Mike F

SMB, You're so danged busy you may not want to hear it, but recommend doing a little bit more to pull your leadership team(s) together. Invite them and families over to your house for a Sunday afternoon BBQ. Invite others who you would like to get more involved. Not as an overt sales pitch - just social. Of course, with your ties in scouting, much of the conversation will drift there. With friendships come more volunteers. Good luck!

Stosh, I certainly did not intend to say APL was a "goof-off" position. Far from it. In the troop I serve, the first position of any sort held by a scout is within the patrol - Patrol QM, Campout Grubmaster, or APL - none of which "count" for rank advancement, but very critical to help them begin to grow. The other boys are observing each other all the time. A scout who doesn't take his position within the patrol seriously will not be elected by the scouts (PL/SPL) or selected by the SPL (all others) until he has grown/matured more and showed he is responsible. Your analogy usi

SMB, I think they did fine in the original situation you described. Scout was corrected and insisted on flagrant breaking of rules. This wasn't just a case of having a knife in his pocket - you described him pulling it out and waving it at other scouts. This was either flaunting the rules, a threat, or stupidity. All can get you in trouble. When the father cornered and berated the PL, he would have earned a removal from the group I serve.

APL is simply a learning/growing position. An opportunity for young scout to begin to step up and to be recognized by his fellow scouts as a future candidate for PL or other Staff position. It's not all about speed to rank -- it's about growing young men.

The Air Force Academy application has a very clear section which asks if you were an Eagle/Gold Scout and if you were a Troop Leader/Officer. I have also known many adults who strongly believed it had a positive effect on their job hunt. Not an overwhelming factor, but a positive factor which helped.

ScruffyJake, Great words from Beavah. I have served two troops who used the two different methods in recent years. I guess the same-age patrols might work somewhere, but my observation was the youth leadership was very weak in the same-age troop - probably because peer-leadership is the hardest of all. The same-age troop I served switched back to mixed-age. Transition was rough, but troop is growing and healthy today. The troop I serve now has mixed-age patrols which the new guys join within a week or two. Patrols take total ownership of the new guys. Our retention rate is great

I promised myself I wasn't going to comment again, but here I am. Ed, Like I've said, if it were just the scouts, the signed job description is not very important. You just work with him until he gets it. About 98% of the time, the paper is irrelevant. However, the signed job description is key when you have a parent appealing to District/Council because junior didn't get credit for rank advancement after 4/6 months wearing a patch. A lot of leaders have discussed this exact problem in these forums for years. It may not be perfect, but this is a solution that works. T

John in KC, I haven't heard anybody say it was a one-way deal. I've been careful to say we use lots of coaching and mentoring along the way and there are no surprises. Feedback and teamwork start within boy leadership chain. They involve adults only when can't resolve themselves. What if I had just said our guys and their immediate boss sign their job description after intial training to confirm it was completed and understood?

Three not-so-quick quick things. 1. The communication part is HUGE! Some learn better by hearing, some by seeing. We do both. And we continually coach, guide, and mentor. No scout is left hanging out there with a forgotten "contract" waiting to get ambushed at a BOR. The only time the written, agreed-upon job descriptions come into play is when in spite of all efforts, the scout is failing to be successful in his position and he (or usually his parents) want to press for him to get signed off from rank advancement anyway. 2. Yes - this is an adult-imposed thing and the boys would no

Wow - some surprising emotions here! I used the term "contracts" which seems to have led to some imagined legal excess. They are simply written job descriptions which scout and his immediate "boss" sign at the conclusion of initial training at the start of the term. I have used them in two different troops for over 10 years and believe they help more than hurt. I agree when our friend Barry says, Boy Scouting is like the adult world scaled down to a boys size. Real jobs have real job descriptions, real expectations and an agreement with the boss. Nothing complicated about thi

Craig, I don't think anyone is suggesting you let the leader fail without intervention, then hammer him at the end by not signing. But sometimes, in spite of Troop Junior Leader Training, written/signed job contracts with detailed expectations, status checks, counseling, mentoring, etc, a boy will sometimes not step up and serve actively (ie, get the job done). In the troop I serve, he does not get credit for rank advancement and it is no surprise to him or his parents. We don't consider it punishment - we consider it a normal part of a boy learning the concepts of responsibility and lead

evry, The boy's poor showing in discussion of how he met the position of responsibility (POR or leadership) requirement is very important. There are two fundamental purposes for a Board of Review for rank advancement: 1. Ensure the scout has properly met the requirements. If he has not, he should be given a plan for properly meeting the requirements in writing and the SM or his designated ASM should work with him on it. 2. Through the BoR process, the Troop Committee is also performing an independent check on how well the SM is executing the program within the troop. When t

