pargolf44067

I was there with a crew from my troop in 2013. We were there mid-June. Full disclosure, I am fairly overweight but have normal blood pressure. I lost weight to go to Philmont, but when I got out there, due to the altitude, my blood pressure got higher. I had to come off trail for a couple of days due to this (and spend most of one night at the ER in Raton), but they cleared me to go back out. When I was coming back to base camp, they said that they had already had 3 or 4 leaders that had heart issues on the trail and had to go home. I think the heat that year was especially bad. I heard later in the summer that they lost a couple of leaders due to heart issues while out there.

If that is happening in your troop there is definitely something wrong. When I was SM, I made sure that as soon as a rank had all the requirements met, I was available to the youth at least by the meeting following the one in which he finished. His BOR was scheduled for the same meeting. I refused to sign off on either of my boys' requirements and would not to MBs with them. The only one that I would have done was the Golf MB because I was the only MBC in the troop, but they did a separate three meeting Golf MB session, so I didn't even do that one. None of our leaders' sons were treated differently than other boys because that is not the scouting way to do things. Now for me as SM again, it doesn't matter because I have no sons in the troop. Unfortunately, I have seen things work the way you describe in other troops.

@@Stosh, is this the same moron that didn't want to tell the boys about the bear procedures in another thread? This guy sounds like a real winner of a SM. Back to the original post, I have a NOAA weather radio as well weather apps. I have taken the weather training from BSA, but some of the other ideas here sound pretty good.

Great idea. Definitely will look into that!

Not to speak for @@Eamonn, but I assumed he was talking about the program that is put on for the Scout. Again, we have good volunteers in our district who put on some great programs, but I guess we could find the training online or another Klondike or Camporee to do and live without the district. But it does seem that in our district there is more of an emphasis from the people that I deal with that they care about what the boys are getting out of the program. Again, are they vitally important and could we survive without them? I am sure we would be fine without them, but at least in my area they don't get in my way and are very helpful with what we do for the boys.

@, based on other posts your district sounds like it comes straight out of Dante's 7th Circle of Hell, so I can understand your cynicism. Our district, while not ideal or perfect, provides us with a lot of great volunteers that provide advancement advice and really help our boys with their Eagle Projects and BORs. They run a tremendous Klondike (we have people from other councils that are 2 and a half hours away that attend because it is so good). They provide both leader and scout training as well as RTs, some of which are good and some, meh. We have had really good DEs and we have had DEs that have lasted less than a month, so I don't base my opinion on the DE! The volunteers in the district are great and a couple of them are still registered to my troop as well and are active at occasional meetings and as MB counselors. On the other hand, I cannot tell you why you or other parents in the troop should volunteer at district, because I really want to work with the boys directly and help them have a great program. I think that district positions take me away from that and so that's why I don't volunteer.

Glad I wasn't at Philmont with that guy. I might have left HIM behind at base camp. That is just not considering the safety of the scouts!

Depending on the situation NSPs have both worked and not worked in our troop. One year we got about 15 boys that crossed over at the same time. We used two NSPs to work with them and had them elect Patrol Leaders, had TGs and Instructors work with them and those worked well. Our mistake was splitting them up into multiple patrols after their first year. A good portion of them have stayed (they are seniors this year) but several left. I don't know that they left because of that but you never know. On the other hand, the past few years we have gotten anywhere from 1-4 new scouts in the troop in a year and the NSP concept just didn't work at that level, so they boys found their way into a patrol (when we had patrols ) and that seemed to work out as well. There is no one solution to any issue. As @@Eagle94-A1 mentioned above, it is more an art than a science. It seems that what @@Stosh does works well for him and what @@Eagledad has seen has worked well for his group.

