MattR

Yep, they came from Area 51. They did learn quickly. The training they needed was that failure is not all that bad. They were more worried about losing then getting excited about winning. Now that they've tasted red meat, it's a different story. But they never would have tried it if I hadn't made them. That's a paradox with the idea of boy led.

Different troops do things differently. Since your son sounds like he's not enjoying that troop, try asking him if he'd like to visit some other troops. Let him own the solution.

Hint: He should be having fun.

Hmmm. It's like @@MattR had a definition of patrolling that envisioned these groups of boys needing to light fire quickly in order to live up to the definition.I guess the growth of scoutmaster skills involves learning when and how hard to nudge a stagnating patrol. We need to accept that when you have to push one aspect of your vision for a patrol, boys may push back. It's a quandary. Just "doing what you do" may not inspire your boys to imitate. Telling them they should do what you do may have them digging their heels.

 

Either way, the practical result for me is their plans for hiking and camping independently need to be tailored to the skills that they have demonstrated. For example, as much as my boys would likely enjoy it, there's no crossing bogs off-trail until they come back from orienteering courses with solid after-action reviews. Obviously, that requires they set up or attend orienteering courses.

Pick any skill you'd like, @@qwazse, orienteering, pioneering, backpacking, fishing, hiking, caving, the list goes on. They're hesitant to try anything they don't already know and some are hesitant to sweat (even though they play sports, which I can't understand). They got signed off and now they don't have to do that any more. It's not that knowing those skills is the the only thing I'm looking for in a patrol. I would like to see some motivation and camaraderie. Solving problems together is one way to generate camaraderie and competitions are a good way to generate those problems. As for crossing bogs off-trail as a motivator, they wouldn't see that as any reason to set up an orienteering course. It's also not that they wouldn't enjoy it, I think they would. It's just the forward looking portion of their brains are mush.

Did you educate them as to the various ways one can have a fire-building contest?  Exploding balloons, for example?    scout fire building contests    gets 2.8 million Google hits.

 

We all only know what we know.  Some are  more motivated to try and learn more, but it's a legitimate adult role, I think, to ask, "Have you thought of/seen/heard of  X?"  I thionk that's part of the adult as resource role.

I tried that for 6 months and finally said enough is enough, there will be a fire building contest. Words work on one side of the brain and competition is on the other side, and in boys the two sides do not talk to each other. It wasn't until they did it that they knew they liked it. My point is we're more than a resource. We have to motivate as well and sometimes motivation includes telling someone something they don't want to hear. To be honest I've also had to eat my words when my motivation back fired.

Only Seven percent of all ASMs I polled at Wood Badges admitted they had read the whole Scoutmaster Handbook. Sadly the truth is most adults don't really care about the details of building character, they just know it's part of scouting and would rather leave the details to the SM. When you explain it, they start to fall asleep. Character is the SMs job, the rest are fine with the SM telling them what to do.

 

But, it is important that the SM be able explain why they are doing what they're doing so that there is buy in to the SMs program. Does that make sense? That is why the SM is the gatekeeper of the vision. As long as the SM can consistently repeat the same vision and explain how what they are doing it is going in a positive direction toward the vision, the other 95% are perfectly happy to follow the plan.

 

The reason for knowing and understanding the Aims and Methods is so the SM can explain the roles of scouts and adults in a scout run troop. After every election, I explained to both the PLC and ASMs that the adults were responsible for: scouts fitness, citizenship and character (three aims). The way the adults achieve the Aims is by the scouts actively: using the the Scout Oath and Law, using patrols, camping outdoors, advancing, a mature relationship with adults, reflecting on personal performance of Doing A Good Turn, leadership and uniform. In other words the "Eight Methods". As long as the scouts take personal responsibility for the Eight Methods, the adults will not interfere with their program. Pretty simple really.

 

That is how I taught and defined the roles for the adults in the boy run troop. The adults are supposed to be passive to the scouts actions as long as the scouts are working toward "growth" in the Fitness, Citizenship, and Character. "Passive"means stand back and stay out of the scouts way. The scouts are on the other hand working "actively" with the Eight Methods. That is where the line is drawn. But, for that to work successfully, the SM has to be able to define how each of the eight methods work toward any or all of the three aims because many challenges will come up In the grey area. In fact I challenged each PLC that if I (SM) couldn't explain how a scout activity or action worked toward any Aim, I would let them take it out of the program. It also protects the scouts from the adults. If the troop has a low performing SPL and the adults start bulking, the wise Scoutmaster points out that character spawns from adversity, not prosperity.

 

The other thing not being discussed here is the factor of maturity. It doesn't take much reasoning to understand that a 17 year old Scout is more capable of making decisions because they have more experience and wisdom. So the responsibilities or roles of the adults and scouts boy changes as a scout grows from his experiences. A responsible adult isn't going to drop off a new NSP by themselves without training, but a patrol with scouts of several years experience in most cases shouldn't be a problem.