Wow - lots of great, solid ideas here! We haven't had a Historian for 8 years, but I'm going to talk to SPL about reconsidering. Be careful about one idea to make the position a year-long. If you state this as a requirement to get credit for rank advancement, you are adding to the requirements which say 4 or 6 months. Scout (likely with parent pushing) has the right to come to you for rank credit signoff after the minimum number of months in the position. You might have to be a little more creative in how you help the scout develop his skills in this POR to help prepare him for the

We did this for the first time about 5 weeks ago at the request of scout and family. Where we normally work our way up through ranks, ending with Life, this time we just continued on into Eagle. Instead of more extensive ceremony, this one just consisted of Eagle Challenge, Eagle Charge, Eagle Oath, and presentation. My preference is still to do more special formal affair. I've never met an "Eaglezilla" but more than one Momzilla and Dadzilla!

Something needs to be corrected -- Boy Scouts may not be dual-registered in two troops. They may be registered in a Troop and a Venture Crew (or Ship). We had something very similar happen a while back. A family joined our troop because they didn't like the program at their church sponsored troop. No problems - no questions. Youngest son joined at 10.5, was immature and unmotivated, and was progressing slowly through his T requirements. No problem - he was enjoying camping and growing. We knew we could keep him engaged and eventually he'd be willing to knock out those last couple of requi

We have some solid recommendations for handling the mildew and crud. Any ideas for re-waterproofing?

First we try to head it off at camp, as others have said. If not discovered until too late, we talk with scouts and parents about the shortcomings, then come up with plan to help the guys really meet the requirements as written. We tell them they may, but have never had anyone appeal to get MB on technicality and all of our guys have the pride of knowing they earned every bit of it. I don't get too worked up about it. We're volunteers and staffs are notoriously inexperienced and underpaid. We tell parents before we leave and staff when we arrive that we plan to work hard, but expect to bri

I've been in DC this weekend and it's absolutely full of scouts! All I've seen were on best behaviour - thank goodness. Parade today was awesome!! Can't wait to get out to Jambo on Wed!!

SS We loved the parade! Which balloon were you working?

When the troop I serve was formed, they established blue jeans as the troop's uniform pants. (Full-length and in good repair.) It took some getting used to at first. In the sense that "uniform" means "the same", at least within the troop, it is a success. It is very rare to see a scout out of uniform. The pants may not be green with BSA label, but they work. I thought about trying to work them towards official pants for Eagle Courts of Honor, etc., but there are more important things to worry about.

Summer camps being way too easy is something we frequently encounter at a variety of camps. A few years ago, 12 of our guys took advantage of a mountain bike course in their free time one afternoon and all came home with the Cycling Merit Badge. We work hard to keep an eye on things at camp to make sure boys are getting to complete the requirements as written. If not, we talk to Camp Program Director immediately. If we get words about how they couldn't do xyz because of class size, boat limitations, etc., we simply insist on getting partial cards so the boys can finish up the rest later.

Lance, You'll get lots of opinions. We're probably at the extreme end with no expectations beyond get Scout badge ASAP. We do encourage and provide opportunities, however I believe the boys benefit more when they finally wake up and realize they want to advance, so we don't push too hard. We have 13-yr old Tenderfeet who are there for almost everything and also have almost all of the requirements completed for 2nd and 1st Class, but don't want to take the initiative to finish off the last requirements. They will eventually. It's working for us. From the last two year groups

We have a few written things which could be called guidelines: 1. New Parents Orientation not list of policy, just general stuff about how we do business especially as it contrasts with Cub/Webelos. 2. Fund Raising Policy we allow boys to keep portion of any money they earned in a Scout Bucks account within troop treasury. To avoid misunderstandings, we wrote it down. Its in the New Parents Orientation. 3. Leadership Development Process to clarify a few things which apply to PORs, we wrote them down. Most of it was already in handbooks, but most dont read all of those an

I'll be helping out in the National Eagle Scout Association area, but only for 1 day, July 28. (Bummer couldn't stay longer!)

This one is a bit more tangled than first read. I discovered an outbreak of "sack tapping" shortly after taking over as SM of the troop I serve. To my son's horror, I addressed it immediately by name with the whole troop. In short, there's room for some physical fun in a spirited game of Capture the Flag, but keep your hands away from your buddy's gonads. Zero tolerance. Any violators will be going home immediately without regard to time of day or distance. In PLC (which offending older boys attended), we talked about their responsibility in always setting the example and protecting the