qwazse

What national is not doing, is envisioning the pinnacle scouting experience as hiking and camping independently with your friends. If that is not the vision, then the patrol method is just a hypothetical method, one that may be abandoned if it doesn't meet the SM's ends of developing character and leadership in post-modern society. For example, if one envisions the pinnacle going to Jambo or some HA base (which likely only will draw a portion of youth enrolled and necessarily require 2 adults for every 10 youth), then patrol is a helpful, but non-essential method for the average scout! They'll pick up everything they need to know on day 1 of the adventure, and if not, there's an adult within earshod to redirect them. On the other hand, if the best and truest scouting experiences are when the gang is out on a routine haunt without any adult, that gang had better develop skills, accountability, and integrity to be a welcome element in their "'hood."

Barry: Thanks for the confidence. I found a guide that she could practice with. If she thinks she'll have too many problems, I'll sew marks in her end so she'll know what aligns where. KM: I wound up using nylon rope for that very reason. Besides, it matched the dress better (and sets off the whipping that matched the bridesmaid's gowns). I still fused the ends a little, and they may catch. TT: S3: I showed them a number of alternatives. They stuck with this! Thanks for the reference! I'll add that to the Ecclesiastes 4:12.

Tangent alert (but I can't resist)! As an afterthought, the new venturing summit award should have a silver vulture on it's device. Vultures are found at higher altitudes than eagles!

Oh, we get this on so many levels. But, here's what you are missing ... If a program succeeds at a district level, a council will do its level best to make sure it perpetuates council-wide. The arms of a council are its districts. A district without a strong, permanent, volunteer leadership structure is considered "broken". When it comes time to do push-ups, it won't rely on that broken arm. The council "helps" by encouraging volunteers to assemble around strong district leadership who include in their plans solid arrangements to pay for staff time spent promoting events (instead of, say, knocking on some millionaire's door asking for donations or some charter org's door asking for space and time to start a new unit). You have an organizing committee that's floating one event for cubs. How about three events per year for cubs, boy scouts, and venturers in your district? If what you are doing is head-and-shoulders above what the neighboring district is doing, promote it at the roundtables of all of your neighboring districts. Now there may be reasons why your units want to steer clear of council (personality conflicts, byzantine regulations, added cost), but in doing so you make yourself out to be something less than a district. The only way to break this cycle is to get a group of scouters willing to manage conflicts, form a leadership structure that can work through regulations, and learn how to negotiate cost with -- or at least extract more benefits from -- council.

Make sure you talk to your leaders right away and ask them if they would at least sign for your first class in your book. That way you'll be able to keep track from where you left off. Don't wait until your scoutmaster conference for star to make sure everything you've done so far has been recorded with the troop and your awards are on the way.

So 'Skip, if some of our disenfranchised homosexuals and atheists shipped across the pond, would you find them jobs and make good use of their free time? Or, when you talk about space limitations, do your countrymen really need to build/free-up more physical space for youth programs?

Stretch hammocks between the adirondacks for any scouts who need to use those 6 nights for the MB.

I really wish folks would get over the "checklist" mentality. I make things open-ended. "What is your duty to God?", "How much have you done that?", "Is there one thing that you are going to try to do more of?" Keep in mind this is a seven year conversation that you're having. Your goal when you review the requirement is to learn something about the scout. Over the years, you may guide him to include his parents or religious leader in the discussion, but you'll be the first person to hear about it. By making the effort, you'll be in the privileged position of bringing those parties together. Moreover, a scout may be fine about his duty to God, but if distant cousins are languishing in a war-torn country, he might have some issues about duty to country. Scout Spirit isn't so much about going through some prescribed motions, but bringing a scout-like attitude to life's tough situations.

So, what you are saying, is that a parent must not only assign guardianship over the child's health and safety over the weekend, but also authority over all of the child's financial resources over the weekend.

Perd's post in no way suggested one-deep adult leadership. He was very specific that the requirement was "at least one" of the congruent sex of the youth involved. For an all boys outing, the unit certainly may only have one male adult ...along with one or more female adult leaders.

Confused about what you think needs changed: Allow "unoffical" guardians (gramps, adult brother) assigned by parents/legal guardians to tent with cubs. (After all, nothing in guardianship law is intended to cover which adults may temporarily shelter a youth for the purposes of outdoor recreation.), or Stipulate that "guardian" in G2SS must refer to the definition applied by your state. (Which it sounds like this pro- effectively did.)

Pardon the fuzzy logic. But with quality #s like these it really is better to guess on the side of most optimistic gains from their reports vs.worst case of ours and then round the ratio very crudely ... Fred: TL troops are K-12. So that 50 probably breaks down the usual pyramid we all have come to know and despise: 10 1st graders ... maybe 2 12th graders. Also I counted 600 instead of their reported 670 of current and in-process of charters. KDD: For quick stats, it doesn't matter where our losses are coming from. Or where TL is picking up theirs. I don't mean to imply that they are even the same boys. Unless TL posts stats on how many former BSA members they have vs. how many youth were never BSA members, we won't have a clue. Pere: Yep, maybe it's 1/5 not 1/3. Still, only a fraction of our losses are boys who marched straight over to TL.