 

But boy constant growth and maturity "requires" that the adults grow and mature with their responsibilities well or they will find themselves in the way and restricting scout growth. Just like we wouldn't give an 11 year old SPL the same responsibilties we give a 17 year old, we also wouldn't restrict the 17 year old SPL with the same independence we gave the 11 year old. The adults have to continually grow and adapt to the scouts growth. I've said before, as adults we screwed up a lot, but we were humble And made adjustments so as not to keep repeating those mistakes. Guiding the adults to change and adapt along with the scouts can be a difficult responsibility for a shy SM who struggles with directing adults. But the SM is the guard of the vision, he/she must keep that in mind.

 

I've gone way too long, hope this helps.

 

Barry

@@Eagledad, I like your description of how to use the aims and methods. I'm doing a lot of that without recognizing it. It is a fairly vague set of rules to interpret, though. As an example, six months ago I got frustrated with talking to the PLC about how bland their program was  and said every campout needs a challenge of some sort. It wasn't a problem of character, citizenship, or fitness, but it was a problem with delivering on what scouts is about. You told me about how every scout needs to keep growing, where does that fit in to this? Something we see a lot is the scouts don't see the possibilities and therefore fall into the same old rut. When I mention a fire building contest they see that maybe they don't really know how to build a fire so they're hesitant and say no. Once we had the competition they wanted another chance to do better. There's more to the interaction between the adults and scouts than "modeling good character." You mention the SM is the keeper of the flame. The challenge is really getting the scouts to see the flame.

Stosh, presumably your instructor is an older boy? So I guess the older boys are teaching the skills. You're the one that said scouts should keep a log of what leadership they did and not worry about a patch, and if teaching skills is one of those items then I guess the older boys are teaching the skills. This would be a big change from what my troop did before I came along, which was have the adults teach the skills.

Ken, you beat me to it.

@@Eagledad, while I'm learning to see what you mean by the aims and methods cover a lot, I have to say it's all hindsight. When I started as SM and said I wanted the older scouts to teach the younger scouts I just about had a mutiny from the adults. When I asked some older scouts why they liked working at summer camp so much better than in the troop they said it was because they knew it was important and nothing in the troop was important -- because the adults would cover for them. In hindsight this can all be attributed to personal growth, but a new SM reading the methods of scouting will never see that because personal growth is some vague blurb about getting a religious knot and doing a good turn daily. Adult association does not describe how important it is to not be around at times.

So how do we get you to fill in all those details? Just to make it concrete how about three pages per method? To make it easier just give me a pile of ideas for each and I'll do the writing.

My guess is most people think this change is coming whether they like it or not. I figured it would be a few more years, but this sounds like a shot across the bow. Either way I don't see it making much of a difference in numbers as it's all about whether the scouts are having fun. My bigger worry is squirt guns. I'll ignore that rule but it is an indication that National is run by committee and not by one with an idea of what scouting is about. Here I am trying to encourage scouts to go off on their own and we're reminded that we can't even trust boys with squirt guns.

Anyone notice that the Denver Area Council was explicitly brought up as disregarding the rules and they also get one of the STEM trials?

BW, I fear when you say they "know scouting," you are giving a good many of them too much credit.  Scouting bureaucracy, yes.  Scouting, no.

Case in point: squirt guns.

There's a clear lack of leadership at National and by that I mean there are all sorts of players pulling in different directions (traditional scouting, bean counters, religious, lawyers, ...). It's difficult to write coherently and concisely when everyone agrees. When people don't agree we get committee reports for boys to read.

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 but related to the OP, I looked up Hillcourt's Page 9 (mentioned in that video on another thread) and it describes exactly what I meant by the promise of scouting. Outdoors with your friends, wielding an axe, tracking a deer. And that's only the beginning. This was on page 9 of the old scout handbooks and was written directly to the scout. The equivalent in the current book is a disaster written by a committee and has a lot of baggage that no kid will understand or wade through.

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 full reign within. I had scouts that enjoyed competitions but would never plan one because they were afraid they didn't know their skills or they might fail at the challenge. The short version of this is I said no, this is scouts, so I dictated that every campout needed a challenge of the scout's choice. It worked, now they like it. I heard of another troop where the scouts decided their campout would be sleeping in the local park and hanging out in the mall all day. I would have said no.

My job is to motivate scouts to do their best, what are my limits? I want to encourage them but that's a fuzzy idea. Sometimes words are enough. Sometimes a demonstration (D.O. cooking is a great example). But sometimes I need to make them do something just to try it. I'm all ears if there are better ways to encourage the scouts.

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 an adventure in the outdoors. Given this is the major benefit of the Patrol Method, I'll work on it.

Also, adult association can make or break this. There is a fine line between leaving a patrol alone and stomping on their freedom. What does support a patrol really mean? They need to encourage the adventure with a gentle touch. However, that's too vague. @@Eagledad or anyone else, any chance you can boil your experience down regarding adult association to something concise and still informative enough that a new leader can grasp the basics?

