone's comments. I want as concise a description as possible that gives enough that someone new to this can make it work. I have to keep it on a page or people will wander away. The reason I'm doing this is the descriptions out there are not working. If they were then most troops would be doing this. This is going somewhere and it's not a power point, but more on that later. The major feedback I'm getting is: If the scouts read this they won't realize that what they should be doing is having

@@qwazse, I'm game. I think you've mentioned the noun/verb distinction before. Unfortunately I didn't quite see what you were getting at. I'd say what we are is what we do, so there's not much difference. But that's not what you're trying to get at. So please explain further. Here's a guess. If I were to define the verb to scout I'd say there are two parts, adventure in the outdoors and service to our community. Are you saying "to scouter" is to encourage scouting? That I could fit in easily.

As the boys will see this MB: Req 1) Describe blah blah Req 2) Discuss blah blah Req 3) Do Something! Req 4) Discuss blah blah Req 5) Discuss blah blah ZZZZZZZzzzzzz.

I'm back. Thanks for the ideas. What I noticed is the missing part is the challenges that each component in the patrol method is missing. It's one thing to say the boys are in charge but what's missing is explaining how hard that is when the scouts want to step back and the adults want to make things more efficient. It's still open for changes. I am going someplace with this. I asked my DE, who I really like, how many troops do this right and his response was more like a grimace. So, he'd like me to do something with this. That will be a different topic. Here's what I have. Play nice. Th

It's clear that the BSA can't describe very well what the Patrol Method is. Considering it's the most important part of a troop they need some help. So let's see if we can help them. What are the most important ideas for a SM to know that cut to the core of the Patrol Method? All the introductions talk about 6-8 scouts, safe environment, types of patrols, etc, but they make lots of assumptions that aren't showing up in any descriptions. Here are a few ideas to get the ball rolling. What can you add? What would you change? Independence of the patrol (300', do their own thing at meetings).

The scouts know a lot more about unfair than you might think. Kids with divorced, angry parents. Kids with parents that are terminally ill. Kids that have been through cancer. Kids with disabilities. I've seen a lot in my troop. I currently have a scout that spends more time sleeping at friends houses because his mom throws him out of the house. Half the adults in the troop have told him he has a place to stay with them. Everyone knows about these things. Spoiled rotten brats? They've seen plenty of that in school. They also see unfair in their patrols when it comes to delegating work or playi

What you did sounds fine to me. I don't necessarily want scouts to fail, I want them to learn. Failing is just one way to motivate someone to learn. The bottom line is it seems like they learned. If they were asked to make another fire they probably could because they obviously figured out how to notch the logs. There is someone else that obviously did not learn anything and that would be the guy that sent these scouts to start a fire. Maybe that's what the other adult got his knickers in a knot over. Not a big deal.

I had a month without an SPL as I had no choice, and I made huge progress with the PLs. I was surprised. I tried describing to the old SPL what his job is and he would understand but he'd just fall back on old habits. I was frustrated. The new SPL is picking this up because he's watching me. I figured out the SPL has to see it to learn it. For some reason the PLs are soaking things up easier. Lesson learned is grow it from the bottom up. It's little details like this that are missing from the training. The current training is based on the simplest training. You have someone that can on

I agree. Maybe that's why I went off topic. The uniform could be improved but better training for adults would be more beneficial. But that's the other thread.

Is it fair to say 4H is similar to Boy Scout merit badges, only they do it right? Rather than discuss and describe how to raise chickens, raise chickens.

Back out of the weeds... and trying to play nice. Here's one word: Exegesis. I think it's a fascinating subject. I've noticed in this thread that examples of moral facts are all things people shouldn't do. That's very un scout like considering we're always trying to encourage scouts to do the right thing rather than punish them for doing the wrong thing. The idea of human dignity is one idea in the Bible (and probably all other religion's basic tenets) that has passed the test of time and been elevated, via exegesis, to the point where it can trump most other rules in the Bible.

Doh! My bad. Sorry Schiff. Which begs the question. If the BSA and GSUSA are both losing kids and they have a wide range of uniforms, and 4H is growing (barely) then what's the difference?

