MattR

Speaking of imprinting, if boys tend to imprint from dads and girls tend to imprint from moms then the typical broken family will tend to hurt the boy more than the girl. Is this why male graduation rates are below female rates? I wouldn't be surprised. Girls and boys think differently and if you don't understand how a kid thinks it's hard to help them grow up. That said, I still struggle getting scouts to take responsibility

Now that I think about it, blaming the women for all the men's problems is not a very manly thing to do But, since I'm a Scoutmaster and motivating boys is my main job, this is a good subject. That and the most frustrating thing I ever see is a group of 15 year olds that are capable of doing amazing things, sitting around like a beached whale. So I certainly don't have the answers. But I try. Boy Scouts is interested in developing well rounded young men. In my view there are two parts to that. The first is being selfless and is basically described in the Scout Oath and Law. The seco

This may be somewhat related but I just did a scoutmaster minute on excellence. Excellence is setting your own bar and reaching for it. Mundane is having someone else set the bar for you. School is mundane. Even if you get straight A's you can be mundane because you might not have had to push yourself, it's just the teacher telling you what to do to get an A, over and over and over. Competition requires excellence. You have to dig it up from the inside. Boys like to compete. Boys also like to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Having your team win the superbowl is something sp

He was running at the swat team with a rifle. It was his fault. His first bad decision was to do something that caused the police to show up. That's not so bad, relatively speaking. What he didn't do is realize he made a mistake and back down. As the police tell us, sometimes good people make bad decisions.

I had just become SM and we were talking about limiting scouts (we were over 50). A dad called me asking if his son could join my troop and I was going back and forth about whether to tell him to bring his son in. The dad was kind and so I finally told him yes. The boy is great, as is his little brother. The father died of ALS a few years ago. While talking to the boy about getting Eagle I asked him why he was letting things not get done and he said his dad used to kick him in the butt. I asked him if he wanted me to kick him in the butt once in awhile and he said yes. He'll be an Eagle this S

I need a scoutmaster minute on making mistakes, as in not compounding a bad decision by making a much worse decision. An ASM from another district was shot and killed by the swat team a week ago....

EagleDad, >Just get in the habit of asking scouts what they are thinking (goals wise) when >they are struggling on something. It works for all ages, just keep the >expectations realistic for their age and dont get hung up on their answers. About a year ago I came to the conclusion that the average scout has really poor time management, goal setting, and planning skills. They mostly drift with the winds and their Eagle project is a big rock that they crash into. So I started quarterly goal setting. I don't care what the goals are that they set, but I'm trying to get

EagleDad, funny you should mention teaching scouts to set goals. Six months ago I started having scouts set goals the meeting after each COH that they want to achieve by the next COH. It's helping a lot of scouts. It's much better when it's their idea. This is one part of something that includes having older scouts create their own vision/dream/future whatever. Maybe I need to get that going, although I'm not sure how to do that. I should add I'm not pushing Eagle so much as I am pushing scout spirit. It's participation, having fun, jumping in, helping out, cheerfully dealing with problem

As I see it, my job as SM is to motivate scouts to live the ideals of scouting. My best tool is praise after a job well done. Set the bar high and help the scout reach it. Sometimes it's a lot of help. Mostly encouraging them, keeping them focused, and sometimes being hard nosed about it. Most scouts respond. Some incredibly so. A couple of scouts don't, however, and I'm wondering if I should be helping them. Or maybe there's a different way to help them? Some scouts just seem lazy and self centered and I'm not happy with the results. Example 1) Scout was enthusiastic when young but disap

What a great way to give the scouts ownership, Red Feather. Do you set expectations that all upper rank scouts need to give service back to the troop? More than just the 4 or 6 months for the POR. It wouldn't have to be as time consuming. Tie that in with them setting their own goals and everyone helps out. I've been talking to some other people about doing this and working the goal setting in with the calendar planning. I'm just not sure what the pros and cons are.

Cheermeister, game master, hike master, cook instructor, dutch oven instructor, backpacking master, campfire mc instructor, leave no trace instructor, service project lead, webmaster, color guard master. I like these. Thanks. Red feather says "All of these PORs were thought of and proposed (in writing to the SPL and SM) by the scout doing the job." I'd like to hear more. How do they come up with ideas? Do they have to set goals for each position? Do the scouts need help defining the position? Can other scouts help them with this? How much mentoring/coaching do they need? SR540Beaver

I'm looking for tasks for older scouts in upper ranks to keep them engaged. My reason is the following: While patrols cook and clean on campouts I constantly repeat "everyone has a job", and it works. While something needs to be done everyone has to help out. There's no arguing, it's easier for PLs to lead, team work develops, the scouts have more fun, it's great. I've also noticed that older scouts, when they have the right responsibility in the troop, also thrive. Scouts that were ready to drop out all of a sudden really get into scouting once they are matched with the right task to do. So I

