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What you are talking about is stealth advancement and reflection ... it has its place at every level of scouting.What your friend is talking about is personal growth and planning ... it has its place at every level of scouting. They are mutually inclusive strategies.

Wheelbarrows. The US Occupational Health and Safety Association (OSHA) says 14 year olds should not be employed to use them. BSA has circulated that and other tool use recommendations to their units. Yes, some camps do offer optional programming features that allow the units to do just that. It seems to be becoming more popular.

@@StillLoomans, this is not your problem. The camp wants its lifesaving students to earn swimming MB. So, tell mom or dad the boy can either: 1. Contact the swimming MBCs in your district to see if he can earn it before camp then earn lifesaving at camp, 2. Contact the lifesaving MBCs in your district to see if he can earn it before or after camp and swimming at camp, or 3. Earn both badges from an MBC in the district, and have dub building catapults at camp, or 4. Earn lifesaving MBC from a district counselor, and forget swimming and earn hiking or cycling instead, or 5. Earn emergency preparedness instead of lifesaving, Leave the adding to the requirements rhetoric in the garbage can with the fiddle used to play "My Heart Bleeds for You." Meanwhile encourage the SM to suss out how much the boy really wants to earn Lifesaving and why.

@@moosetracker, it's a grey area entirely dependent on how the deed was worded when the land was gifted. It was probably worded as a gift to scouts, not to the CO's in particular. And, unlike equipment, parcels of land may be counted as the equivalent of financial contributions. Which is why the SE pounced. That's why most lawyers in these parts put a stipulation in the title that if the land is sold, all proceeds from the sale revert to the estate of the donor.

@@KentClizbe, either provide a quote from the pertinent section of your manuscript, or don't reference it. We don't need a snake oil salesman when plenty of us on these forums brew it for free. @@Scouter99, we've had similar problems with elected SPL's ... only one of whom was the SM's son. The grass ain't necessarily greener, but at least the boys planted it. Everybody, teach boys that if half of their patrol activities are not independent of the troop, they will run the risk of being subsumed by the SPL's agenda.

Love this!!! It's like my boys have evil twins! What they needed was a "vision" of what a patrol should be preparing to do. You gave them that by saying, "These are the games you can play, and this is the one you are going to do, and do it until you like it." Every patrol is different, mine are currently older boys (if they are acting through the crew things are only slightly different than when they are doing it through a patrol), so navigating an Appalachian bog in a race against bears to the blueberries is a vision that they accept. Settling down comfortably in weather that others would curse and finding beauty therein is another vision that they accept. It's something that *I* told them that *I* expect every scout in any unit *I* serve should aspire to do. They've accepted it ... with some limits. From time to time I remind them that their "won't do" lists make up the bars in the prisons of their own design, and If they want to break some shackles, I'm here with the keys. This is how we talk. It doesn't work for everyone, and it doesn't always work with these guys. But it lays the groundwork for further growth in all of us. For younger scouts ... you do need to be more concrete. "Okay, Wolfs, you've been together for a year, your PL has become a first class scout. Your mission is to set up camp on the opposite side of the field from us adults. Get a fire started quickly, and cook dinner on it. Then review the map of this area and come to me with your plan for tomorrow's 5 mile hike through town. Determine when you will have breakfast, when you will have secured camp for your absence, and when you will return. Set a time tonight or tomorrow for me to review your plan." The first outing, after months of sheltering under the wings of the older boys in the troop playing scout skill games, they might balk. Or they might be overly ambitious. But regardless, they need to get a vision via adult association to know where they stand. I don't consider any of that going against the patrol method. I consider it defining the method for the boys so that they apply it successfully.

I'm not averse to the concept. I can't truly speak to waste of money until I see the production budget (split between paper and digital) and then a year later compare it to sales. But, I voted pessimistically until those are made public. My main concern: transferability. Once a boy is finished using the pamphlet, how can he turn it in to his troop library? What tool can a troop librarian have to manage these E-volumes? Say, he has four licenses for one book. Five guys are working on the badge. Can he determined who gets which volume? Is he able to "call back" licenses if they haven't been excersized? In other words, I know how to make paper pamphlets -- and the sharing of them to contain costs -- part of a youth's responsibility. I want to know how do the same thing with this new product from the company that's selling this service.

