qwazse

The tough thing about awards ... Figuring what matters most to the boys: AoL on his cub uni vs. getting it at crossover with his den? Eagle Court of Honor or just having his troop at Ganny's for graduation party? Wearing that Eagle patch at camp or waiting until the CoH for mom to pin the medal on? Leaving time in the schedule to finish Eagle, or training so he can legitimately hold that ASM + Trained patch right out the gate? The answers are never the same for every boy. Except ... "Son, it's about time you started seeing your own patches on!"

First, let's contemplate that word "temporary." Let's put the average Boy Scout tenure at 5 years (a few age out, a few drop out). If this temporary change is for a year, that will consume 20% of his scouting career ... That boils down to 20% fewer leadership opportunities. NSPs stink. I believe it. But usually they stink because they aren't challenged to cook a complex meal. (Someone talks them out of it for the sake of efficiency.) Yours did, and learned that their lack of teamwork costs time. They stink because they are saddled with a name that someone else gave them or they chose when they really didn't know what they were doing. Yours are taking up the challenge of renaming themselves. Have the SPL ask the boys in can't-get-their-name-right patrol if they want to stick together. If yes, the troop will try to support them with better coaching. (Pull the TG. Give the PL and APL a couple of training evenings and weekends courtesy of the oldest scouts. Invite them on a special activity that the Veteran patrol is doing. Etc ...) If no, then the troop's other patrols will decide who wants to be traded for some younger scouts in hopes of gaining more mentoring opportunities. None of this is the SM/ASM's problem to solve. December is forever away in a boy's mind. By then NSP may be a bunch of cracker jacks.

Is your problem that one or two of the patrols are a little slow, or one of the "fast" patrols isn't challenged enough? For example, in our backpacking excursions, we may assign the older scout patrol a 14 miler and the younger scout patrols 5 milers. Since each patrol is doing all if its day's activity independently, there's no reason to do any cooking together as a troop. Regardless, I don't understand why you all are afraid of putting the boys in a room and tasking them with figuring out the roster of three patrols by the time you all come back from grabbing a coffee.

This may sound trivial, but at times I've found to be an annoyance. How many of you like he tent in general, but have found yourself getting replacement stakes (or possibly some other part that came with the tent) an your earliest opportunity? For he Eurekas, the aluminum stakes were a disappointment. For the Colemans, invariably I'd be replacing the poles or cutting down dining fly poles to use as wind supports.

BLW2, growing up, our troop had a pocket requirements booklet (standard BSA issue) that we used for T2F. That was an era when every boy was expected to have a wallet in his pocket, and this little booklet would fit there tidily.

durn thumbs! SSScout, that should have been plus one!

The top leader? The one who does the work of a leader at the time! Example, at summer camp one year they boys were in a funk about something (can't remember exactly what) and a younger scout (provisional from another troop actually) got a round of song started around the campfire and got everyone going forward. At that moment, he was the top leader ... POR patch notwithstanding. As the Good Book say: let him who is a servant among you be the greatest of all. So, the SPL who serves his PLC well, who in turn serves their patrols well, who in turn surve each other well ... That guy is the top leader. An SPL who assigns tasks and that's about it? Pretty much the bottom of the pecking order as far as I'm concerned.

I don't think it makes much of a difference. Those few years after high school will tell more of the story. There is a tremendous amount of busy work to being DE. So, I would think an clerk in the military would excel over most college grads. Obviously a college grad who was in ROTC or who worked in sales/marketing would have advantages. Sometimes the DE who was never a scout thinks highly of the program for never having been one. In that sense, sincerity trumps history. I know one lady who does an outstanding job. How a new DE performs (by the numbers) out of the gate is really determined by the mentoring of his/her colleagues, and the heavy lifting already being done by the commissioners. How he/she helps your unit with your particular problems depends on how much he/she's paid attention during training vs. the level of difficulty your unit is in.

