MattR

You're wasting a perfect problem/learning-opportunity. What I would do, given their age, is buy a bunch of ramen packets and take them with me. At the parking lot I'd ask them if they are good to go. If they say yes, then they are good to go. On Sat morning when they figure out they don't have food then I'd remind them that they said they were good to go. I'd ask the other patrols to only give them leftovers that they wouldn't have eaten anyway. If they'd like to trade food for washing dishes that could be good. At lunch, same thing. I'd let them starve. By dinner time they will be really hung

BadenP, with a hundred scouts in your crew, how do they organize? Is there something similar to a patrol that has some permanence or is it by event?

fred, official records as far as the council is concerned is what gets loaded into their computer and troopmaster will generate an advancement report that will do just that. It also tracks things like adult training, service hours, things for JTE, and who is going on what events. When a scout has an Eagle COH I like to print out a report of everything the scout has done to help me remember good stories stories. Once scouts don't need any more campouts they won't keep track of them. As for scouts and parents not reading email or listening to announcements, yep. Then they complain to you th

And this is why I'm leaning towards having patrols for younger scouts and older scouts. It's not just time outside their patrol but time outside of scouts. Most scouts have a limit as to how many campout they can go on a year. I have some older scouts that won't touch another camporee but they really enjoy the high adventure. I don't want single age patrols, but breaking 11-17 into two groups that roughly reflect junior high and high school makes some sense to me. I'd still want interaction between the younger and older scouts (instructors, troop guides, training) Edit: I don't want to sp

Barry, we do something similar, six months with two troop guides and then split them up. We don't do the shopping part and that sounds much better. But getting to your growth theme, I have a couple of 13 year olds that are ready to be PL and some 16 year olds that shouldn't be PL or just need a break. But I don't want to let a high school drama case in with a 13 year old PL. It would probably be easier on the young PL if he is one of the older scouts or the older scout is an exceptional scout that understands the dynamics. This likely means there are some youngish patrols and some patrols that

Stosh, I understand what you mean by let the new scouts do this, but some of the 13 year olds could barely hold up the shotgun. We weren't allowed to mix shell size so we couldn't go for a smaller gun. Considering that the scout that said he now understands the PL's job was one of the troop guides, I must admit I failed with the last new scout patrol. The troop guides probably just acted as den leaders so nobody progressed and the troop guides suffered. There's a project. When it comes to mixed vs fixed aged patrols there seem to be lots of tradeoffs. When a mixed aged patrol works

koolaidman and scoutgipper, this is what I did. If it helps you out then I'll call it a good deed for the day and hopefully you can share what went right and wrong if you use something similar. About a month ago I told the scouts we were going to have a high adventure weekend with as many fun events as we can do at our council camp but they were going to plan it. And, BTW, we'd also be doing some leadership training. In hindsight we needed some adults that knew the answers and people to call for shotgun and climbing. We didn't so for those we had adults help (a lot.) Anyway, we had mounta

This weekend we had a leadership training campout that worked great. At the campfire on Saturday night, which was the only time we talked about leadership for more than a few minutes, the scouts were enthusiastic about leading and said they now understand what the PL is supposed to do and how the patrols are supposed to work. The light came on. Thanks to Eagledad and jblake47 for a couple of ideas I based everything on and everyone else that joined in on those discussions. I made the weekend fun and limited the ideas I wanted to get across to them. The main, fun activities were long sessi

But the boys pick the program. And maybe they aren't interested in first aid nearly as much as rock climbing. They got signed off. Why should they know it anymore? If the adults say the scouts need more first aid competitions then who is running the troop? The only options are testing of some form, having the adults control the calendar, or dropping the requirement.

Hedgehog, his insecurity came from the fact that he wasn't sure he was allowed to do it, not that he wasn't capable. I didn't know how to convince him that since I am the SM, if I say it's OK to help his PL it's really OK to help his PL, so I dared him. Challenge is good.

The son of one of the parents that burned me a new orifice called me up after I suggested to the mom that he do so. The problem is the PL hasn't organized anything for this week, so I told the younger boy to do it. He said he couldn't do that and I responded with, that's fine, he can give up and stay home. 20 minutes later I see email that he organized something. A slightly different view that failure can be good is that letting scouts have, and solve, problems is good. I've had to explain this 3 times to different parents in the past 24 hours. The same age vs mixed age patrol idea brings

Brewmeister, not when it comes to first aid. Scouts shouldn't have to look up what's a hurry case or symptoms of a heart attack. I had an opportunity to use my CPR skills last summer. The guy died but I did my best until the ambulance showed up. At least his organs were used. I also have to get retested every other year in order to take my scotus camping, but they get tested once and call themselves Eagle scouts. I asked some scouts yesterday about unlinking the skill check. There response was they'd rather keep it the way it is. They know that the check can be uncomfortable but they also

I have a similarly sized troop. Today I received two irate emails from parents because something isn't going right. My response is to explain how the scouts can solve this problem on their own and that I'd be happy to coach them. Now I have two parents pissed off at me. Not only am I not solving their problem I'm proposing to do their job. Bad day. Everyone is right, boy led is chaotic. Two steps forward and one back. Getting a dominating SPL to back off is certainly important and probably not nearly as hard as getting adults to understand. Just as hard, if not harder, is to get the PLs t

I choose door number 4, Billy teaches Johnny. There are two things needed to make this work. The first is Billy is held accountable for how well Johnny does. The second is that every scout gets a chance to teach, often. Is it reasonable to say Johnny's PL can ask any Billy in his patrol with the correct rank to teach Johnny, Billy can't refuse, and if Johnny isn't proficient then the ASM can go back to Billy and work with him to learn the skill? Or Billy and the PL? It's another test of sorts but it has nothing to do with a scout's rank advancement.