Hmmm. It's like @@MattR had a definition of patrolling that envisioned these groups of boys needing to light fire quickly in order to live up to the definition. I guess the growth of scoutmaster skills involves learning when and how hard to nudge a stagnating patrol. We need to accept that when you have to push one aspect of your vision for a patrol, boys may push back. It's a quandary. Just "doing what you do" may not inspire your boys to imitate. Telling them they should do what you do may have them digging their heels. Either way, the practical result for me is their plans for hiking and camping independently need to be tailored to the skills that they have demonstrated. For example, as much as my boys would likely enjoy it, there's no crossing bogs off-trail until they come back from orienteering courses with solid after-action reviews. Obviously, that requires they set up or attend orienteering courses.

They could stand to travel a little. "I've never been to Niagara Falls before, but based on the pictures, I'm pretty sure this is what it's like. ..." Of course, the poor girl was a reporter, not a forecaster, but we still can't stop laughing!

He does not need to be tapped out. The local lodge chief or advisor should be able to tell him where/how to send his dues to re activate his membership.

Didn't the pioneering MB pamphlet have some instructions on building a log cabin?

Sorry to not get back to this earlier ... I had my nose to far into the I&P thread and missed these awesome (as usual) questions ... The simple answer is: (unless I've underestimated your omnipresence) you won't always be there. Two years from now when this boy is out on his own with his buddies and their girlfriends and his muscle memory about axe grinding fails him, will @@Oldscout448, or you or I be around for him to get a quick refresher -- even if he does manage to find cell service up the hill from whatever idyllic vally they set up camp in? It's vital that each boy knows there's a reference he can turn to ... a book that he can keep at hand, maybe. Or a pamphlet that might go into specific detail. So, when we're not around, each can rehearse the skill with some surety that they are working from a common source. By having a boy grab his handbook, and look up the pertinent section, an SM may also learn that their are gaps and inadequacies in one reference relative to the skill level the boys are shooting for, and can make sure they have something written at the level they are trying to achieve.

I guess that's where I differ. The last DE and I ... our spouses were colleagues, so we had him his wife and their dog over once or twice. The current DE, well, we wound up riding around on a quad during a SAR at summer camp last year. For us these were young guys who grew up in the program. The venturing DEs have been a little more hit-and-miss. But then again, they come into the program as outsiders. From time to time I've had to call them out at RTs over some asinine council policy they were parroting, but that's point, isn't it? A working district is just big enough to cover a wide geography and still provide two-way communication between and among the pro's and the volunteers. That stuff did get run up the chain, sometimes at my (or someone in the troop's) request. And our SE's would let us bend their ear. These must have been decent enough folks, because two of them made it to CSE. I have met other SE's who at times were quite proud of their brick shithouses (quite literally) and didn't mention a word of their staff and volunteers, so I suspect there can be other ways of doing business out there not conducive tight-knit districts. So decent districts should provide a little something for every unit.

Agree with @@Stosh. The only alternative is to dig your heels in and say "I'm the treasurer now. These are the rules. They are for the good of the troop. Follow them." That said, a motion approved in committee minutes for a specific purpose may count as a receipt. (E.g. "By CC: To give Mrs. X, $100.00 in advance for court of honor preparation. Seconded by SM. Approved.") That way in your ledger you can reference the minutes. Then if the woman goes on a bender with her motorcycle gang, the troop has legal recourse to demand $ if the desired product was not there.

Oops, just read your other post, and saw you are an adult, and this was the unit award that you went for. Still, thanks for letting us know the hoops.

Welcome to the forums. Glad your pack took this on with you! Let's face it, some boys are better at service projects than others. Those simple steps of getting guidance, doing research, and working with an advisor are daunting to most first class scouts. Usually, the most I expect of a first class scout is to present me a plan to take his patrol hiking and camping with maybe an hour of service thrown in for good measure. I routinely expect that of my venturers, and they are often very uncomfortable with that humble objective. Youth willing to mobilize their community are a rare breed. Keep encouraging your peers to do fly in rarefied air.. Messaging does work. And other scouts watching might contact you if their parents allow them to talk to strangers in the Internet. Alternatively, there is a way to open a blog on this site if you want to share your experience in detail ... Not that any of have tried it, but there's always a first .

it was in reply to one of Bryan's earlier thread. I don't have the patience for digging through his old posts. Sorry for not making that clear. Fairness to scouting magazine, they don't delete comments like those. Opting to let them get buried in the slew of daily threads. Cousin Robbie makes the same slippery slope argument. I don't think it's entirely fair. The permissive sexuality movement is evolving boundaries as it advances. Less permissive folks may not trust the ability of people to maintain said boundaries (adults of minority orientations with too few similar adults -- coupled with the mobility of hormonal adolescents -- does sound like gasoline on fire), but I give them credit for trying.