Wow! Lot's of questions, but let me borrow what I've learned (mostly from Kudu) ... Simply (and more generally) put, a patrol is a group of roughly 8 youth who hike and camp independently. A patrol leader's primary responsibility is to qualify to take his(her) members hiking and camping. Adults exist to mentor PLs and help identify senior PLs who would do a good job replacing them as mentors. The challenge for adults is maintaining the necessary physical distance for multiple patrols to operate comfortably in a troop environment. Although we have encouraged patrol method, there are lots of impediments (both among adults and youth). So, we have had a difficult time maintaining that culture. Venturing, which doesn't use patrols as a method at all also can be problematic. The older the youth, and the less responsibility for younger youth, the more they prefer a "club" organizational structure to the patrol method. The G2SS making it seem almost criminal to trust a patrol to execute a 24 hour plan hasn't helped. Thus, as soon as my youth leave the BSA, they start using the patrol method.

To be fair, as soon as I used that acronym with her, I realized that by extension, I am a FILT.

A CC who sets personal limits is much different than a CC who obstructs and impedes. It's not clear which kind you have. If this is a person who simply isn't good at asking for help, encourage her to do so and ask the other person to come along side and encourage a better team effort.

Like 2c said. Living by the scout oath and law. There's no single metric. Usually we challenge each other (yes boys challenge scouters) on one part or the other, so I guess that willingness to be challenged is a hallmark of that "spirit." For some it might need to be attendance, others attitude, others speech, others health habits or citizenship.

You are only as able as you CC and DL's are willing.

The church does have high ceilings and inverted faces ... and we did a bit of rope work when we were remodeling it back in the day. Now that it's all pretty, they frown on that sort of thing.

So Son #1 wants to tie the knot, literally. Instead of that unity candle that's been all the rage these days, he and DILT (daughter-in-law trainee) #1 want me to provide some rope with which they may join one another with bowlines. (I can see the gears rolling with some your replies already.) They asked me to preside over this part of the ceremony. I've already went over knot guides with DILT #1 and it seems like 1/2" sisal is the way to go. There is some debate about whipping the ends to match the gown, the groom's men, or the bride's maids. Not a problem, I got plenty of thread. So have any of you all seen or heard a ceremony like this? I'd like to keep my speaking part to 3 minutes and explain some of the meaning behind the metaphor while the kids are working the rope. Of course "SM minutes" like his should involve a little old, new, borrowed, and blue.

I agree with every step that Fred spelled out except this one. Taking the requirement literally, the student should be "prepared to pass the requirements to his unit leader’s satisfaction". If the learner can't perform the skill, the skill wasn't taught. I wouldn't tell an ASM he/she needs to adjust standards if they are taking things literally. But I would encourage him to consider any mitigating circumstances that could lead to the standard not being met in a particular case. I mentioned the difference between teaching one scout (as mentioned above) vs. teaching many. On top of that, the EDGE method omits some key steps. I've harped on "referencing" (e.g., to a book or instruction sheet) before, but there's also "evaluation". Under a time constraint, this step gets short shrift, and I suspect this star scout -- eager to prove himself in this new environment -- didn't really evaluate if any of his students were ready to present themselves to for proficiency testing. Which reminds of an important 1st step: "allocate time" and "set up an environment." It is inappropriate to expect there to be enough time during a meeting for a boy (let alone a number of boys) to master each scout skill. Again, a star scout (the concept, not the patch) is constantly setting aside time and space to nudge novices along in the learning process. But a boy who is new to the troop may not even have his mate's phone number to arrange to meet after school or during lunch. Likewise mentoring for teaching involves setting aside time including securing the scout's commitment to teach outside of meeting in a learning-friendly environment, making sure the star scout has adequate references (hint: the current BSHB may not be adequate), making sure the scout can evaluate the quality of his work by soliciting feedback from his peer and asking him to repeat the skill a number of times. Needless to say, if you just use EDGE, you will never do any of these! Thus, I don't think the ASM's standard is the issue here. But there are a whole set of things (including the inherent fallacy of EDGE, but no point in arguing that to anyone) that impeded succes. Focus on those things.

I am, as many know, anti-EDGE. So I simply ask a boy to recall teaching the last time they taught a skill and how they did it. I help him reflect on how to do better next time. (I especially do the reflection if he did use EDGE so he understands how woefully inadequate it is.) This could have been done at the SMC to everyone's satisfaction. That said, following the requirements to the letter ... "use the EDGE method to teach another Scout" singular. Having a boy teach more than one scout can be a recipe for failure. If the boy is committed to getting Life ASAP, I would file an appeal for an extension. There is enough here to indicate that adults failed the boy. But, that's no guarantee that national would approve it. If there is consensus in the unit that the boy had done the requirements, albeit unwittingly, I would just as readily ask to backdate the SMC and BoR.