qwazse

Or, the girls might field two patrols; and the boys, two. Within their units, no SPL necessary. But the PLCs, deciding to coordinate tightly, might decide to elect an SPL for their frequent-and-often activities at the same place and time. He/she may select an ASPL from either the same or different unit. Two troops, four PLs, one SPL, one ASPL. National sees two charters. Youth PoRs are not on the charter. Even if they were, an SPL would be on one roster and no SPL would be on the other troop's roster and nobody would dare yank the SMs' chains about it one way or the other. The SMs see youth develop leadership .... to the point that SPL may put on his/her resume: "Boy Scouts of America: Troops ###B/###G, ___ rank, Senior Patrol Leader" SM is listed as a reference and backs the claim.

Guys, your quotes just keep getting better as I type! 1. National has no way to track or control how patrols form. It might be cool if they did. Each youth would fill out an online survey on each scout in the rest of the troop and produce a "friend matrix" that would tell the SPL who would best cluster together in patrols. Or it might be just as cool if we keep 'big brother' out of this. 2. National has no way to prevent any two troops from working in lock-step. Any two PLC's could decide they want to camp, hike, and meet together. That's how a spin-off of a spin-off troop and ours eventually merged. The boys looked at their friends meeting just down the road and told us that being two troops was just plain stupid. We shuffled back and forth between CO's, and ultimately settled on the one who wasn't going to charge us rent, but we let the boys wear either of the two unit numbers on their sleeve. 3. My observations of other co-ed scouting groups (including venturing) does not show that boys would be "muscled out" of leadership positions. This is because there are more youth to care for, the outdoors is big, and everybody has to step into a PoR for their patrol (and later, their troop) to succeed. My observation of co-ed contingents on backpacking trips indicate that it is completely random as to who takes the lead. 4. In our culture, girls only look like they have more organizational skills than boys. That's because they haven't been challenged to get their patrol geared up to hike 5 miles to someplace where they will need to set up their own shelter and provide their own food, and all the rosters in the world won't make up for personality conflicts. So, they stay at home and get out their tablet and plan sleepovers, or trips to the mall that require heavy coordination of parent pick-up/drop-off time. 5. Thanks to GS/USA's sequestering of the best troops into isolated clusters of no more than 15, American girls have next to no experience with tour plans like: "Insert Friday, extract Sunday, we've got everything in between, adults Mrs. ___ and Miss __ will supervise from a distance". That development is arrested until they go to college or the military. They start adulthood trained to manage detail: good preparation for corporals, not so good for generals. So, my larger concern for BSA4G -- at least in early years -- is not girls "outleading" boys. It is adults willing to provide girls the controlled chaos that our boys have grown comfortable with.

Now, if the scouts built the camper themselves, they should count it towards camping nights!

Pertinent sections of the g2ss https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/gss/gss03/: Overnight camping may include. This is not family camping, which is defined (emphasis mine) as: If staff were National Camp School trained, they should have known about the winter sports helmet recommendation https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/alerts/winter2009/: What's unsaid is what staff did, if anything, to set up a safe-sledding area.

The message of a charitable giving knot IMHO: A scout is thrifty. He manages his finances for that rainy day ... and so that he can return some of his earnings to the people who he sees doing good in the world. But, this knot may also be given to the person who inspired a donor to act. From http://councils.scouting.org/Council440/Donate/James West Award So when you see someone with that knot, ask more about their story. Find out who made the donation in order for them to wear it and why.

For those who are concerned: From https://scoutingmagazine.org/2008/01/know-your-knots/

Welcome to the forums @justbill !

@HelpfulTracks, we don't usually count Learning for Life members - as many of those participants aren't even aware that their school registered them in the BSA. Excluding that (as well as 18+ year-olds in Venturing and Exploring), we see steady declines in the traditional program - going back to the nationalization of the 18th birthday requirement for Eagle.

No plaques for me please. On the other hand if, in my name, you create a $600 campership for scouts or scholarship for scouters' training or even a gas buy-down for parents who transport scouts, I would be truly honored.

Nobody says six consecutive consecutive weeks!

Well, if they've never done any kind of boating on the ocean, there's no comparison. But, yes, every day of every adventure is on water. Some, like Bahama's adventure, involves island exploring, others, like scuba, bring you back to base in the evening. You don't have to be a collegiate swimmer, but you have to be comfortable swimming a couple hundred yards ... in rather deep water ... with heavily-toothed critters scuttling below out of sight.

Except for issues like camperships or waiving dues for specific scouts - which involves some privacy - committee members benefit from the presence of DLs at their meetings. But that starts asking for more than one hour a week from your DL!