My kids loved Latin! (Much of the credit for that goes to an enthusiastic teacher.) And, although they are die-hard science majors, English was their strength. (Especially Son #2 who outright disdained the humanities to his English teacher. In turn, she said he was one of her more enjoyable students!) I wished Latin was offered in my H.S. (told some teachers so at the time). I made do with French. I was always too chicken to take it or Greek in college. Loved learning Arabic, though. (Best way to get small classes at a big university at the time.)

Definitely what we are teaching boys with this is "legwork PR." It's a profession that some companies value highly. When Son #1 was in high school, he got a job just like this for a pizza joint -- putting flyers in apartment boxes, etc .... As for the CO letting some boys have a meal on them, well, lets just call it "product testing."

I think, in general, UC's who get together, share data, and plan specific near-term actions that they can do as a team (like calling a sample of boys who drop from a roster, promoting a scout-driven recruiting campaign, highlighting some district or council program) will be more effective and efficient than waiting for a plan from National. Some people will balk at training, but if there's a routine cycle of problem-solving that they can get in on, the training can be slipped in while some "work's getting done."

I'll agree with Stosh that Mr. ho-to-quit, as described, is not a bad apple. Boys and their little insurrections rarely amount to much. I disagree that the protest could have been averted. New SM is bound to do something that'll light the fuse. As to what to do next ... Contact the boy ... Ask SPL or PL or buddy to do it ... Contact parents ... Have a committee member or old SM do it ... Those decisions are best settled on with the help of caring adults until the new SM grows a "gut feel" for his scouts. I'm sorry, but a bunch of old farts on the Internet do not qualify as caring adults!

The Eureka series has served our family well. But then again, so have hardware store tarps and para chord. Of which you can buy quite a lot for the price of a retail tent.

Probably the best strategy to implement uniforms: Wear yours. Apologize to the boys if for some reason you are at a meeting out of uniform (e.g., you get stuck at work with no time to change). Teach the SPLs to do the same. Thank them when they look sharp. Train your SPLs in using the uniform inspection sheet, and have them put inspection night on the calendar. Pass out copies of the sheet one week. Give the PLs a chance to practice inspect/fix problems the next week. Have the SPL do overall inspection. Have some little flag-totem for the patrol with the highest average score. Spout off uniform trivia from time to time. (You'll find plenty of it on this forum!) You really don't have to do inspection often. Our troop hasn't done it in years. Uniforming has its own momentum.

Every SM has two options: filter in the boys who fit the mold he wants to stay in, or grow with his boys as he learns how to positively reinforce his vision. Now, I suspect Mr. How-to-quit was just itching for a reason to oppose change. So I disagree with Stosh that the opportunity "just walked out the door." Whatever boundary you would have drawn, he probably would have balked. Anyway, this is where your other adults come in handy. They need to give you his back-story. Then you need to decide if and how to flex for this kid. Again, nothing any of us on this side of the Internet can do to help you with that decision. Your people, and maybe the kid's parents, can give you an honest appraisal such a boy. (Yep, there'll be more of them.) With my oppositionally defiants, I usually emphasize skills acquisition. I tell the kid that It's not about the patch, but is he able to do something this week that he couldn't do the week before. Regarding uniforms, BSA recently allowed boys to wear neckerchiefs independent of their filed uniforms. Your boys might not be interested, but it's useful to know. Oh, and your dad? It's like I have an evil twin! I started announcing soccer games to improve my behavior!

We've used a similar event with our local Wendy's. We usually schedule it for our meeting night. It's optional for families of the boys to come, but we encourage it. Boys show up in uniform for a given hour and thank everyone for supporting the troop. It's a great way to get your friends and neighbors together to meet the boys. There is a unit fundraising application that you are supposed to file with your council, but call your DE to see if he thinks that's necessary. It didn't net a lot of $ for the troop, and it took them a while to figure that amount on one occasion. But it was a fun change of pace from the usual meeting night. Around here, most of the boys would go out like that anyway once a month or more, so we didn't factor in how much they ate the profits.

