qwazse

Different troops have different visions for their summer camp. Ours is to return to the exact same spot year after year!

Regardless of who gets elected, you'll be able to help with the discussion among the responsible boys in your troop. You've clearly been putting a lot of thought into this. Definitely try to change your camping arrangements. Your adults are on the right track. Ideally, you put the patrol sites on opposite sides of the adult site with at least a stones throw between sites. Don't worry about that patrol of three. They'll be fine. Some hints: you don't always need a fly. One three-man tent sets up in a hurry. Single burner stove can cook up soup for three easily. The best way to get someone to do what you want is to make them think it was their idea. Your first act as SPL should be to listen. Ask they guys how they like their patrols. What could be better about them. Ideally, the "PL Reports" are part of each meeting. Not the PLC. Lacking any major activity they should be short and sweet. You might want to give them a default phrase "Sir, the Owl patrol has nothing to report tonight, but y'all just wait until next week." Like Stosh said below, most SPLs start out as "top down" managers and quickly learn how to be a "come along-side" leader.

It's a rare troop that will tolerate a crew operating in lock-step with the troop. There is often an adult (sometimes a youth, either boy scout or venturer) that will generate sour grapes. Someone will demand a separate space (or time-slot) for meetings. My crew meets twice a month. When the troop is meeting that day, we schedule the crew meeting for the 1/2 hour after the troop adjourns. The youth are what we call a "general interest crew". I.e., pretty much into the same things as the troop. We leave it up to the troop SPL and Crew president to determine which weekends will be shared activities and which will be separate. That keeps most of the naysayers at bay.

My troop is similar. You'll find lots of discussion about this on the previous version of this site (http://old.scouter.com/). Here a couple of the items that I've gleaned from it all ... When you go camping, how far apart are the patrols from each other and the adult leaders? In an open field, they should be a football fields distance apart. Now, sometimes in the tortuous hills where you and I live, that's not that practical. But the idea is that as patrols get used to living with each other at a distance apart (only coming together for assemblies or emergencies), they'll get it into their heads that scheduling stuff on their own isn't that far fetched. The part about not assigning boys to a patrol, but rather having friends choose to be together -- well that's like Fred said. If your patrol-mate is already your friend it's that much easier to pull together with him and do an activity. In fact I'd wager that there's a group of you boys who are already doing something together this weekend, they just aren't doing it with their patrol. Going directly to the SPL is a sign that the PL is not the boy's buddy. It happens. The SPL should tactfully bring it up to the PL. For example, "Joey came to me with an idea that he seemed really enthused about. Did he tell you about it?" If not, say "You or your APL should talk to him and see if it's something ya'll would like to make happen." Finally, patrol leaders should report at the meetings and "talk a little smack" to one another. "Since our last meeting, we Owls accomplished ...", "Well since our last meeting we Crows have decided to propose this troop activity ..." "Well we Ballistic Bluegills are proud to announce that two more boys made tenderfoot ..." The SPL should allow a little time at each troop meeting for a couple of patrol reports. Those are the little things that an SPL and his assistant can do to move toward your objective. Of course he needs the support of his SM for that (and sometimes the SM needs to be really thick skinned and able to back adults away so the boys have that latitude), but it sounds like your SPL would have that in your troop.

Looks like that's an individualized link, which probably is a simple security against non-participants taking the survey.

Carving/weaving: #1 wood block, #2 wicker chairs, #3 sculpture, #4 totem poles, #5 cargo nets.

Don't forget your slick promotional videos! Seriously, there are a number of camps out there with th HA competent. Ours isn't quite he tiered system that JoeBob has going. But it definitely gets the boys out from under merit badge burn-out.

You mean like this http://heritagereservation.org/eaglebase/programd.php ? For reasons that I still find a little odd, BSA has limited handgun training to Venturing.

Well, patrol cooking is definitely the glue of our summer camp. The trade-off is they have so much fun at it that they often skip camp-wide activities. It's also hard to tell who's ready for what at which age. Son #1 earned Archery at 11. I think if the camp had a wall with totems representing patrol challenges it would make it fun. They choose a totem, report to the camp director, get goals and objectives, report back, get some recognition.

Primitive arms #5: Atlatl Structures: #1 shelter, #2 tower, #3 bridge, #4 crane, #5 trebuchet.

Why not? Simply put, SMs want their boys all to themselves! They don't see it as a new program to bring youth who missed out on scouting one last chance, they see it as a big time drain on their oldest boys' time.

Well, in these days of photoshop, there is plausible deniability. But, if your SM gets a phone call let us know. I just wish you'd had the chance to work on the 30' towers I did in 1980.

Nice poll. Wonder how many venturers will think they are venture scouts.

Here's a question: If a boy leaves scouting, does he loose his membership in O/A? (Considering some of the machinations of our soon-to-be-former chartered organizations, this may be relevant to more than venturers.) If instead of multiple registration, a boy transfers to a crew (like E441 was thinking of doing, but maybe we'll talk him out of it ) does he get to retain his membership? Y'all get where I'm going with this.

