MattR

Yep, it's in my backyard. It's one reason we don't feel Philmont is such a big deal. They don't have as many activities as Philmont but it's much less crowded, as in you rarely see other people. Also a lot cheaper. You get to climb on real rocks as opposed to climbing walls, and rappelling off of Weaver's Thumb (a full pitch) is great stuff. There are different hikes you can choose from. The easiest is 35 miles and you stay on the ranch. The hardest is 50+ miles, pretty much above 11,000 feet the whole week and you go into the local National Forest. I know they have 7 day treks and I think they still have the 10 day treks. They use the same Philmont food (not a plus in my mind). Beautiful country. It's been a few years since I did one as there are plenty of other hikes nearby. They just closed the camp down for the planned activities and now it's all troops doing weekends until Spring. Give them a call if you need info.

"By following the Scout Law, you follow the Law of God also." I'd say that's a good lesson for the entire world. Especially the part in Reverent about respecting the religious beliefs of others. The 12th point is a paradox and that needs to come out in front. My religion or beliefs are absolute and none other can be correct, and at the same time I have to accept that different people have different beliefs that work for them. The only thing preventing people to handle that paradox is religious pride. So if the humanists/druids/wickans/whatever say their beliefs encourage the first 11 points than who am I to judge their beliefs? ​I just read Bruce Feiler's book "Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths" and it describes the history of the story of Abraham. Everyone has modified that story to encourage their point of view and encourage their beliefs. The bottom line is getting past religious pride. There has been progress but it has a ways to go. Wouldn't it be cool if the BSA encouraged that?

Yeah, he's trained. His problem is he doesn't listen to anything he doesn't want to hear. Kind of like my dog. And yes, there have been many many many discussions. I always get worried when I see a scout with hundreds of sticky notes in his scout handbook. But usually they go camping a lot so it's all good. This scout does not. Dad bribes him a considerable amount for each rank he gets, so Eagle is just a bunch of check boxes in the way. If it weren't such a thorn in my side it would be sad, so it's a sad thorn in my side. Nothing a beer can't fix.

I just had a parent tell me he or his wife had to go on every campout to ensure their son had a good time, and for his safety. I said fine, but they were to stay away from his patrol the whole weekend. Last week it was mom's turn and she decided not to go. I have about 60 scouts in my troop and I'd say four parents are high maintenance. Of those two help out a lot, so I can deal with them. The other two dads are ASMs. One might mellow out. That leaves me with one parent I just want to go away. So really, this isn't horrible.

I agree that the PL handbook doesn't need more, for the boys. If anything it needs less. But the OP was about using it for the adults.

Remove the bling. Make them for the boys, not the adults. Shirt cost is $10. There's a summer and winter weight/material. It needs a US flag, the world crest, and something that says BSA. There is no need for troop or council patches. No pockets, epaulets or collar. Patrol, rank, POR, and OA are pins that go on one, removable thing that easily attaches. Keep the necker. Zippy cargo pants are fine, but make them simpler and cheaper. Kids grow and get dirty, adapt.

​I vote because I have a duty to my country. I'm a scoutmaster because I believe in the Scout Oath and Law. Neither my country nor the BSA is perfect. Of course, neither is my family but I love them anyway. It has nothing to do with rose colored glasses or false pride. It has to do with believing in something and working to improve it. After that I can only have a beer and not worry about it.

Barry, I'll bite. I agree that the PL and SPL handbooks contain all the parts (and also that the SM handbook is a real snorer). But it didn't help me move my troop forward. What I mean is, in hindsight, it's all there, but before hand I couldn't see how to get there. It's very vague. I didn't see the end result. Here's one example. The biggest complaint I heard from PLs for a long time was that they ask their patrol to do something and it just doesn't happen. They have to constantly nag and heard cats. Bad teamwork. So, we created duty rosters and flag competitions and team building exercises. And nothing worked. By pure luck a month ago I tried a leadership training thing for the older scouts and who knows why but I just said there will be no patrol leaders. Help out or suffer together. It worked fantastically well. The scouts said things ran so smooth, they had plenty of time, and they had a lot of fun. They told me to do it for the whole troop and I did and the whole troop said the same thing. What happened is that the scouts finally learned what teamwork really means. I can talk about it. I can even show it in how the adults work together. I'm also guilty of assuming the scouts should understand what teamwork means. But the bottom line is the scouts had no idea because they've never done anything like this before. Even the scouts that play sports have no idea what team work means. They are told what to do by their parents, teachers, coaches, and all adults and they've never had to figure out how to work together and encourage each other. They've never had to solve problems together either. ​If you have a troop that already has this culture built in, and I really hope my troop will soon join that crowd, it's easy and maybe the PL handbook is good enough. But if you came from where I started, the PL handbook is not much help. While I agree this forum has it's weird family behavior, it has helped a lot. And some of your ideas I use verbatim in trying to describe to parents what's going on. So thank you.