Maybe ... A change in uniform. Maybe UCs should only wear BSA dress (blue blazers) when fulfilling their duties. Keep them them from walking into the room with a row of knots and WB beads and a commish patch. So, they enter the room looking very clearly like they are not an integral part of troop life. They look like service people not field people. They aren't a unit's "spare SM". They shouldn't look anything like one.

Round here? Unless it's that one BBQ that upper-middle-class folks are afraid to go in, take the rodent ... seriously.

You got good people! That's 80% of it. Another 10% will be figuring out ways to thank them as often as you can without annoying them. What you all actually do with the boys is the rest of the equation. How do I state this politely without repeating the other replies? THIS HAS TO CHANGE For you and I, as Eagles, the goal was to make Eagle. We were first class scouts, the Eagles around us were good eggs, they devised cool projects, we wanted to devise a cool project, the troop needed leadership, we were gifted in providing that leadership, the folks didn't need much help minding the store ... it made sense for us to round it all out and get that bird. But that will not apply to every one of your first class scouts. That may be the goal for all of the boys you met last night, but that's them. That may be the goal for every boy's parents, but that's them. But that's not your goal for them. It can't be. Otherwise, there will be no point in keeping a 17 year old boy with Star rank. There would be no point in keeping the boy who barely avoids robbing a liquor store to buy drugs. Your goal ... for every boy ... is that he be a first class scout until he ages out. First class if he's ranking. First class if he's not. First class at meetings. First class at school. First class in the woods. First class at home. First class even if he never obtains that rank! That "Eagle churn" that you heard about? It's because the SM had the wrong goal. Everyone bought into the wrong goal. Suddenly boys who had no business making Eagle their goal forgot about being first class -- and parents were okay with it.

This is where your view as a scout and your view as an SM must change: the goal in scouts is not Eagle rank. That was just your personal goal. The goal is to be a first class scout (the concept, not the patch). That's what you're calling the "end goal." That's why there are no time requirements on First Class rank anymore. It might take a fella 5 years to make second class, and one month to finish 1st. First class scouts get caught up in all sorts of things ... Travel, service projects, positions of responsibility, merit badges, all manner of activities in other programs .... only a few of them will balance it all to earn Eagle. But all of them will be accomplished scouts.

UC is a good idea, if you're a good listener.

I did talk to our AoLs who visited tonight, and they did not have a name for their den.

I think the step down began with the name. At least with the Silver Award, anyone who had seen an Eagle Award would make the connection. And folks from the military might make the association with "Silver Star." I'm afraid not everyone makes the association between "Summit" something grand and glorious -- at least not until they've seen a 14k peak with their own eyes. If anything, given the "One Oath Initiative", I would think calling it "Venturing Eagle" or "Eagle Venturer" would have conveyed a greater sense of intrinsic value. But, the venturers who cared about naming awards also cared about being distinct from boy-scouts, thus the names we have. I doubt the name-choice is precisely why the current medal might not look as noble as earlier awards. I suspect there was a change in manufacturer due to uncertainty in demand. On the other hand, the award now comes with a patch ... so it could have been cost containment. At the next Area summit, I will try to pay closer attention to what youth who actually earn the awards think.

Our Pack's Weblos dens never did. If I see the current WDL's, I'll ask. There was a period when our troop re-organized patrols, and they would sound off as patrol #1, #2, etc ... and I would comment, "Den's have numbers. Patrols have names!" I think you have the right strategy, Let your Bears lead by example when they move up. If the boys are enthused by it, keep it up. If you find it to be a net negative, drop it. Then pass on what you've learned to the next DL.

@@SSScout and @@Eagledad, the OP was referring to the 'classroom' training, not IOLS. And the question was not if he should, but if he could. I see no reason why not -- considering there are limited opportunities for that course throughout the year. Get the boy trained before he goes off to college or war, and fitting things like this into his schedule will be difficult.