BartHumphries

We bring new adults in to a unit and we want them to get their trained patch (we want them to complete all appropriate basic training, which is what the patch is). So why is it that the adult positions outside the unit that these new adults are most likely to meet don't have a trained patch? Namely every District and Council position, such as unit commissioners, summer camp staff, etc. Many new adults are shy anyway and don't want to wear a patch that hardly anyone else is wearing.

Bring a laptop to a meeting with internet access. While the boys go off and do whatever it is that they're going to be doing anyway, have the parents spend the hour running through Youth Protection, This is Scouting, Fast Start: whatever. Offer cookies and other refreshments in between each internet class because adults who have to sit there doing that internet stuff for too long get cranky (seriously). Hey presto, they're done and they can go on every campout, etc.

 

Then you all walk outside to the parking lot. Don't surprise anyone, in case they changed providers recently and don't have the form (or don't have insurance, but don't bring that up), and everyone goes to their glove compartment, grabs their insurance form, and brings it over. It'll have the make/model/year of the car and CA minimum is 15k for injury/death to one person, 30k for injury/death to more than one person, 5k for property damage. That's all you fill out on your trip form. If there is an accident and it turns out that they have more insurance than you wrote down, great for them and everyone else but it's really not important.

 

Then you go back inside, the boys will be finishing up with whatever they were finishing up with, and you let the boys partake of whatever is left over from the refreshments after the internet session. And you hopefully won't have any problems with any future tour permits.

 

If any adults want to earn the "trained" patch, then next week they can do the troop committee challenge on the same laptop, and they're done. Anyone who wants to be an Assistant Scoutmaster just needs to take a couple weekends, and the District has them on its calendar at, yadda, yadda. Make sure that everyone who's trained wears their trained patch. Unfortunately, there is no trained patch for the people outside the troop that troop members are most likely to see regularly (unit commissioners and district committee people running friends of scouting drives and summer camp staff), but at least the adults in the troop can feel proud that they have a trained patch.

I have hundreds of kids... but if I ever have a kid of my own, every patch on a pocket, and any patch that they might have to change later on will be velcroed on. Sewing on patches? Don't really mind that. Picking out the threads from a patch that was sewed on previously? Rather irksome. Sewing a patch on a pocket by hand instead of getting to use the machine? Only going to happen once per shirt.

Maybe it's because of the "non-camping" things you have to do, requirement 9b. Camping alone won't earn you the camping merit badge.

Boy those kids grow up fast. It's time to buy him his first little file folder box and teach him how to file things. Someday he can graduate to a full filing cabinet. Personally, I favor the "categorize and index" method.

At the Court of Honor when you award everything else? Get a Cyber Chip patch and/or certificate from the same place you get every other patch/certificate, the Scout store. ​http://www.scoutstuff.org/catalogsearch/result/?q=cyber+chip

Anyone heard anything about the new cooking merit badge requirements?

Why would I want a notification that I posted? I already know that, I'm the one that did it. In the Notifications for this site, we can turn on email notifications. If we turn them on, they're delivered, "When you post a new conversation, reply to a topic or someone likes your post". Why would I want an emailed notification about my own actions? Now, if someone else "likes" my post or if someone else responds to my post, sure I'ld usually like to hear about that, but why would I want a notification about my own posting?

 

If National wasn't a higher division, they couldn't change the membership requirements. I think National is a little more than a support structure for Councils/Districts.

Well, as that "very long link" in my post up there shows, apparently just typing a link into the normal post window works and makes a clickable link. I'm not sure what the difference is, though, why one would work and others don't.

The forum automatically puts url tags around links, but doesn't display them. It's sort of distracting, especially for long links where they're repeated three times.

 

http://www.thisisaverylonglink.averylonglinkindeed.onethatwillberepeatedthreetimes.com

 

I can't edit a post. When I try, it tells me that I have to add a title to the post, but it won't let me click in the title field and type anything in there.

The BSA will offer a Wilderness First Aid Train the Trainer course at Philmont this fall. It'll be offered through ECSI [url=http://www.ecsinstitute.org/]http://www.ecsinstitute.org/[/url=http://www.ecsinstitute.org/] I took it last fall and it was a great course. Not as good as my Wilderness First Responder through NOLS/WMI, but then WFR allows a couple more things than WFA does (like the focused spine assessment) and it's a longer course overall. If you go, let me know so that I can count you as one of my three people for the Philmont Training Center Masters Award [url=http://www.usscouts.org/awards/Philmont.asp]http://www.usscouts.org/awards/Philmont.asp[/url=http://www.usscouts.org/awards/Philmont.asp] (although I hear that this is the last year for that, so hurry up and sign up then email me at bart.humphries@gmail.com before it's too late for me to collect more uniform swag).

