qwazse

First, a scout does not have to show me anything. Our PL's sign off on requirements. Things that I suggest that they require for signoff include but not limited to ... Assisted by a map, a verbal description of each find (location, type of evidence, estimated size or numbers, particular activity). Notepad with drawings. Reference to the page in the field guide used for identification. DNA samples, with lab results. (Okay, just joking!) Pictures, with labels. Audio recordings. Even if the PL is present when the boy does his little exploration, I encourage him to review each find using the one of the above methods. Finger-pointing in the moment does not cut it. If he can't recall 10 items that he just saw, he wasn't paying enough attention and did not fulfill the requirement.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with teaching a skill that the boys want to learn! They can call a counselor and have him or her come in and maybe explain some of the finer points of the requirements. Maybe provide them a practice session. But, even when our boys had the chance to do worksheet-type paperwork, for a badge-on-the-spot ... only a minority would have completed it ... EVEN WHEN THE ANSWERS WERE SPELLED OUT DURING THE MEETING! Isn't it better to take that time pencil-whipping and use it to demonstrate something cool? Anyone who wants a patch for it can ask for a blue card and line up an appointment with a counselor. If they didn't remember anything specific from the meeting, they master requirements by the first step in the tried and true method of learning MB skills: referencing a pamphlet!

Well. I gave you one way of interpreting the intent of the med forms. Scoutergripper gave you the opposite. And there's everything in between. So now you can tell your committee there's a half dozen scouters on the internet with as many diverse opinions. They'll be shocked. I'm not against in principle having some basic medical and contact info on file, but you're stuck herding unwilling cats. Tell them what you'd like (which you've already done). Maintain that folder with flags for everything that is outdated. Make sure your key leaders know where it is ... if you've asked someone for something and they've denied it ... that's on them, not the troop, leave it alone. Insert a blank form in your binder with a flag that's your special color for "requested not returned." You're not a failure if only 80% of your peeps are compliant. But, even if everyone has a change of heart and turns in their paperwork ... you need to understand something: these forms work really well for a camp where there is a medic station with a full time crew in radio contact with every camp staff director. For the day-to-day workings of a troop of volunteers ... not so much. With a troop your size working the patrol method to its fullest, you'll have boys on multiple different activities on the same weekend. If you're forcing those forms to be available for every meeting and eagle project (take it to the extreme ... every contact with a merit badge counselor), and a couple of your patrols meet at their convenience, as do your SPL/APL then your troop has a logistics nightmare. You'd have to split up the binder as needed and hope the forms get "checked in" at the end of each group's respective "activity" ... or make copies, then keep track of who has copies for which and make sure they get a fresh copy when a new form is turned in. Let's take your worst-case scenario. Someone collapses into sudden cardiac arrest. Will the person who knows where the form is be there? When he/she opens that binder, will the forms still be in alphabetical order? What's the odds of the sibling/parent form being grabbed? In the four pages of that form, how long will it take that person (not likely a trained medic) to hone in on the relevant data? Since they have the form, would he/she hustle the boy to the ER, consent to treatment, etc ..., and forget to call the parent/guardian???? The victim is better served by a medic alert bracelet. A misplaced faith in paperwork will not forestall death. You scoffed at the phone list. But, when our troop's very bad day happened and our cars were separated by miles in rush hour traffic ... one of the scouts in the accident sat in the officer's car and got online and remembered our website's password and the officer was able to contact all parents involved then the SM, who -- binders full of forms notwithstanding -- was the last to be contacted. Yes, we did pull the med forms, collected siblings and he sped off to the hospital ... just in case a parent didn't beat us there. They did. Take your pick: Burnout from trying to fulfill the literal interpretation of writer at national who knows nothing of your unit ... or fulfillment from making sure you've increased everyone's odds of handling an emergency well.

d821, I may have misunderstood. Were you thinking that the boy needed to come with a freshly completed part A for every meeting? That's what I was responding to. You DO need complete contact info for every parent. Collect it once, put it on a clean sheet of paper. Before making copies, call every number on the list to make sure you all recorded it correctly, update it at rechartering or more frequently if your parents change phone #s often (it happens). Honestly, when there's that kind of emergency, you will have one irate SM if all there is are a stack of medical records to wade through. You WILL need a medical record for any activity where it would not be practical to wait for a parents' arrival to deliver care beyond first aid. Which means you should collect a copy of A and B one from a boy annually, and for most boys, you would get that along with part C when they go to camp for a week. Frankly, if your troop is full of active boys who actually go out on patrols, etc ... the medical record is best served kept on their person, with the troop copy as a back-up. (This is extremely practical for venturers -- who often participate in events beyond the crew's purview.)

Some say "babysitter", others say "free of helicopters". By vicinity, I mean, if SM calls and says he's taking them to X hospital, they'll be there before the ambulance. (For that, med forms are useless. A roster with phone #s is the thing.)

You're not gonna get unified answer from this site. So here's my working definition: Activities are anything where if there is an emergency, medical info would not be available when professional personnel would need it as they begin to treat the youth. Meetings are not activities. If your parents are in the vicinity, then they will be the purveyors of info, not you. Needless to say, for eagle projects, it depends.

By way of duct tape: take the climbing merit badge book and break it down into meeting activites and cliff-side activities. If you really want to up the game, get a topo map and maybe satellite images and let the youth use it to identify where some workable cliffs and boulder fields might be in your area. Pick one that they could hike to in a morning (from a safe parking spot), and have them arrange a trip to it. Or maybe you have a training location in mind. Give the youth the GPS coordinates and have them draw up a plan to get there.

