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MattR

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Everything posted by MattR

  1. Humuhumunukunukuapua'a. I think it's a fish. The flag was rectangular but had an extension so the name could fit. In order to be in the patrol you had to be able to pronounce the name.
  2. @@KevinRiner, since you are both a CM and tiger den leader you should be awarded more than a knot. What you're doing is wonderful and whatever recognition you'd like I hope you get. Staying the course does require some recognition so go for it and don't be shy. It may take many years until the boys you work with are mature enough to say thank you, but it's worth the wait. That is the best recognition. In the meantime I hope some parents will also thank you.
  3. The scout is just as high minded as the board. They aren't asking him to do anything out of the ordinary. Know a knot, handle some paperwork, describe what he did. At the same time, telling a scout he'll never get Eagle is being a bit closed minded. He's a kid. Of course there's a mess. Whether or not the board will improve is of no interest, but the scout could learn from this. It sounds like the scout respects qwazse. Qwazse could talk to him. Just a guess but I'd say the scout got defensive when the board got pushy. That's the mess. Since the scout said he'd do those things for qwazse i
  4. The crux of the problem seems to be buried in the bottom of this post. My troop does not appoint anyone that doesn't want a position. I would never suggest a scout take on a POR that he doesn't want. There are lots of reasons why a scout might not want to do it and most are legit, so we trust the scouts on that. There are not so many positions that everyone that wants one gets one. So they are coveted and there's never an issue of telling someone they have to do something. I may encourage a scout to try something, but it's his decision. At the same time, only the SPL and PL positions are v
  5. I missed two campouts in a row for the first time since I joined the troop 14 years ago. While gone it seemed like everything was falling apart. All sorts of Mean Girls crap, parents sending me emails, one family quit in a huff, scouts saying they want to quit, parents telling me we have to have adults with the scouts at all times, an adult berating the troop because his son wasn't treated well. Blah blah blah. No, this is not the good news but it does make it that much sweeter. Anyway, after all that I stick with my belief that scouts are good, problems are opportunities, and we are not g
  6. If the parents are having fun then they are showing up, and bringing their sons with them. If the parents are showing up then it's easier to teach them how scouting works. If all the parents are having fun together then it's easier to pull them aside when they get too involved with the scouts. Before I became SM I was going to make a Heckawee patrol patch. After I step down I'll go back to that. The patch was going to be a broken compass. For those of you that don't know, the Heckawee came from F Troop, as in Where the Heckawee. Turns out there really was a Heckawee tribe and they weren't
  7. I agree with fred, the art of this is finding some fun things that incorporate learning. If there's a boring class that just has to be done then hopefully it will be preparing the scouts for some fun activity. Gun safety is an easy example. Imagine gun safety without the shooting afterwards. Dry. Horrible. So, how to make Cit in the World not dry and horrible? That's art. Once I taught that MB and to illustrate a dictator I took a tennis ball and said whoever is holding the tennis ball makes the rules. Then I tossed the ball up in the air. Mayhem. But they learned something about types of gove
  8. Make time to have fun and tell the scouts when they do a good job. This may sound simple but while you're trying to deal with all the details you can lose the forest in the trees.
  9. Well, make them take the training.Or give the kids equal work doing something else, like making sure the floors stay clean. I was in Japan a long time ago and the kids clean the schools. They have no janitors. My guess is something could be worked out, if the schools were interested.
  10. If it does happen, and the only reason they do it is to increase membership, then they're in for a surprise. It won't change much because that's not the issue. If it were than venture scouts would be growing. It's not about girls, or gays, or God, or STEM, or making a uniform that has a pocket for an mp3 player. Boy scouts has an image problem that has become self fulfilling. That's why the numbers are going down. It's where you go to pad your resume for college. Nerds and preppies. Many scouts will say that's nonsense but that's the image. The BSA is playing to its strengths so they're na
  11. My approach to scouts not acting scout-like has always been, you break it, you fix it. The level of fixing matches the size of hole they make. In this case it was a deep hole. Loss of trust was a big issue. He couldn't just talk his way out of this one. Other scouts were also an issue as they knew what happened and were watching. There is a point where the hole is too big. For this scout it was. I told him make it right and we can talk but he didn't even try. He left the troop. So, maybe what I did and what David would have done with a zero tolerance policy weren't so far apart. David wouldn't
  12. @@desertrat77, there was no zero tolerance policy from me, the county sheriff, my CO, or my CE. I talked to all of them and they all wanted to get this kid to see his mistake and own it. The problem was, as the saying goes, you can bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink. This kid was not interested. I suspect Frank was different, or maybe it was his parents. My impression is that zero tolerance policies are being used less.