National Camping School certification isn't necessarily good for five years, as the recert lengths vary depending on what you're getting. "But the National website says..." I know, but the National website is sort of wrong. For instance, COPE or Climbing Instructor Level 2 is still taught at some NCS sessions this year (and will also be taught this fall at Philmont) and it's only good for the normal time for that level, even though you get an NCS patch and can say that you attended NCS. Climbing Lead Instructor is no longer a certification, it's now COPE or Climbing Level 1, Level 2, then Program Manager.

 

Some NCS certs require that a "sub" cert also be maintained. For instance, a person could call themselves an Aquatics Director, but without a lifeguard cert they'd be pretty useless poolside, right? So NCS sessions now require potential Aquatics Directors to already have a lifeguard cert when they show up, and I've been told that they aren't doing the lifeguard training at NCS anymore because there's so much mandatory training that's already required to be able to teach all of the things an Aquatics Director has to teach. The last couple times I've been to NCS, the Aquatics Directors were usually up and going by 6am and didn't stop until about 10pm, every day except one, and apparently they want to have more "reasonable" hours like the rest of NCS participants. If the lifeguard cert lapses, your Aquatics Director cert also will temporarily lapse until you get it again and depending on where you got it from, your work, the BSA, wherever, your lifeguard cert may last anywhere from one to three years, which can make your Aquatics Director cert variable length.

 

To be a Health Lodge Director (online NCS training), you must at least be an EMT. EMT certification lasts for two years before you have to get recerted (I'm an EMT). EMT's also have to maintain basic first aid certification as well as CPR certification or their EMT license temporarily lapses. In either case, if your EMT cert lapses for whatever reason, you're ineligible to be a Health Lodge Director, no matter how long the NCS cert is good for. Similarly, nurses and doctors have to recert as well, although it can be anywhere for three years for some nurses to 10 years for some doctors.

 

USA Archery or National Field Archer Association Level 1 or 2 coach certs only last for three years, as do NRA Instructor certs, although a person can continue to be a Shooting Sports Director without those. If all of a person's NRA/archery certs lapse, though, then they aren't going to be able to do much on a range, so it would seem important to keep up those "sub" certs.

 

Basically, try to get retrained for most things every year. If you take an occasional year off, or even every other year off, fine, no problem, but if you take two or more years off then you should probably go get retrained no matter what your training was. That being said, basic leader training classes (like BALOO, IOLS, Wood Badge, etc.), tend not to have an expiration date, although if you haven't done any of those things for several years then it may be a good idea to go get retrained just to see if anyone has any new tricks to teach you.

 

Wilderness First Aid for the Boy Scouts is slightly different from a "regular" WFA class in that there's additional material. It's pretty much the same as becoming an LNT Instructor/Master Educator, the certification comes from outside Boy Scouts (in LNT's case from the LNT Center for Outdoor Ethics), all the training is the same, but there's additional material that the Boy Scouts adds to the course. This is why a Boy Scout WFA class is 16 hours, while most WFA classes are only 8-12 hours.

 

We have Wilderness First Aid trainers in the area. Some started training through the Red Cross. I took my WFA Instructor training through Philmont last fall -- heck of a lot of fun. I'm also an EMT and I just recently took a Wilderness First Responder course through the WMI & NOLS. In my area, there are usually a few WFA courses every year. It's sometimes offered to leaders during summer camp, to give them something to do besides sit around and helicopter over their kids, and it's also offered a few other times during the year. Wherever people because certified to teach, they're certified to teach as far as the Boy Scouts are concerned, they just have to use the Boy Scout WFA curriculum to call it a Boy Scout WFA course (and they likely have to get permission from their District or Council training rep as well).

 

If you want to see the Boy Scout WFA curriculum, it's available: [url=http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-008.pdf]http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-008.pdf[/url=http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-008.pdf] just like virtually all Boy Scout training curriculum is available online (with NYLT, Wood Badge, and OA events being one of the primary exceptions).