It's like my troop has an evil twin! ... with one small exception, which leads me to this off-the-wall suggestion .... Want a plan C? Have your CO consider starting a venturing crew (possibly as an extension of an existing high school youth ministry). Ask the boys: If they want the adventure to continue. If they have sisters and girlfriends who might want to hike and camp. If they think handguns and go-carts should be on the menu. If they want a gang to hang with on leave from school or military. If this flies (clearly you'd have to find adult advisors and committee members), dual-register the older boys in the crew. As the troop shrinks, send the youngn's to an active troop.

Well, there's a leap!

You just got your "man on the inside!" Have the SPL ask him if there are things that they do that you should be doing. This is a rare opportunity ... take advantage of it. If we didn't attract boys from other troops we wouldn't have a troop! (Our boys do the recruiting, and only their buddies, and only if they complain of not camping enough, not really being youth led, being too "military style", summer camp week conflicts with vacation ...) More often than not, those SM's are running decent programs, they just don't fit the boy's style.

Give it the number of adults who will be there on overnights! Be thankful that your crew isn't co-ed. It just gets hairier. (So much so, that I'm kind of relieved if young men and women just travel to location on their own.)

I get it. The SM has not been focused on skills retention. So, JG172 wants that to change, and he uses the boy as an example. That'll only get him so far. Like I said if a boy can't rattle off the meaning of an acronym, but he can tell me in his own words how someone should teach/learn a skill, he's okay in my book ... especially if one of his steps is "look it up in the book!" :0 The adults need to get their heads out of the sand and get on the same page with skills challenges. Or, accept that some skills don't matter.

Your son's standing would be unaffected. Your record is your responsibility to disclose on your application. The Charter Organization is responsible for approving adult applications. Discuss this with him or her when (or before) you turn it in.

I had a friend who does surveys help me with my first self-assessment. I gave him the description of crew advisor from the venturing leaders guide, and he and I boiled it down to some quick, yet to-the-point items. I can't find the original, but here are the categories. I think you can easily tweak to answer the questions about your unit: First there was an open ended question: What do You Like Best (about Mr. Q) Then there were checkbox questions (rate excellent, good, fair, not at all): Makes you feell welcome Encourages you to be a leader Is respectful toward you Listens to you Tells you when you are doing a good job Encourages you to participate in activities Makes sure outings and events are safe Takes time to reflect and review what you learned while doing activities Thanks you for helping Then it ended with an open-ended question What You think he Could Do Better

First heard it when Son #1 was finishing 8th grade. The school superintendent defined it as those who were getting the bulk of their education (secondary and beyond) in 21st century. She referenced an original book on the subject, but I never followed up and read it.

First and formost References. That would include contact info the council advancement committee and district advancement chairs. If you could invite any of them to drop by the class, it would be a big boost. Secondly, you want low tech and high tech solutions. So if you know how a troop handles each, two case studies would be good. If your council has best practices, you want to promote them. You might be the only training this person will attend, so your personal philosophy matters. If you believe (as I do) that advancement is best tracked first in a boys handbook, then he brings it from time to time to the Advancement chair to copy into the troop's record, say so sometime in the beginning, middle, and the end of your talk. If you think differently, open with "Unlike those whacky scouters in internet land ..."

Well, I never would have counted Scout Sunday as a troop activity, ever. It's doing what a reverent fella should routinely do, only with a different shirt and temporary change of venue. At the same time, if the boy took the time to write it down in his handbook, I wouldn't strike it. Requesting it for other boys? If they don't write it in their own handbook ... I probably wouldn't count it.

Details matter. If boys are already on a roster to do this stuff, and you have time to touch base to talk about it. Ask the PL assigned for this week, POLITELY, if he would be so kind as to add your one or two changes to the routine. Then after the meeting, ask the PL assigned to do it next week what he thought and let him know he's free to do it either way next week. If you don't have that roster, and your real agenda is establishing a boy led ethic, you need to slow down and add another step ... If you already delineated patrols, and the boys seem generally happy with them, start by having a talk with the SPL (in front of the boys) and giving him a roster (best if you draw it on the clipboard while talking) for which patrol will do opening and which will do closing for the next few weeks. Hand it to him and say "Thank you for adding this to tonight's agenda at the last minute. Forgive me for not talking to you about it earlier, I will try to do better next time. As you were ..." Then return to your seat at the back of the room. If the boys are unhappy with their patrols or think the patrol method stinks, then you have your work cut out for you. Don't touch the opening ceremony or any tradition until cracking that bigger nut! Start with some form of after action review "What do you like about our meetings? What don't you like? What's the one thing you think we should do differently?" Maybe put the "do differents" on separate cards and fave them vote on the most important one, gradually fold in how patrols might make accomplishing the "do differents" easier. My reasoning? People who are in the habit of someone putting their thumb down on them aren't trusting some new boss when he tells them "it's whatever they want to do." They need to experience someone treating them with dignity and respect. They need to see their ideas being worked into the grand scheme of things.

We don't pre-post, but our routine is post, pledge, oath and law. I guess if your boys have good pipes, each one could solo the national anthem on a different week! But seriously, one thing my SM did was have a "this week in American history" booklet, from which one of the boys would read a passage. That often led into his SM minute. Other troops have a pre-opening activity ... typically a 15 minute game. Then flags are a way to transition into something else. I think in that scenario, pre-posting may be a good idea. If you have several patrols, each one could take it in turn to set up the flags and perform the opening ceremony. Pick just one thing to fold in. Do it in a way that suits your style.