MattR

3 minutes ago, Treflienne said:

Do you mean this sort?   https://scoutmastercg.com/ecozoom-stove-review/

Have any of you used them as patrol stoves?   

Oh, sure! I just said they'd be better because I have a fire pit in my backyard that's very efficient. Very little smoke. Little ash. Easy to start. Something similar would be good. I'm not sure what a good size would be but that one looks great.

The gas stoves are a pain when they get cold or there's dirt in the hoses. Getting the scouts to cut wood for a fire would be much better all the way around.

It's really just a test of your cheerfulness. Let's face it, this is a silly thing to point out to anyone.

We never had patrol boxes. We divied up the gear before the campout and everyone took their share. Other than that and fires the movie looks similar to my troop now. I tried ditching the patrol boxes to no avail. The portable wood stoves would be better than a fire pit or a gas stove.

In my defense, my grandmother used to make fruit cake. It was horrible. Most likely because she had a cast iron pan that, in hindsight, was rancid.

I vow to try making one next year.

On 12/23/2018 at 11:22 AM, 5thGenTexan said:

I get particularly nervous in the doctors office. 

Places like Walgreens have blood pressure machines. Go there once a week till you're bored with it. A) you'll find out what your bp really is and B) you won't worry about it at the doctor's office. A long time ago I was severely stressed about something and my bp was up some 30 points over normal. The lesson was work on the stress, not the number.

19 hours ago, qwazse said:

Even in winter, I keep my gloves in my pocket until my fingers are too cold to work without them.

That's why you want to wash dishes in cold weather - use hot water.

8 hours ago, dkurtenbach said:

If each troop is executing the patrol method, does a larger patrol method troop have any advantages over the smaller patrol method troop in giving the youth an effective Scouting program?

More adults to help.

On 12/20/2018 at 7:35 PM, Sentinel947 said:

I found out in November that I've been accepted to Graduate school

Congratulations!

@ParkMan, there's some training I took, whose name shall not me mentioned, that covered how to do this. It's more about people than any area. @SSScout is interested in marketing and has good ideas. I'd try to pave the way for him to succeed. @Cambridgeskip wants to help promote units on the internet, so I'd ask him if he'd be willing to give a talk at roundtable about that. @Eagledad likes the patrol method, so I'd ask him if he'd be interested in developing some training for patrol leaders, SPL's and SM's.

I'd ask each person on the committee what their ideas are for their area. Creating an encouraging, successful environment for volunteers is probably the key. The dynamic at our district committee meetings is there's a ton of stuff to do just to keep up with awards, filling empty positions, dealing with rotating DE's, etc, that asking people what they'd like to do more of always runs the risk of "you can't ask that person to do more because his spouse is already annoyed with the time spent on scouts." I'm not saying don't do this, just understand the real world issues people are up against.

So, I would not focus on scout numbers, I would focus on volunteer numbers. BTW, 10 years is too long (Timely goals?). I'd set a goal of increasing the number of volunteers at the district by 30% in a year. Make it a welcoming place where people are successful. Have enough people to cover the basics and do the extra things that will start helping units put on a better program. Believe in that and the scout numbers will take care of themselves. That's the vision I'd promote.
 

Lots of good ideas here. Other ideas:

The first campout, if there's snow about, can be a hike instead.

Rather than leadership, I'd start with teamwork. The idea is you do something for your patrol and your patrol can depend on you. If everyone does that then things are sweet. Once everyone understands teamwork leadership is much easier to grasp.

The scouts don't know what they don't know, so when they're coming up with ideas add some that they can choose from. Or help them find them.

Another important idea is to review how things went after the event. In particular, if there were people problems then that is a good time to solve them. Most kids think solving people problems involves going to an adult. In scouts we want the youth to understand how to do it.

Don't solve problems that they know how to solve. Corollary: If they don't know how to solve a problem, help them learn.

Finally, have fun. It's important to develop a good relationship with the scouts so that some day, when you have to tell them something they don't want to hear, they'll listen to you.

Let us know it works.

27 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

I'm so starved for a patrol method discussion

Then start writing. Seriously. You know it. You enjoy it. You want to share it. I mean this in the most respective and appreciative way I can. Write something that we can point people to. Write something that will not only explain how to do patrol method but why.