If I vote twice can I complain twice as much?

SR540Beaver, I went to WB and it followed the national syllabus, they even told me they couldn't change anything. They illustrated patrol method in that there were patrols. They talked about leadership for adults, but not the problems associated with teaching leadership to scouts. The focus was not on patrol method. It was on adult leadership. There was little mention of working with scouts. There was a section on mentoring vs coaching but that was it. If the focus was on patrol method then there are lots of important details they didn't mention. They did not talk about separation between adults and scouts or between patrols. They did not talk about trust or what eagledad calls growth. They didn't talk about how teamwork must precede servant leadership. They did not talk about how made up, abstract scenarios for training are useless for boys. ​ I tried to use what I learned. Smart goals, vision, start stop, arrows, and all that but it didn't do me much good. What has been working is asking my scouts and listening to Barry and Stosh butt heads. While amusing it's also true. ​I'm not claiming I know it. I even went back and retook SM specific training to see if there was something I missed. While I'm making good progress I have a way to go and still feel like I'm just bumbling around on my own. I'm dealing with angry parents, trying to teach ASMs while I learn, and spending a lot of time with the scouts. But what I've gotten from National's training has done me very little good in trying to change a troop that was mostly troop method into one that is patrol method.

I think there are two issues. The first is the SM and the second is nobody understands the big picture. ​The good about the SM: Happy guy. I suspect the scouts like him, at least when he's not signing off reqs. A lot of outdoor skills. He expects the scouts to lead so he won't get in the way when they actually do. The bad: You can't make suggestions. Disorganized. No vision. Is it fair to say he has more confidence than skill and that's why he won't listen to anyone? Another guess is he thinks scouts should just man up and figure it out? That would fit with the comments that he has high standards and no inclination to help anyone get there. The one and only big picture item missing is: The adults ask enough questions of the scouts till the scouts identify what they want to do and then ask enough questions that the scouts are successful at getting there. Given the SM, what can the ASM do that won't offend the SM? Can he run a planning meeting? Or a leadership training session? Or just a session to review what went right or wrong after an event? i.e., can the ASM complement the SM and find some way to get this process going? ​It just takes one adult that works with the scouts and gives them credit when they do a good job to keep everyone happy and moving forward. Let the SM keep his high standards and use that as motivation for the scouts. Have the ASM be the guy that works with the scouts so they meet those standards. If some scouts have all the Eagle MBs and still don't have first class skills signed off then you know what they will say when asked how's advancement going? Some scouts might say they're tired of roasting marshmallows on campouts. Either way, the next question is what can you do about it? The SM probably won't get in the way, and that's really good. The skill needed by the ASM is knowing what questions to ask when. Ask them enough questions so they're successful. Ask them what they want. Ask them how much they think they can handle doing on their own -- and the committee handles what they can't do. Offer suggestions on how they might get there. Keep it simple. Forget about the budget for now. Ask them how to break a big problem down into smaller problems. Repeatedly ask them what they are doing to ensure their plans work. The ASM needs the vision. BTW, from my experience I wouldn't spend too much time on scouts with bad attitudes. It's a horse and water thing. When and if they grow up they will be motivated. Until then I'd keep them from dragging down those that are interested in the program. Work the program for those that enjoy it.

Please help me with this line: " They want to be better. The SM is a terrific outdoorsman that lives and breathes the BSA program, but he's mostly gotten frustrated with him. Last campout he and I were up until all hours of the night discussing what to do and brainstorming. When I left the campout, I posted here, looking for advice from people here. " Are you saying that the CC and you stayed up all night trying to figure out what to do about the SM? If so, that is the crux of the problem. If the SM is willing to change then there's the answer. If not, there's another answer. I think you've said a couple of times the SM does it his way and doesn't want to change. All of the advice everyone is giving is based along the idea that the scouts need to grow into boy led and the adults job is to oil that machinery. The SM's job is to lead that process. As you've said, sitting back and just saying figure it out on your own isn't doing anything. The CC is responsible for having the right SM. The CC can either work with the SM or replace him. Those seem to be the options you have. All of the other ideas involving working around the SM, or plan B, is all just a bandaid for a compound fracture. Not to mention the power struggle that will follow. What does the rest of the committee think of the SM? Can the DE work with the SM? Or is this a matter of the SM saving face? I have a new ASM that thinks that because he has tons of experience in the outdoors that he'll be a great ASM. Well, no, he isn't because he doesn't know squat about working with boys. There is plenty to work with in your troop. The fact that the boys were embarrassed with their pioneering project is easy pickings. "How would you guys like to learn how to make the best tower?" "You guys need to eat and clean up before 3 stars come up and we're not cooking for you anymore. Would you like to learn some quick easy recipes?"