Who says girl scout membership is growing? It's currently 2.8M and was at a peak of 3.8M in 2003. At least those are the numbers I found. I don't like the patches and bling on the uniforms so I asked my scouts if they'd be willing to wear their uniform to school if there was some special reason. They don't mind the patches. They said the only problem would be dealing with the kids that have no idea what scouts is about. Many students think the BSA is a Christian youth military organization. The scouts don't mind wearing their uniform at meetings and are fine with them on campouts that aren

Sure, if you're in a train station. But we were out in the woods. We were worried about whether we were allowed to camp there. But this is the confusion of 16 year olds that knew about camping rules in the US but not in Europe. Another good story was we took a train to Italy to go to a US Army base for summer camp. The train got all messed up (this was Italy after all) and we got to spend the night in the Milan train station. At the time this was one of the more dangerous places to be. We put all the gear in a pile with the younger scouts sleeping on top of it and the parents and older scouts

My best friend and I wanted to go backpacking and we were the only older scouts in the troop so we decided to go on our own. Since we lived in Belgium there was nothing like a national forest or park. So we found the most wooded place we could on the lousy maps we had and had our parents drop us off. We weren't sure if what we were doing was illegal or not so we were paranoid about being caught. Our goal was to get to camp at dusk and not be seen. We would hide our packs using the best camo techniques we knew, scout out an area ahead of us, go back, get our gear, and move forward. In hind sigh

Yeah, well, I took Woodbadge to learn about boy led, I wanted to read the book, not write it. But yes, that would have been a much better ticket than what I did. The rubber hits the road when it comes to dealing with problems. Who finds them and who solves them will point to who's leading. That takes a lot of patience by the adults.

That is one of the points I learned from this forum. There needs to be a very clear distinction between what the adults and scouts are responsible for. Without that the boys will tend to back down and the adults will tend to step in. Suddenly it's the adults. I also like the 300' idea. While it doesn't have to be 300' there needs to be separation between patrols in camping as well as what patrols do on campouts and meetings. It's similar to the 2x4 only it's for scouts. I guess 300' is softer than a 2x4. Recently I've been repeating the mantra that the PLs are responsible for delivering the pr

That's a really good question, as in I'd like to see a good answer. But I don't have one. Actually, you have two questions. The first is how to explain the benefits of boy led and the second is how to teach it. Benefits: Boy led teaches the scouts responsibility, problem solving, and compassion. I don't see other youth activities that come close. While younger scouts mostly just want fun, older scouts also want purpose. Boy led provides that purpose. Teaching/resources: There are resources that hint at what the issues are. SM specific training is very light on helping someone that hasn

Years ago the OA ran our camporees and it was the same thing every year. Some adults with a knack for making it fun took over and it's been much better. They take any and all ideas and help. One rut they have gotten into is that they end up with a bunch of stations that take 10-15 minutes to complete. So patrols move from station to station. Turns out the younger scouts like it and the older scouts don't. They'd rather do something that takes hours to complete. That's hard to do with 150 scouts, most of which don't have the patience or focus. So I've been encouraging the older scouts to do the

We have a real accountant for a treasurer. He came up with a real budget based on the past several years and it includes everything including budgeted major items. We've had a few people try and do this before but with no luck. It was surprisingly difficult to figure out where our money went until our current treasurer organized everything. Our dues are $70/year and that covers national, boys life, cohs, adults, gear and 50% training (first aid, woodbadge, sm, etc). We have scout accounts that can only be used for scout events and scouts pay food, fees, and sometimes gas for events. I would li

It's just time for some good news. The weather at our campout was fine until Saturday afternoon when a wind storm came in and started blowing tents all over. I was starting a SMC with one scout right before the wind picked up and the rain came. I told him the SMC would be delayed. All the new scouts were screaming part in fun and part fear. The scout tents were rolling, and folding, and just having a bad time because they were not staked down correctly or the stakes were pulling up from the wind and soft ground. I did not want to risk destroyed tents making this a teachable moment so I g