One of the problems with the usual writing is the authors are trying to keep things short and not get into too much detail. The result is overly vague and not useful. It also has no emotion. We all get goose bumps when a scout first conquers his fears and starts leading his patrol. That needs to be conveyed in order to get someone to understand why. It does not come across in a description of ethical decision making. You have tons of stories and those stories are what grabs people. It's passion that turns people, not claptrap written my committees.

And don't tell me that it's all out there because if it were then we wouldn't see someone, like NotEagleDad, write something like:

35 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Now, it gets maybe one a month. That in of itself is indicative of how the program has been changing.

I knew this other guy on the forum, I forget his name, but he always used to end his posts with "I love this scouting stuff." That's what we need more of. There will always be bad stuff, there's little hope in ending that. But it's the good stuff that will change things. In fact, I love this scouting stuff would be a great title, rather than something that contains the word manual.

This scout won't listen to scout leadership or adults. In other words, he just doesn't understand teamwork. I don't know his age but my guess is he's 11 or 12?

One option is, on the permission slip, have a copy of the scout oath and law. Explicitly state that if a scout does not follow this then they will be sent home. Since grandpa is there it won't be a problem. The important part is that you follow through.

Another option: I've never done this before but you're welcome to try. Before the next campout tell everyone in the patrol that without teamwork they may as well be in cub scouts. Ask them who wants to be in cub scouts. Hopefully none of them say they do. Tell them that there are problems with this patrol not acting as a team. Stop the scouts if they point fingers or mention the problem scout's name. Explain to them that you'll be watching along with the SM or SPL or ASM or just someone outside of the patrol. Then tell them if there are any scouts that aren't team members carrying their share of the work then they will be put in a troop den. They will camp with the adults. For this campout the adults are going to eat something special. Breakfast is hard boiled eggs and a slice of cheese. Lunch is split pea soup and white bread. Dinner is canned spam and white rice. Hopefully you'll never get to dinner. Oh, and the cub scouts will be washing all the dishes. The cub scouts will also be working on advancement. That's the bad cop stuff. Find a good cop that tries to encourage encourage this scout. Show him how to have fun while washing dishes. Talk to him about what happens when nobody wants to do their part. Tell him all the adults really want to see him succeed and move back to his patrol. Hopefully, when he does, congratulations from all the adults is in order.

As far as grandpa is concerned, that's something the SM has to deal with. Grandpa needs to learn about how scouts is done in your troop. I hate to say this but when the parents aren't in the picture then maybe grandpa is part of the problem? Sounds like a guy with a heart of gold that has trouble setting boundaries. Just a hunch, though, I don't know the whole story. Either way, someone has to talk to him and you're not that someone.

Our CO made a new requirement that any adult that does any event with us that requires a permission slip (just about everything but meetings) has to have a background check. They pay for it. It's easy to do. That's how you keep the CO's comfortable.

Those that make a big deal of refusing to say God in the pledge of allegiance bother me as much as those that say I'm going to burn in hell for not accepting Jesus. I like my spirituality, my religion, my sitting on a rock and just soaking up the beauty of the outdoors. And I also believe it has made me a better person. So I think it is important and yet it has to be done right.

What is it about religion that encourages better character? For me it's time spent praying/thinking/discussing what the best of mankind can be. I have no idea why but when I spend the time doing this it just makes everything better and calmer, makes me more empathetic and wanting to help others, makes me think about situations I'd rather not. This, more than anything else, encourages me to be a better person. I think of character as a muscle group and the term use it or lose it applies. Training is important and we have to put time into it. I see the person that meditates daily as being more empathetic than the person that goes to religious services twice a year and calls it good.

So rather than ask what is your duty to God I'd rather ask how do you practice and train your character. Yearly? Weekly? Daily? Reps and sets? We can't really tell a scout he's doing it wrong but with all the other points of the scout law it's simple enough to prove to a scout that he can improve.

The other day I saw something on the internet about a "dopamine fast:" For one day, no food, no work, no entertainment, no hard exercise, but you could write and think about your life. The guy that wrote this and all the comments sounded like he had invented the greatest thing since sliced bread, but this is surprisingly close to what Yom Kippur is. Take out the no food part and it's surprisingly close to the Sabbath. I suspect this guy has no religious beliefs, based on some crudity in his descriptions. But he independently found what people have known for a long time, character takes time.