Good for you, Alex. There's a lot to read here but the missing ingredient seems to be adults that understand how this works. Without that there seems to be no trust between the scouts and the adults. Everyone seems frustrated and nobody knows what to do. The scouts are flailing or not showing up. The adults are setting very high standards but are not showing the scouts how to get there. Your idea of getting them some success is great. How about coming up with a plan for the next 3 months and running it like an annual planning session? Here's one approach. Find a good chunk of a day, probably Sunday, get some good food the scouts like, and, given that you live in Florida, an outdoor place. Start with a silly, fun activity to break the ice and spread a few more out throughout the process. Then spend at least a half hour to ask them why they are in scouts and what they want out of it. They will likely talk about friends, skills, advancement, and hopefully talk about service, the outdoors and adventure. If they forget any of these then ask them. It's not that you care too much it's that they should think about it. Then spend some time asking them about how things are going now. Review the last 3 months. Don't judge their answers but help them dig deeper and also identify assumptions they are making. Maybe they really do want to advance but since their SM is a hard nose, they don't enjoy it. At this point it's time to start coming up with a plan for the next 3 months. The Troop Program Features mentioned by KDD might be a good place to start. And by that I mean suggest to them a framework they can add stuff to. That narrows down the decisions they need to make considerably. When scouts are learning to make decisions limiting their choices can be a good way to help them out. In its simplest form all they have to do is pick 3 months that are already planned out. If they are mature enough they could come up with 3 themes and 3 campouts (assuming they want to do 3 campouts) that reflect some of the things they said they want out of scouts. From there talk them through the process off figuring out what each meeting should cover. At the very least, have them pick the game they play each meeting. One of those volumes has a ton of game ideas in them. Now they should have a calendar. Make sure it reflects what the scouts want out of scouts. You're getting their buy in. You're also developing trust that they know you're letting them make the calls and you're helping them out. The next thing to do is ask them how they are going to make this happen. They'll come up with something. Maybe the younger scouts will take charge of the games and the older scouts will take charge of advancement activities. Who knows. But it would be wise for everyone to have a part of this. The next part is presenting this to the committee. If the scouts do this forewarn the adults to not stomp on the scouts when they present something. If you do it then sell it as something the scouts did and the adults need to support them. Then comes the tough part. The scouts need to be constantly reminded to do their part. They should not be asked questions that can be answered in one word. "Fine" is always a dangerous answer. After every event sit them down and review how it went. I'm finding this is hugely important. The scouts know when things go wrong but they don't know how to talk about it. That requires a facilitator to review the good, bad, and future changes. Eventually a lot of this can be done by the scouts but for now, since they've never seen it done, you'll have to guide them. After the calendar has been executed I'd suggest making a very big deal at a COH about how the scouts did this. Most likely the scouts will know they did a good job and they will come together. You may ask what this has to do with getting scouts to first class or completing merit badges. It doesn't. It has to do with the scouts deciding, within the context of the aims and methods of scouting, what they want to do. This is just a start.

I use the wool blanket to cover the entire floor and I put my foam pad on top of that. The pad only covers half the floor.I'm not sure why but it helps a lot. It blocks the cold from coming up around the foam pad. It may only help within a few inches of the floor but that's pretty much where I am all night.

I'm going with Stosh on this one. I don't care how warm my bag is, and I have plenty of hair on my head, if my neck and head are exposed, I'm cold. As for yellow nalgenes I learned a long time ago that if it takes 20 minutes to get dressed, while you have to pee, it's better to just have an extra water bottle. BTW, I know it was a cold night when piss freezes On our cold campouts we tell scouts to bring extra long underwear and to put a dry pair on before they go to bed and to wear those the next day. Even if they didn't sweat during the day there is still moisture in their clothing. On the really cold campouts we push calories as well as water. It's kind of a hobbit thing. Breakfast, morning snack, elevensies, lunch, .... Since we started feeding them at 9pm we've had very few scouts waking up cold. The late night snack is what diabetics should eat, little sugar, complex carbs, fat and protein. We also tell them to stay away from the fire as it will slow down their metabolism. One other thing I haven't seen mentioned is we put a wool blanket on the bottom of the tent to cover the entire floor. There's a lot of cold coming up from underneath. I've made quinzees and they are much warmer than a tent. The only problem is how much work it is. Our snow is so dry that the usual igloo approaches don't work. But maybe this is all a bit much for the lady that's cold at 64 degrees?