Folks are afraid of me culling the girls. Supposedly another adult female in camp precepts that. :/ The LGBTQIA community (I think that's the new official acronymn for the entire constituency) is indeed proposing something new. Along with the redefinition of marriage, comes a redefinition of the terms of sexual expression. This sexual expression may be latent in adolescence but society should affirm it. And that includes affirmation by inserting adult constituents into youth communities -- without actually assaulting those youth. When a fella on Bryan's blog says outright and with no shame that he had same-sex relations with his former SM (among others) once he was legal, it doesn't instill confidence among folks who aren't very permissive.

Glad to see this working. Maybe I'll use it to nudge my crew into significant action. Don't expect much from national regarding venturing, and you'll be pleasantly surprised when it happens. Most of us are used to seat-of-your-pants operation, but here's a brainstorm: I'd leave record-keeping up to the youth. Sounds like you have buy-in, so get them to purchase handbooks and work this old-school. Get them into the habit of journalling their own successes. In a couple of months, challenge them to write their resume' of their venturing career so far. If you have a Crew Historian or Secretary, try to set up a cloud-based system for recording things like this and give them privelages to write in it. Track the big things, like Discovery, Path Finder, etc ... online. Eventually, when National's IT catches up with this program (in a way that let's the youth have some responsibility for the record-keeping), you can buy-in. Or, you all can just settle for becoming the model for the rest of us. That's how venturers roll.

Was there with the wife and kids 8 days before. Made a dash up Elk Mt. But, it really wasn't hard to see what was coming and what the window of opportunity was. Just like with scouts, I used weather.gov two days before then the day before. That was enough to tell me that we would have to review plans the morning of. (Mrs. spent a lot of time drumming up alternate destinations. Noble attempt, but useless.) Morning of, we saw that the Wildlife refuge was the least turbulent. We set our noon turn-around time. Son #1 had been in a 100 MPH winter storm before, so I knew he would not linger at the peak. If it wasn't for the slow service at Meers, and everyone wanting to swing by our hotel before returning to Daughter's apt, we would have been holed up before the heavens let fly. Oh well, pitted van roof souvenier. The rangers there are pretty conciencious, so they have a good idea of who is setting up where. Just because a dad was clueless doesn't mean the SM didn't review evacuation routes with the ranger.

Picky picky ... Sorry for those of you with red-blue colorblindness. Didn't feel like changing fonts. Not everything that a district does will be of value to every unit. A district shouldn't do anything that is of no value to any unit. But, it sounds like that happens a lot outside of (the great) Seneca district. For that, I feel sorry for you all.

We're small, like @@Stosh's troop, but older. Sometimes the boys like to have a theme. (Lately, that's been cooking.) Sometimes they just want to focus on the next event. Like backpacking, when the straps start rubbing, adjust them.

I don't find this a problem, unless the unit is EDGE-dependent. The boys will learn by the SM's and PL's example that the ideal way of mastering a scout skill includes looking up a reference. "I don't know, let's see if we can find it in this field guide." ... Perhaps the best phrase a boy could ever hear. When my crew was hiking around Lake Arthur, we came upon a tall tree that had dropped some odd nuts, and the MC and I stopped and spent a good while talking over what it could be. It thoroughly perplexed my daughter and her friend (the MC's daughter) to see us haggling over this identification. That evening I looked up a guide, then e-mailed everyone to let them know, that I narrowed it to English hornbeam. If the kids see us on our little voyages of discovery, they won't be embarrassed to make their own journeys.

Things I get from the district that are no small feat ... someplace once a month for scouters of all sorts to get together, a list of counselors for every MB (not just the ones my troop has experts in), someplace to send each pack's best PWD car day camp an advancement chair for every Eagle BoR a means for my crew to invite every scout in our community to help them place flags on veterans' graves in the city's not-for-profit cemetary camporees fliers printed on council's ink council calendars a place for good men to serve when their time in a unit has run its course my boys get to know that the SM and I aren't the only adults that expects them to suck it up and carry their weight. Yes, sometimes my people get guff from high-handed UC's. (Ron, if you're reading, love you man. But, we're not about to be bothered by the burrs up other folks' butts.) And they have to put up with me yanking the chain back. Small cost of doing business, I figure.

'Skip has a point. The reason BSA is in this state of arrested development is that 25 years ago homosexual rights publications were holding up some of their constituents who were model citizens, one of whom happened to be an SM. They used his association with the BSA to ask society at large to be more tolerant ... not to suggest that that boys were an impressionable source of future members.