@Stosh: My troops does have some troop wide activities. Opening and closing flags and games come to mind. We have troop wide service projects. Swim tests are troop wide. Getting the trailer packed. That's all I meant by the SPL leads troop wide activities.

@@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.

http://boyslife.org/merit-badges/animation-merit-badge/

 

IMO, after a long delay I expected more than Easy here. This seems ready to join Fingerprinting for merit badge Saturday or camp.

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.
 
The Patrol Method/Boy Led Troop consists of Patrols, each led by a Patrol Leader, the Senior Patrol Leader, and the adults. Each of these people have responsibilities and challenges.
 
A Patrol. A patrol is a gang of friends. It consists of 6-8 scouts that self select who is in the patrol. Most events are done at the patrol level.

• Responsibility: Deliver the promise of scouting to the members of the patrol. This means planning and implementing the events that scouting is about: fun, friendships, adventure, skills, and service. Each member of the patrol shares the responsibility for this. This means they help their patrol and each member in their patrol.
• Challenges: Stepping forward and handling their responsibility. Boys this age have rarely had the freedom to plan their own events and will tend to wait until someone else does this for them. Encouraging them to handle this responsibility is key. Another challenge is keeping their independence from other patrols and the adults. Staying away from each other helps develop cohesion and spirit. This includes camping, at meetings, and events. The final challenge is developing patrol spirit. This takes time and success.

Patrol Leader. The patrol leader is the most important position in a troop. Each patrol elects its own patrol leader.

• Responsibility: Take care of his patrol by ensuring it is fulfilling what the scouts want out of scouting. Communicate with the scouts in both directions. Stay ahead of the calendar and know what's coming. Make sure everyone in the patrol has a job to do (delegate) and that they are trained to do it. Develop future leadership for the patrol. Set the example for the Scout Oath and Law.
• Challenges: Everything he is responsible for is a challenge for scouts that have never done this before. Keeping adults, other patrols and patrol leaders, and the SPL away from making decisions for his patrol. Having never led before he will likely sit back and let someone else do it. Stepping back and allowing the scouts in his patrol to do their jobs.

Senior Patrol Leader: For troops of only 1 or 2 patrols, this position is not needed.

• Responsibility: Make the Patrol Leaders successful. Lead troop wide activities. Lead scouts in Positions of Responsibility that are not related to patrols.
• Challenges: Stepping back and allowing Patrol Leaders to do their jobs. Stepping up and not letting the adults do his job.

Adults: This includes the Scoutmaster, his assistants, and all other adults and parents.

• Responsibility: Ensure a safe environment. Set boundaries that confine the scouts to the scout methods yet also gives them enough freedom to learn and grow. Develop trust between the scouts and adults. Without trust nothing will work.
• Challenges: Patience. A boy led troop is messy and chaotic. It takes time. Scouts fail and that's okay as that's how they learn. Too much failure can also be discouraging. The challenge is in knowing when to encourage, help, or stand back. Too often adults want to make the process more efficient and that's a mistake. “The role of the adults is not the destination, but the journey. That is, our responsibility as adults is to promote the 'process' of Scouting.†Keep the boundaries between scouts and adults very clear and simple. Without clear boundaries the scouts will tend to step back and the adults will tend to step forward. Do not solve any problems that the scouts can solve on their own.

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).
• Respecting the PLs authority and not stepping over it (both SPL and adults).
• The PLs responsibility to his patrol. Stosh would call this "take care of your people."
• Teamwork: Helping your patrol & giving everyone a job
• Boundaries for adults.
• The chaos of learning or why it takes them so long.
• Trust between the adults and scouts.
• Working through people problems - this is probably the one thing that ILST talks about.

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 playing against other patrols that are much stronger. I won't fix those problems but I certainly encourage scouts to talk about them. Some of it falls under the category of suck it up and keep smiling.

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 only spend 6 hours learning about scouts and they won't do any more. So they get a very brief overview that will work if the troop is already in a good place but won't help anyone that wants to make a change. It is what it is.  But there's a whole range of other adults that can and would do more if they had the resources. What does the training look like that adapts to all these people? Something where you can keep coming back and slowly improve. Something that describes real situations and typical problems in some detail rather than vague situations.

Remember when Pack18Alex came here asking for help and there was this huge disconnect? That was the last we heard of him and it's a real shame. At the same time this has been the only useful resource I've used. We need more than just a forum.

I really really don't believe the uniform is the make or break of a youth program.

 

Barry

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.

.. The kids that participate have a very wide range of program opportunities to pursue.  Go to  your local county fair and you'll find 4-H kids in the livestock pens, horse shows, art, cooking, sewing, and performance art display areas.  They have programs in citizenship and leadership and are expanding into science, robotics, etc.  On top of that they operate camps for kids that pick up many of the same things that kids in scouts can do (archery, shooting, swimming, boating, climbing, etc.)  ...  It's a solid 100-year old program.

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.

If we had to use two words to describe God's shaping of man's morality, it would be "Baby Steps."

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.

Not me, I said Boy & Girls, 4-H, and YMCA.

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?