That's what our troop did when we actually planned out our year and our monthly meetings as well. Some months worked great, some months not so great. Some of the themes were the same every year (December/early January was typically getting ready for Klondike, while late January/early February was about cold weather camping in preparation for our Polar Bear). If the boys decided at the Annual Planning Meeting that they wanted to do a canoe trip in June, then the month prior was some sort of canoeing/water safety theme. As I move forward to start this again, I am going to encourage the boys to expand their thoughts about what can be done for a theme. In the past, they kind of limited their activities to what they can do in the church and part of that may have been how us adults kind of hinted at things. But, as always, you need to learn from your past mistakes, and I want them to think about what they can do outside of the meeting place (either literally outside or at other venues, such as the fire house as part of a first aid themed month to talk to EMTs, etc.). As long as the boys are learning AND having fun that is what is important. @@Stosh, if your group is going along fine and you don't have retention issues, then you are probably fine, but for some of us this works as well.

Totally agree!

And posters like @@hicountry is why I had stopped coming on this forum for awhile. It is one thing to state an opinion on one side of an issue or another but to spew some of the venom that he did seems a little over the top. So you don't agree with the lifestyle, that doesn't make them all pedophiles. I'm out!

Usually I don't comment on the stuff in I&P because it can get pretty nasty and no matter what, people are going to believe in what they believe in and anything I say is not going to change it. I personally don't agree with BSA's policy on homosexuals as it stands now, however, I also don't agree with all the people outside of scouts that vilify BSA and scouts in general because of it. I have always accepted that it is a private group and if that is what they want to do it is their choice. But just because I disagree with one aspect of the group, doesn't mean I have to reject it as a whole. Just like many others on this forum there is a lot of good in scouting that, to me, outweighs the things I disagree with. I saw what Scouting did for my sons, and I have seen what it has done for other boys in my troop. That, to me is what is important, not the politics and stuff that goes on at national. I have seen leaders that care a lot about the boys in the troop. For those of you who say that your convictions are so strong that you would quit if this local option came into place, I applaud you for your strong convictions, but I also think that you are doing a disservice to those boys that rely on us volunteers to give them an outdoor program that builds character. It may not be perfect, but there is still value.

That's what my goal always was for the meeting was planning the next month's meetings. We have used the Troop Program Resources as a guide and will use those again. This time the SPL will have a copy of his own ! I think it goes back to the point that @quazse made as well as yours and that is being efficient. Maybe in the past we tried to do too much, but your point about high level assignments with follow up by SPL makes a ton of sense. The good news is we have a lot of boys that want to learn and want to lead.

I assume you have multiple rooms to meet in as it could be very disruptive with all activities going on in the same place. I can picture some of the adults that would do exactly that. I also think that it is unnatural for adults to let the boys bear this brunt. It is in most people's nature to make sure things go right for the kids so they have a "good experience". Instead we should make sure they have fun, but also have a "learning experience". Appreciate the feedback from both of you.

When we get together with the new PLC in a couple of months for our Annual Planning Meeting for the boys to determine what they want to do for the upcoming scout year, I want to talk to them about having monthly PLC meetings. They really haven't done them on a regular or semi-regular basis since I stepped down as SM. In the past I have tried two different schedules. The first that I did for the first few years I was SM, was meeting 30-45 minutes before one of the regular troop meetings. The problem with this was that we never seemed to get through everything that we needed to and things were left unplanned. The last couple of years we took one of our weekly meetings and turned it into the PLC/Advancement meeting. So we had the PLC meeting and the other scouts could come in and have a SM conference or BOR or work on MBs, etc. That was great for getting through our agenda and getting everything planned out. The one downside, is it was one less troop meeting that we had in a month and that could sometimes, not always, impact what we would try and accomplish in a month. I am going to leave it up to the boys, but I just wanted to know what some of you folks on the forum do. I know some do it before a meeting and some have a separate meeting either a set week of the month or the week after the campout. Some of you with more experienced boy-led troops, especially, might be able to provide some thoughts on what works for you. That way I can give the boys some pros and cons for each choice. Thanks!

@@TAHAWK, I misspoke when I said "we are going to let them operate". What my intention was meant to indicate was that I don't believe in the Patrol Shuffle as was discussed earlier, so the patrols were going to be left as they were. Trust me, I am in agreement on the Patrol Method, but it is going to take a little time to help the boys unlearn what they have been taught the last couple of years!