Not sure why FCFY's tend not to run for OA. Maybe because there are so few of them in our troop and they see those older boys running after they took 4 years to get to FC, and that intimidates them. One boy, who I thought would have made a great candidate quit scouting to devote more time to his video games (really!) so he never came to camp that 2nd year. Our troop is larger than yours and has kids with behavioral disorders. Actually, many of those boys later tell me that the troop (along with junior ROTC) was the solution to those problems. Not getting elected for the 3rd time in a row was definitely the wake-up-call one boy needed. From then on, any foul comment from him I would reply "And you wonder why ...?" No need to fill in the blank, he knew exactly what I meant. You should dive into some of our old patrol method threads to see all the different ways these cliques are handled. We must have met the same immature Eagle scout, several times over! There are always exceptions to the rules. But, I've seen a lot of crews besides my own in the past six years, and I gotta say there are very few who aren't already boy scouts who would meet criteria for arrowmen. So our question boils down to a very small number. That in itself isn't a reason to maintain the current policy. It just gives us a feel of the magnitude of the problem. Why not make the adult leader's choice the only requirement? I think it's a matter of pride among the OA advisors that their youth are elected by a wide range of their peers. Nobody will buy into a double standard. So there will have to be a way that a venturer can get that "360 evaluation" that the average 1st class scout gets when he comes up for election.

For venturing, did you try this: http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/Venturing.aspx Then look up all the crew advisors from your woodbadge class and give them a call.

skeptic, there's some kind of wannabe Puritan uprising going on in that council. K, I like your son's decision. Honestly, I would just tell his buddy to pray something from his heart using his own words. Just like what he might do for grace or bedtime. That's what Baden Powell would have done.

E441: You and my previous crew president! She said "Venture just doesn't sound right and why couldn't they have chosen something that slips of the tongue easier?" It's all about branding. Which matters to a lot of people. Not so much to others. (For example, the person who labeled pics from Jambo on BSA's Flickr stream used "Venture Scout".) In terms of who I will be climbing and rappelling with on Saturday? It won't matter an ounce. As long as they're on when I need belayed, I'll be happy. BP, no koolaid. I'm just trying to give us a view from behind Wayne's desk and why he would form a task force to act! I'm not suggesting that any of the actions will result in a change in membership trajectory.

It's a big country and "what venturers want" is very diverse. But, there are some trends ... The most striking one is they don't want to stick around. For the past 7 years, venturing membership has been the fastest declining division of the BSA. Very few of crews buy awards, which is a good sign that thy are not earning them. Many of them aren't heavily invested in the venturing oath and code. It's just not pounded in their heads. Clearly, if they aren't earning their gold awards, there is no real need for them to bother with the oath and code. There are troop members who think venturers don't belong anywhere near them. Most of these are adults. It stinks. Those of us who are in the game for all youth involved are sick of it. So, say you have a nation-wide shrinking business, in one of your divisions customers are walking out the door faster than the other, and the ones that stick around aren't buying what you have to offer. Customers in another division complain that the few costumers in the fastest shrinking division are making your product less enjoyable to them. Of the 10 things that you could change about the company, turns out that you only have the ability to change 2. What would you do?

Rick First, it's six feet. Secondly, have you ever seen bridge height signs? That's the height to the BOTTOM of the bridge (the space a vehicle has to pass under it).

And here's the other dirty little secret about venturing (that I really wish weren't true). The only venturers who are highly experienced and more mature, were the ones who are also boy scouts and about half of those who are also girl scouts. For a lot of them, we are making up for lost ground.

The Good Book tells me that the Almighty chooses the weak to confound the wise. Go figure.

Well, in our troop very few scouts make 1st class until they are moving into high school. Most of our FYFC's (first year, first class) don't run. It's 15 camping days which, you're right, does tend to favor Jr. High kids with a more flexible schedule. High-school boys with only same-school peers for a constituency, have not get elected in our troop. Jr. High boys who disrespect older boys and boys who aren't in their "special clique" have not got elected. The boys who command the respect same-age AND different-age peers, they get elected.

I'm not an active arrowman, so my opinion is strictly from what I see in the youth in my troop. It's nice to see young people keep bantering this about. The point of your argument is that it is entirely possible that a venturer, without being in a troop, can: 1. display tremendous scout spirit (vouched for by his/her advisor), 2. be a first-class scout even though he/she hasn't obtained that rank, 3. have done lots of camping with his/her unit and under the auspices of the BSA. Therefore, what would make them any different than the current youth membership? There's only one thing that I can think of: who gets to vote them in? I don't know if you've experienced any boys not getting elected, but it is a trying time for them. Why? Because it is real easy for a boy and his same-aged buddies to pat him on the back and he thinks he's doing scouting honorably. His SM may think so too, but then we older farts are 300 ft away and need our beauty sleep -- so sometimes we miss a little. Well (and this is especially true if you have your elections at summer camp, like we do), guess who the largest voting block in an average troop is? 11-12 year-olds! And trust me, they don't pull their punches! More than once, I've seen a scout who is neglecting the young ones not get elected. Venturing deprives a youth of the critical evaluation of that peer group. The vote from a crew would only tell me how a candidate is seen among his high-school and college buddies. The lodge wants to know what the Jr. High kids think of him/her!