Eagle732, I doubt that today's kids are not physical enough. Some scouts are obviously stronger than others, but I'm guessing you're reasonable (or else you wouldn't be here asking). I don't know if I asked this before but did the scouts that picked the calendar go on the campouts? If less than half of those that picked the calendar went then that suggests they're in a rut. If all of those guys go but the younger scouts don't go, that's another problem. I do like SMT224's idea of checking out the tents and patrol boxes before and after the campout. I also like five minutes of th

I think all of you are going to be pleasantly surprised in 2010 as the BSA rolls out some changes. They are going on offense with their message. They feel that their message was being written by everyone besides the BSA. I think Arrow Corps 5 was a way to focus attention on all the conservation work scouts do. I had a chance to ask people at national whether putting the outing back in scouting matched their goals and they said absolutely. As for Scoutreach, that's being replaced with something intended to bring all sorts of people that don't understand the scouting culture into scouts. My unde

Here's something I noticed in my troop. The PLC came up with a calendar that they liked but few of them actually showed up at the campouts they picked. I think we were getting in a rut so we scrapped the calendar and started over. We're trying to work with the scouts on creating a better calendar. On our Spring camporee we told everyone to bring camo for capture the flag and also required every patrol to use a dutch oven for dinner. They said it was one of the better campouts they've had. The thing is they never would have come up with this on their own. We're trying to show them how to come u

Eagle732, You say only 25% of your scouts are going on the bike hike. Have you done bike hikes before? (We haven't and it sounds like fun.) If it's not a new idea, is this to a new place or have you already been there before? I really would like the answers to these questions. Since I first started this thread I've added a new requirement for every campout. It has to be memorable. New place, new skill, or new theme. One campout was to the Air Force Academy (canceled because of bad weather, so we'll keep it for next time). At Spring Camporee we told them to bring camo and they played

Hi Kudu, Interesting comments. With the PLs picking the SPL it sounds like a parliamentary system as opposed to a democracy. I guess it has its pros and cons. However, I would really like a book with 400 pages of ideas for having fun. That should be reprinted. We used to have something more along the lines of what you're talking about. The patrol leaders picked weeks to plan and they were responsible for those weeks. From what I can tell that's the way it's described. The problem was that the PLs spent so much time organizing meetings they didn't have time to do anything else. Troop

In my troop Patrol leaders are only responsible for their patrols so troop meetings are organized by the SPL and ASPLs. That would be severe burnout on the part of the SPL if he didn't have help as every meeting is different. There's a main theme/skill/demo as well as a game. They will occasionally ask some of the older scouts in patrols to help with these things and that means keeping them in focus and getting things done. There's also communication and training. My mantra seems to be: "You're the leader and you have a lot of responsibility but you don't have to do all of it. Get people to he

What's the best way to use drums at a campfire? It just seems like the kind of music that would fit in. I could see 40 scouts playing drums around a campfire together would really get the blood going. Japanese Taiko, Indian drum circles, or Nalgene bottles and pots. If anyone has experience I'd like to hear about it.

As far as I know Okpik is a Camp Tahosa thing. I'm sure you could call up the Denver Area Council and start asking questions. Someone else might be doing something similar.

GernBlansten, that's why we camp on the other side of the divide; more snow and colder. The cold is a challenge but the snow is fun.

acco40, to keep your water from freezing you can bury it in the snow. Dig a hole down to the ground, put your water bottles in the hole, and bury it in snow. Snow is a good insulator and the ground will generate just a bit of heat. You have to go all the way to the ground. For us, -15 is typical and -25 is miserable. We only end up with a little bit of ice in our jugs. There are many tricks including eating like a horse. We feed our scouts dinner at 4pm and then give them a night time meal (chili or similar) before they go to bed. A nalgene with boiling water stuffed inside a wool sock stuffed

Thanks for the ideas. I feel more comfortable about starting over with the calendar. We have a lot of adults with ideas and I think I'll use those to get the scouts thinking. Mafaking also has a point. I don't think the parents understand how important the comraderie is to scouting and it's primarily from the campouts. And I never really thought of this until just now, so thanks. Another question: How much of your meetings are spent preparing for a campout? As I said before, the campouts aren't the focus of the meetings. We just figure out menus. We could be doing skits. We could Be Prepa

kenk, The scouts do pick the calendar and events. We have a whole campout just for the PLC to pick the calendar. We start a few weeks in advance collecting ideas from the troop. ON the campout we review the old calendar, set goals, generate ideas, vote on them, and fit them into a calendar. It's boy led. The problem is they have no idea what would really get them excited (that we can afford). They don't know what they don't know

I was talking to my troop about how scouting is an adventure and I talked about the great adventures I've had the past 7 years. Making friends backpacking, sailing alongside a whale on a moonless night, sea kayaking, waking up by a fog covered lake, and lots of other great memories. Afterwords, I realized these memories are all from high adventure trips. Our weekend campouts are fun, but not memorable. I ask scouts at the end of each trip what was fun and they rattle off stuff so we're doing something right. But the problem I have is that we now only have about a third of the troop go on campo