You need to search less quickly. There are, quite literally, boatloads of adventures: http://www.bsaseabase.org/Adventures.aspx. That said, mask, fins, and snorkel are integral to most of the adventures ... sort of like hiking boots at Philmont. Even the out-island adventure that you mention involves snorkeling gear. There's also fishing, and if you're lucky, seafood.

Just flew home. Feels good to have one's face hurt by stepping outside. Less deceptive than that sun getting you all cheery only to have you watch your face peel off later.

Honor God and Country Help Others Obey the Scout Law[ Three fingers symbolize those three points. I don't think the thumb holding down the pinky was meant to symbolize anything - it was just a way to draw attention to the other fingers. So, I like option 1.

My issue with the "masculinity" mantra is that, having met scouts from other countries who are no more or no less paragons of their respective sexes, I found men who are no less masculine nor women who are no less feminine than our own citizens. My impression is that boys become masculine with or without the presence of girls in their troop. The cultural influences that foster gender dysphoria (or identity discovery, as a progressive may call it) may overwhelm notions of male or female mystique. This may be especially true in (BSA or GS/USA) troops who value ideals to the near exclusion of the promise of scouting in the outdoors. In contrast, the pioneer spirit of men and women working together to settle in a strange land side-by-side may be what youth need to rekindle the notion that we humans were created uniquely to complement one another. But, that would require any set of boys and girls to be tasked with monthly challenges of hiking and camping independently with their mates.

There are plenty of scouting forums that ban discussion of the 3G's and politics and general. I don't mind that there's a mix of both. I'm trying to get my head around lots of things. Only some days is it the patrol method or scoutcraft. This week I'm dealing with a couple of young relatives (an their dad) who are about done with scouting because the SM vetoes the boys requests to camp every month, freaked out when the one 14 y/o boy wanted to spend the night sleeping out in 30 degree weather (south Floridians) , and avoids back-country like the plague. On top of it, the dad and I got skunked fishing this morning, so we had nothing to distract us from our little worlds of trouble! On weeks like this I don't enjoy hearing that someone like @Eagle94-A1 also has adults who refuse to deliver on the promise of scouting, so it's nice to have a forum that I can look to for a decent current I&P back-and-forth where I can simply up- or down- vote.

Boy Scout: Life Rank, Senior Patrol Leader That says it all, and is enough on the resume` to get you an interview from anyone who admires scouts (and no small number of employers who may despise them). At the interview, they will ask how close you are to getting Eagle and what specific responsibilities you took on as SPL. As an employer, I want to know that you'll call a spade a spade. Trust me, Mrs. Q and I are dealing with an elder care situation where staff didn't have the stones to be forthright with us. Their administrators got an earful, and they are none too please to hear about their staff glossing over an incident that could have been settled with an apology. I'll bet a -1 on this post from you if you don't experience this.

I'm betting it's not what I or anyone else feels, but what skilled litigators have got from negligence cases when plaintiffs were all-male caretakers vs all-female caretakers of the opposite sex.

Or, maybe BSA has been breaking more lofty rules for a few decades, and they are just setting things aright! Player or pawn, she's not the first. She just happens to be present when enough customers are clamoring for recognition based on achievement, not identity.

Wierd, I never experienced anything like this on the iPad.

The one group of youth who I most want to keep are the ones who, for what they save by not registering, go hiking and camping independently with their mates.

We used Google Docs, Calendar, Sites, and Groups. For messaging, the last group of boys used Instagram with limited success. The limit was mostly selfishness on my part because I didn't want to create one more account. Our council VOA advisor is giving GroupMe a trial run. Evidently the regional VOA has been operating with it for some time. If the crew reactivates, I may give this a re-think. Although the more E-hoops I go through, the more I am liking Field Notes (https://fieldnotesbrand.com/products/original-kraft) ... and a cork-board at the CO. (Or, maybe a dead-drop outside it.)

It seems like your advantage is a small community ... at the moment. Basically, you have a patrol of boys and a patrol of girls. My daughter's problem seemed to be that she was the 16th girl in any troop with regular outdoor activities. Thus, venturing. That said, for the other girls in my crew ... We had mostly dual registered (either with a GS/USA or BSA troop) in our crew. Council wide, it tended to be the GS/USA pros who were most vocal about the arrangement. The rank-and-file volunteers made it work with happy faces. In general, I've always known BSA to encourage youth at every level to participate in other service/outdoor organizations as well as their troop/crew -- with the expectation that they bring back what they discovered to the unit.

@cocomax, is your GS/USA troop sticking to the size limit of 15? Or are the bucking that "recommendation"?