  13. @@krypton_son, you make good points, teenagers make mistakes and the punishment should match the transgression. At the same time the teenagers need to learn from those mistakes and there is no learning until the scout realizes he make a mistake. The big question is how to know when that happens. As I said before, I wanted to know if this scout was sorry he got caught or sorry he did something wrong. Until he realized he did something wrong I didn't want him in my troop. I suspect the same thing was going on with Frank. After his parents and his scout leaders punished him he regretted what he h
  14. I think the sports/scouts comparison doesn't hold. Sure at the game a player has to wear the uniform, but scouts go to a lot more "games". I played football when I was a kid and we wore our jerseys to school on game day. It was fun. But we only played 8 games a year. If we had to wear our uniforms every Monday for seven years, it would have gotten beyond old. @@qwazse, I think the real issue came out in your last message, you'd like it stricter and some adults wouldn't. I'm in the "it's a method, not the aim" camp. Yes, I want the scouts to look sharp and I always do, but right now I am mu
  15. Just my 2 cents: For 3-4" I'd likely use 1/4 to 3/8" rope. I've bought spools of rope online. It's much cheaper than going to the local store. Before you buy a spool get 100' and try it out. I prefer natural fiber rope as it holds better. The biggest challenge with the scouts is getting them to tie the lashings tight enough to, say, hold up a tower they want to climb on. I tell the scouts they have to pull on the rope until it creaks, for nearly every wrap and frap. With natural fiber there's enough friction that after every pull it will tend to stay in place. The plastic ropes are muc
  16. Just trying to get this back on track. I think @@blw2 was not so interested in the fact that there are Areas so much as the absurdity of saying a 16 year old is allowed to drive several hours to some events but not one hour to a unit event. BTW, blw2, we apply those rules to our unit events.
  17. @@onetallmama, welcome to the forums. I find it very hard to turn kids away. The boy scouts would handle this by splitting the group in two but still be in the same troop (each group is called a patrol). Maybe these scouts have differences of opinion on what they should do so two groups of 7 might be easier to work with. More scouts means more parents so maybe you can get some help. This could be a good thing.
  18. I saw a great demo you might want to try regarding wet kindling. Someone took a bucket filled with kindling and filled that with water and let it soak for awhile. He then took the kindling out of the water and put it on a stand with a candle under it. Lots of smoke for awhile but it eventually lit. Probably a practical skill in your neck of the woods.
  19. I agree with people that say this isn't worth service hours. A flag ceremony is not a service project. It's just something we do. Which begs the question, what is it? If it's just part of an advertising campaign then I'd pass. But how about a company that's interested in developing community. If the sole intent is nothing more than doing a flag ceremony because it's veteran's day, I think it's fine. Yes, they may get some advertising for it but they also help pay for creating events that bring community together. At the same time some parent might bring their child to a scout unit because
  20. Well done. The scouts are having fun. Did the scouts put this all together? I wish we could set up a stove in the middle of our room.
  21. I don't know Skip, I think of what I grew up with and everyone knew about it and we still got out. Late 60's to mid 70's? Not only was all that in the news but so was the fact that rock and roll was going to rot your brain. I got bused into an inner city school and they had fights between white kids and black kids every day. I learned to stay away from that. I also learned to walk away from a dicey looking street. My parents taught me that if I got robbed, just give them the money and don't worry about it. We walked around with traveler's checks and didn't keep all the eggs in one basket, so t
  22. I'm not surprised a scout would ask for certification, assuming an instructor told him to ask for it, but it's a very bad idea. Not only is it a lost time issue (the time to find my id, if I had it on me, would be the time I'd give myself to see if someone has a pulse before starting CPR) it's also creating a bad environment. Any first aid situation I've been in requires lots of help and starting it off by dismissing someone is not going to help things. In the heat of the moment you need to work together and check each other. You have to fight your own shock. The more people helping the better
  23. I had a great time this weekend and it had nothing to do with scouting or the outdoors but it did clarify why I'm frustrated with boy scouts. I went to a class reunion and had a great time reminiscing over all the adventures we had. As teenagers we were thrown together with people from all over the world and put in a place that was completely different from what we were used to. We had to figure it out, it didn't always work out, but we ended up with incredible memories and we learned how to solve problems. All in all everyone said it was a great experience. It all reminded me of what scou
  24. I wouldn't use a survey for one campout. We do something after every campout that we call roses, thorns and buds. The BSA calls it stop, start, continue. The idea is get everyone in groups of about 10 (we do it by patrol) to stand in a circle and politely talk about what went great, what went wrong, and what should be done in the future. By explicitly asking for examples of each of those the most important issues come up. Asking for feedback is important. Your parents will really appreciate it. Doing it face to face should help tone down the snarky comments you might get with an electronic
  25. Maybe we have a different definition of fire ball. When starting a fire it can easily get to be a foot or two high. Not instantly but it gets there. I'd say it's just about as dangerous as the scout that pumps up the tank, opens the valve and lights the fuel. If the stove is treated like a fire and nothing nearby is flammable then there likely won't be more problems. The only time I've ever seen big flames from a stove is when a scout is learning how to use the stove. Once he knows he won't make that mistake again. Maybe our problem is moisture in the hoses along with cold weather. Or mayb
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