We've tried high adventure as bait and it didn't do what we'd hoped for.

Another thing I have noticed is scouts that don't have a couple of good scouting friends by the time they're 14 won't last. And those friendships take time to develop. I don't think the scouts are so much against the OA as they just don't see making friendships. Walking into a new group of scouts when you have friends in your troop that you're used to is a hard sell. My guess is that when the OA was highly respected a scout would just suck it up and make it work. Then the friendships had time to develop. I have no idea how to raise the level of respect for scouts in the OA. My troop is brutally honest about who they elect. The scouts that are elected do have the best character. It is not a social thing at all. But once they're elected, something is missing.

Just a thought, but does part of the demise of the OA have to do with poor leadership skills of the scouts? I look at my local chapter's OA and the scouts that show up are good scouts, but they're all shy, timid, not ready to take charge. If they had confidence in how to get things done there are adults that would like to help them out. Instead they're kind of waiting for someone to tell them what to do. The result is any other scout that comes to check it out doesn't really see a reason to stick around.

Would leadership development within OA help?

If your treasurer is any good it's possible to have multiple accounts under the same bank account. A troop should likely have multiple accounts anyway so adding another set for a different troop shouldn't be too hard. We have an account for HA, summer camp, gear, etc. It ties to our budget.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."

Our story: We have some girls and parents that will bridge to scouts in a year. Some of the moms really do a lot of outdoor activities. We were worried about a split troop until we heard that last part. We have time but the current thinking is essentially EDGE for the parents and the scouts. A temp SM/ASM's with an expiration date while the moms get up to speed and take over. We'll teach them our program. Shared gear and committee. Separate PLC, separate calendar, with the hope that weekends mostly line up. If we go to the same area there's no reason the two troops have to do the same thing. If the girls want to canoe and the boys want to backpack, so be it.

I'm hoping this encourages the boys to understand that their patrols can do different things on a campout.

Unless they owe you or you work at national I don't think this will change anything. This is about restructuring debt, which is code for owing less. I doubt national actually owes much they could sell, otherwise they would have already sold it.

Restructuring the leadership at the top might be a good thing, though. But I don't know who would do that. We should volunteer!

27 minutes ago, rubixcube said:

I don’t think there is any interest in selling the boat since the boat is mostly used for personal use, and they don’t want to give that up.

Kind of a long shot, but if the boat is mostly used for personal use, then figure out the ratio and say it's fair for those that used it for their own use to pay that share of the $4000.

How many scouts are in this troop and how much does the troop have in the bank? ($4k is huge for any troops I know of.) Also, what percentage of the families are upset about this?

3 hours ago, cocomax said:

Will it be great with Outdoorsy women taking the role of scout master for these girls. . . 

I was worried about that, as was our troop when asked about starting a girls troop. In fact, there are a number of moms of web 1's that do a lot of outdoor stuff and are very interested. They're all younger moms, though. (When I meet parents in their 30's it really makes me feel old.) Anyway, I said I'd help start the troop assuming that there would be a mom taking over as SM after a year and wanted to do the outdoor program. We have a half year or so to figure things out.

I think it will help the patrol method and I can't think of a better way to illustrate different patrols doing different things then having different SM and SPL as well as patrols with different calendars. They might drive to the campsite together (or to different campsites) but they'll be doing different activities.

If you're clever you can also creates something like http://boys.troop123.org and http://girls.troop123.org assuming you now have http://www.troop123.org.

Welcome to the forum, @epiieq1. You just made two great decisions. First, you're helping out your son's den. Second, you're asking for ideas. I haven't been a den leader for a very long time but I would say, go to round tables (monthly district meetings of scouters) and get training for being a den leader. I never did these things and that was a mistake.

One more thing, stick around the forum!

Oh my! Welcome to the forum. The two best days of owning a boat: The first and the last.

5 minutes ago, rubixcube said:

Many of the parents with scouts in the troop are ready to break away and form our own troop. 

That's likely your best option.

8 minutes ago, rubixcube said:

But we would like to at least get funds that our scouts raised as well as the troop camping equipment (we could care less about the motor boat). 

I don't think you have much claim to that money. It's a sunk cost that's best forgotten. One thing you might do is set up individual scout accounts, make sure there's a policy that says if you change troops you can take your money to the new troop, and then leave. Not sure what the odds of that working are, though.