The adults need to intrude somewhere. They either define the calendar and require knot contests, they test somehow, or it's one and done. Having the scouts teach is good, but that's only a few scouts. The least evil thing I can think of is have an adult sit down with a scout once per rank and work with him until he knows the skills. At the same time I require every campout to have some challenge or competition, their choice. Sometimes it's a First Class skill, so they slowly get covered.

You have a nice idea but think carefully about the Patrol leader is going to be in charge on the camp-out of his patrol I'm not sure what that means. Everyone needs to know what you mean, including the scouts and the parents. If the parents don't buy in then they won't back off. If the boy doesn't understand what is his responsibility vs yours then you'll either end up with a leader in name only (he backs off to the point of doing nothing) or you'll have a whinny kid that doesn't want to play your game. What decisions are his? Think of the worst decision he can make and then dec

To the OP, there's clearly a problem of expectations. The boy doesn't know what they are. I'd have a problem with a troop that fails a kid that's not wearing green socks. That there are also 3 different adults working with him is also a problem. The idea of whether to test is also not very clear. Yes, the SMC is not supposed to be a test, but rank implies a set of skills the scout knows, not just once knew. It's the SM that needs to ensure that happens. One approach is to do some sort of skill check and the other is to have enough activities that the scouts will constantly re learn the sk

I think it's a good idea but projects for an individual are on the border. Here's a paragraph from the advancement guide: Normally “your community†would not refer to individuals, although a council or district advancement committee may consider scenarios where an individual in need can affect a community. An example might involve elderly persons able to live at home but unable to maintain their property, with the result being an “attractive nuisance†or related dangerous situations, or even an eyesore something that raises concern to more than t

Not many scouts can hike rim to rim in a day. That's 22 miles, 10,000' elevation (5 up, 5 down), plus the heat. This is a non issue. I know some people that have done it (and even rim to rim to rim in 20 hours) and they're athletes in another class. Did you notice the $300k insurance policy? Having hiked the Canyon and seen some of the people (that are not prepared) trying to go rim to rim in a day, I bet the insurance is the biggest issue. Prove that you can pay for the helicopter ride out before you start hiking.

We used to have this problem. Our criteria now is the scout has to solve the bulk of the problems and have the vision of what it's about. There also needs to be enough problems to solve. Repeats are not allowed. Tie the new set of problems with working with a bunch of people and there's leadership. ​There's almost always a way to take an idea and make it challenging with a new set of problems. If a scout wants to do a food drive and we usually collect X pounds, have him collect 2X. More people, more stuff, more sorting. It's not just a matter of send out the usual email to get the

Have them check the color of their urine. We do something like KDD's toast, at morning flags we tell everyone to bring a full litre of water and we see who can drink it the quickest. Only the bigger kids can drink that much and it's uncomfortable for awhile. We also tell them the symptoms and for kids they get nauseous. But it doesn't matter what we say or do because most 11 year olds are much wiser than us old fools. So I don't nag, someone invariably gets sick and spends a day in the medic's tent sipping water and puking, and soon everyone figures out that water is indeed important. Als

Why does anyone care what kind of tent a scout brings if it's his own? If it falls apart the scout has a problem to solve. That provides cheap entertainment for the adults. And then we watch the adult of said scout fume because his tent got destroyed. Two for the price of one. We enforce the buddy system. When you are in bear country and you're supposed to pee a hundred yards from camp (google bearmuda triangle) then it's actually quite easy to get disoriented when backpacking and there's no moon. As for kids that don't want to tent with another boy, they all can get changed in their sle

Stosh, the SPL wants the PLs to work with the other POR's. I like it because it gets the PLs closer to taking ownership of the troop. We'll see. Scoutergipper, I was in a similar situation with PLs that played "nose goes" to figure out the next PL. Nobody wanted it. But I did notice that the scouts were very good about picking the best for OA. So I instituted a nomination process to pick the scouts that were even eligible for being a PL. So you can't run for being PL until you're nominated. A scout has to be first class and the majority of all scouts in the troop have to say he could be a

Yep, NJ, you're likely right. But I also know that writing anything, whether one page or a book, is tough when people criticize it. It's very personal. If you've ever written a thesis or journal article and had someone you don't know drill you a new orifice you'd know what I was talking about. I was just asking for people to be polite. Who knows, if we were to try and help him he might rewrite it in a way we'd all like. People rarely get a paper written the first time that will be a final draft. He likely doesn't have an editor that knows anything about scouting, so this is the first draft. Th