I just did an Eagle SMC and the scout told me a story: He was hiking with his college friends a month ago (yes, he's in college and not yet 18) one of them has anemia and passed out. All the other friends started panicking and the scout said, hold on, let's lay him down, get his feet over his head, treat him for shock, and keep him warm. The other boy woke up about 15 seconds later, sipped water, and did fine. All the other friends asked where the scout had learned these things and he told them. They were amazed. The point being that people that actually know boy scouts tend to have a good perception and people that don't know any have a random perception.

I don't know that I've ever been camping at 64 degrees. I would sleep on top in my boxers at that temp. But it's all relative. Don't add layers inside the sleeping bag as your body will not warm up the bag and you'll end up with cold toes. Put the layers on the outside. Our winter campouts are in the 0 to -20 range and I use a second bag as a blanket. One problem with many bags if you sleep on your side is you get tight spots around your hips and shoulders, thus compressing the insulation to the point of not doing much good. A second loose layer solves that problem. Insulation underneath is also critical. Below ~10 I also like a balaclava to keep my neck warm.

We do a mix. Typically they have something organized in the morning and in the afternoon it's whatever fits within the buddy system. They like that format. It seems that an organized event just gets them going. We had a series of campouts where it was just show up and see what happens and they mostly did play card games. And the participation started dropping. I don't know if this was the right way to handle it but I reminded the PLC that they always mention having fun and adventure as things they like about scouts, so where is it? It wasn't too hard to get them to commit to having some form of adventure, skill, excitement, challenge, or memory inducing activity at every event. Sledding, skill competitions, canoeing, a service project, dutch oven cook offs, .... The last couple of years they go on an early spring campout and build a massive wood pile on a frozen lake and light it up at night. It's the boy scout version of burning man.

Make two versions, one for cub scouts and one for boy scouts. Have each tailored for teaching adults how to make the best program possible. That would mean finding people to write the syllabus that have actually turned a pack or troop around. Let it be about the boys, not generic corporate stuff.

Of course they don't understand. If they did they would have pushed me into doing this a long time ago. But to get to the real point, no, I haven't done a good job explaining it. It's been a slow process figuring this out. I finally have the adults not making decisions, which is good, but now we're seeing how poorly the problem solving skills are of the scouts. They don't talk, they stew. I spend a lot of time talking to the scouts to get them to identify their own problems. Now we have to scale that up without having the adults gum up the works. I talked today with my CC and we think the next phase is being the guy in the tie and having a scouting 201 class. For motivation I'm going to bring up their work experience. How many people have had problems with their boss before? This is why it's good to let the scouts solve these issues so they learn a useful skill. Another idea is that problems should be solved at the lowest point possible. Manufacturing, the military, and many other organizations push this. And the lowest point is ... letting the scouts solve their own problems.

That's cool Sentinel. Good luck. I wish you were in my troop. I'm in the middle of this transition and there seems to be a lot of issues that a user's manual would help with. Let's share notes. There are some parents that are angry with me and some confused scouts. There are also some scouts that are really jumping into this. I'm not sure about whether any parents are happy with me but I think I'm getting there.

While a newbie category might help, shouldn't we play nice in all the categories? Stosh has a good point, just look at the number of posts. It might help if people point these things out when they see someone with a lot of experience beating on a newbie. In the case of this thread I'm not sure if anything would have helped, but we should still play nice. You have to remember that people are thrown into this with little help from anyone. My early experience with this forum was not good, so I left it for a few years. But eventually I came back and found some good ideas. Now I know how to weigh personalities and remove the chaff to find the good stuff. There's no doubt this forum is much better than most, but there's still some things that likely don't come across right.

I'm not sure what this argument is about, but it's all relative. I got an irate email today that included the line "this boy led troop idea is fine, but ..." and it went on to describe how brilliant their child is and how one of the parents need to be on every campout to ensure their son has an exciting, safe, time. And they want to find out who is organizing the events to make sure it's done right. And, they never volunteer. Teaching the adults seems to be a lot harder than teaching the scouts.

Our last camporee was with a different district, just to mix things up, and they had an obligatory chapel service after flags Saturday night. It would have been a perfect time for a havdalah ceremony (marks the end of shabbat) but instead we got a full on fire-and-brimstone-you're-all-going-to-hell sermon. It was bad for the Christian kids. For me, I had to keep telling myself don't answer that question, just don't do it. I finally dug into the Scout Law and courteously walked out. But back to the original post. The requirement changes will not change the behavior of what I saw. They just don't see it and no micro management from national will change it. But, to try and make this useful, I'd like to hear how others will handle this. I like the part of starting with asking a scout what his duty to God is, but then what? If the kid has an answer then it's easy sailing. What if he doesn't have an answer? Do I just leave it at ask your parents?

I could see it. Once upon a time we were looking for a CO and one church likes the scouts so much they wanted us, but they really didn't have room. Some troop are more independent from the CO than others and in that case the CO is only providing space. So why not.