I actually had a mom that was that way as well, a neighbor of mine, in fact. Her son made Eagle just before the end of 8th grade. Stayed in long enough to go on a High Adventure later that summer. Re-registered the kid every year, so he could say that he was in scouts for such an amount of time and actually had the nerve at one point to ask if she could have a discount on her annual fee because he wasn't really active and didn't get the benefits that the fee covered. We told her that if that was what she wanted then she should find another troop to re-charter with. My biggest regret as a leader in scouts was this boy's Eagle rank. I was intimidated by the overbearing mother at the time. Never let that happen again!

@, I have to say that I am sorry that you feel that way. However, with as much crap as you have to deal with in your district and council, I shouldn't be surprised. As much as I may disagree with some of BSA's policies I stepped back in because I have seen the effect that scouts has had on my sons and other boys in the troop. I was going over an Eagle Project proposal with an almost 18 year old scout last week. This boy was a huge trouble maker and had severe social issues when he first came into my troop and I never thought that he would be even close to Eagle. We were discussing the MBs he had left and he was talking about what he did for his Communication MB. He presented and led a discussion on the philosophy of Ayn Rand. I was shocked. I never would have guessed a few years ago that he would ever lead a discussion on a topic like that. In addition, his mother has told me several times what a godsend Scouts was to her son. So when I get frustrated with the crap going on at national (or council, district, etc) I just remember I am doing this for the boys and not for anything else.

As I mentioned in a post a couple of days ago, the boys were finally split into patrols. I wasn't around for it, the former SM that I took over for was watching/leading the meeting. Although he didn't do it the way I would have, at least we have patrols again. The one thing that was interesting about it was when he asked the boys how they wanted to form patrols. Every one of them said that they thought it should be mixed age patrols so older scouts are teaching younger scouts as part of it. I have had it both ways same age and mixed age and there have been pros and cons to each. Even though I didn't agree 100% with the method, the boys seemed happy at the end of the meeting, and we are going to let these patrols operate as such. I have mentioned to the former SM that I think we need to go back to menu planning and eating by patrol (they had gone away from that after I left) and he agreed and said he told the boys that and they were excited about that opportunity. We used to have a Leadership Patrol, but the other patrols really found the boys distracting and not helpful, so the boys themselves asked to disband the Leadership Patrol. So, instead, once an SPL or ASPL has served his role, he will go back into the patrol that he came from. Again these were decisions by the boys, and facilitated by the adults. So, we may not be perfect, but the boys had a say in how the patrols were made up and how they will perform going forward.

I did the same thing when my boys were in marching band. I chaperoned to football games and band competitions and I really helped with loading and unloading of equipment, etc. There were a lot of weekends that were spent with the band and/or scouts, as I was SM at the time too. Most of the people involved with band were also involved in some other activity as well, including the Band Boosters president who was an ASM in my troop. I agree with @@Stosh that a small group of people make up the majority of the volunteers across organizations.

Agree that we make room for things that matter. Thankfully, I haven't had issues to the point that you have had @, but it is sometimes hard to get people to volunteer. Hopefully, my wonderful charm will do the trick and get more volunteers!

@@NJCubScouter, I tried to get back on topic

@@Rick_in_CA, I didn't use the words "lazy and don't care" specifically and I would never present that attitude to volunteers. As I have said, my personal history when I was SM before in my troop was that I had a great group of parents that volunteered, but now it is a little different. I know people are pulled in many directions, and I am one of them, but I also notice that those that are pulled in many directions are usually the ones that step up and volunteer, folks such as yourself who are trying to do multiple things to help. If you were in my troop and weren't as involved but stayed somewhat involved, I wouldn't in any way complain about it, because you care enough to stay involved. I do know that there are parents, and I think several posters on this forum can personally attest to this, that don't volunteer for anything. It is just a general trend that I have seen in my district and in conversations (which obviously @@Stosh and @ agree with) that parents are volunteering less.

@@LeCastor, very interesting article! Thanks for linking.

@@LeCastor, I guess I was lucky when I was SM in my troop before . I had very helpful and active volunteer parents, so this is why I am taking a bigger notice of this now I guess. I always did the "small tasks" thing in the past and that has worked, hopefully it works again!