I think girls should be able to join Boy Scouts. My sisters wanted to do the fun things that I was able to do. My young cousins today think that Girl Scouts is boring and want to go do to the fun things they see Boy Scouts doing. I think a name change would have to be in order, though. Perhaps, to keep the BSA acronym, it could be changed to Both Scouts of America, or simply follow 3M's line and simply change the name to "BSA" or something. Sure, you're going to have some people making fun of the name change with things like:

Bodacious Scouts of America. Cowabunga, dude!

Buxom Scouts of America

"Bicameral" Scouts of America

Blow-dryed Scouts of America.

Ok, on a more serious note, I've heard that a name change would be impossible because Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts USA are the only entities in the USA who are allowed to use the copyrighted term "Scouts" as part of their program, Boy Scouts with boys and Girl Scouts with girls, and that each jealously guards their prerogatives and doesn't want to work with the other entity. In any case, I think girls should be able to join -- local choice. Leaders aren't a problem, we already have no problem with female leaders.

If someone gives you a gift, if you don't have anything against it, accept it. As to the creator of a "paper Venturing unit" throwing a new unit founder award in the trash, why would anyone want to create a paper Venturing unit in the first place? I don't really understand most of the people in this thread.

That website seems to have gone down as well. Anyone happen to have a copy that they could send me or know another website that it's been uploaded to?

The recent change to the Dog Care merit badge says, "The activities used to fulfill the requirements for the Dog Care merit badge may not be used to help fulfill the requirements for other merit badges." How were people double-tapping those requirements? I checked out Mammal Study, but there's nothing in there that would seem to overlap. First Aid, perhaps? I don't see it.

You'd have my vote for removing loops/tabs/epaulettes. I've already put velcro on my arm so I can more easily swap a position patch.

I think we need a new National silver/gold policy. If this means redesigning/renaming some things, then great, redesign/rename away. The problem is that sometimes gold is better than silver and sometimes silver is better than gold. I'm sure we're all familiar with how silver is better in Eagle palms while gold is better in JTE, but here's a new one:

 

Commissioners above Council-level wear gold epaulettes but their position patches feature silver wreaths while all Commissioners within the Council wear silver epaulettes and their position patches feature gold wreaths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Scouting

Congratulations!

I noticed that the new camp standards have a revised section. I sat down and compared the two and the only new thing that I saw was a new paragraph, "For all camps, the training plan communicates that all employees must go online and take Unlawful Harassment Prevention training. A roster of participants who have completed the online training is maintained at the council office. Prior to, or upon arrival at camp, each employee must provide a copy of the certificate showing his or her successful completion of the training." Yes, the word "all" was also emphasized in the original.

 

So, just paid employees? If a camp is run by all volunteer staff, then nobody has to take it? The standard emphasizes "all" camps, but usually it's only summer camps that have employees. The standard says that it applies to family camps, and day camps, but they don't usually have employees (well, maybe a few like a professional Scouter who's overseeing things and possibly specialized support like medical or climbing personnel, but by far most of the staff are volunteers). I don't know why we'd track participants who completed the training. Perhaps they meant to say all staff instead of all employees are required to take it? And perhaps they meant that they'd track all staff who completed it, not all participants?

 

I also thought it was interesting that this training apparently only exists online and can't (shouldn't?) be done physically. Speaking of which, I don't see it yet at myscouting.org -- possibly it'll be there after the first of January?

 

I guess it'll be nice to have clear well-communicated messages on exactly what harassment is -- is it ever appropriate to have a Scout sing/chant/speak in front of others? Can Scouts be told that they "have" to participate in the skit along with the rest of the pack/troop/team/crew? What about when a group is preparing for a Court of Honor and the unit wants "everyone" to either recite something or carry a flag or otherwise do something in front of the group, can we tell a Scout that they "have" to do that? How despondent can a Scout get while hiking and should we wait until everyone is in a good mood whenever we stop to take a break? For a volunteer stressful situation such as a Polar Bear Swim, how much ice are we allowed to use and how long can people swim for? I can't wait to get clear answers on questions like these.

http://bsauniforms.org/#/venturer/item-venturerfemale and http://bsauniforms.org/#/scout-leader/item-leaderfemale show women wearing uniform shirts that are tucked in. Will the new shirts that have a top which is more appropriately sized for a female now be long enough that it can be tucked in without popping out every time a person moves? Or are the women shown wearing men's shirts?