qwazse

The next thing the G2SS should include ...

A STRONG encouragement for patrols to plan overnights in the absence of adults. And directions on how to use the BSA tour plan as a tool to organize their trip, with the PL and the APL signing off as tour leaders, the SPL instead of the charter org rep or committee chair, and ultimately the SM as, well, him/herself.

Yo, G!

Welcome aboard! This section isn't as active, but in proportion to the size of the program, I think that makes sense. A lot of what gets talked about in other sections is pretty useful (especially the youth leadership tips).

I gotta warn you about some stuff that's not in the training manual. Some of it was from browsing this site, but most was from when our crew came online 5 years ago. You will need ...

1. coffee.

2. afternoon naps.

3. to be willing to negotiate things like light's out, use of electronic devices, uniforms, ceremonies, etc....

3. to coordinate events with other crews. (Give special attention to the select few youth who form your council's venturing officers association.)

4. to be willing to let the kids fail.

5. to pick up only the pieces that are really important.

Above all, to be in for the ride of your life.

As far as committees go, I've seen advisors working under every configuration. One for both units, one with crew and troop subcommittees, two harmonious committees, two highly discordant committees. I'm not tellin' which is mine, because they all manage to be great and dysfunctional at the same time. My, bottom line, get 'em all trained, and get each taking a turn getting out on the trail with the fine young people you got.

Oh, and one last thing ... get out of the paperwork business! Teach your VP-program to complete the tour plans!

I'll leave the venturing youth and advisors to spout off a few more of their lessons from the school of hard knocks!

Q

Base camp?????? that is car camping with hiking. The point of Backpacking beyond, seeing cool stuff is to cover lots of miles. You could slack pack from a moving base camp....but again whats the fun of that.

The point, BD, is to give the guys who want to work on racking up miles and breaking in gear opportunities to be with the rest of their troop for part of the weekend. It is also to show the youth who opt to stay at camp to see a Backpacking team arrive in the evening, set-up, eat, sleep, and break camp before half the boys get moving in the morning.

Buffalo, if you add more activities to the schedule, some boys will have to be selective. The only requirements I would make is that to go on an advanced hike, a boy has to complete a certain number of shakedown hikes. As I describe above, shakedown hikes can be incorporated with other troop activities.

... I'm sure if you looked hard enough, you could find some Polish food that is not good. ...

No need to stretch the truth to be conciliatory here.

scout - I'd be a little more drastic than what the above have suggested. I'd go to your DC and say, "My troop's UC just resigned. They'll do without until we find a replacement. We don't have to worry too much ... I hear the ASM is top-notch!"

If nobody comes forward, you can still do UC-type stuff for your SM, you just wont be "wearing the patch" around him when you to it.

The best way to do this is to choose locations that have a basecamp along a trail that the backpackers can hike into/out of while the non-hikers work on various scouting skills.

You may have to reshuffle your patrols for that weekend. But it inspires the non-hikers to consider taking up the sport.

If you have enough leadership you can do a multitier hike in a wilderness area where one group hikes in about 3 miles, the other 6, the other 8, the other 12. This gives some of the older boys some serious planning to do with "insertion" and "extraction" locations and times.

Sometimes just give the whole troop a backpacking trip where groups start on opposite ends of the trail, pick a stopping point 6 miles in for one group and 10 miles in for the other.

The point of doing these coordinated trips is to free up the schedule for the months where the backpackers do have that open weekend that the rest of the troop doesn't.

My crew fills that need. There are boys who want to hike more frequently than their troop does, so they set up trips with us. Your older boys could look into that. Of course, that doesn't help your younger boys that much.

And, bottom line, your patrols should be planning their own hikes. It may take years to get them comfortable with that, but the payoff will be huge for your backpackers in terms of a steady supply of fresh hiking partners.

It's very hard to correct older boys' attidude.

Separating the adults from the boys is a good idea on so many levels. Hopefully the adults will cook up a storm, hussle with thier clean-up duties, and have plenty of time left over to enjoy their outings.

Patrols of 4 boys is kind of lean, so encourage them to recruit, recruit, recruit. Have a recruiter prize. (Special patch, dessert at adult's campfire with the newbie, etc ...)

Contests that advantage younger boys include stretcher carries (build a stretcher carry your heaviest boy 100 yards in it). Crawling obstacle courses. And nearly any trail-to-first class skills simply because it will be fresher in their mind. But even blindfold tent pitching may come easier to whatever group performs best as a team vs. which team has the best experience.

Your older boys may have caught on that SPL is a lot of work, so they may not mind putting a youngster in charge. The SM will probably assign the oldns' back to PL or give them JASM patches. The challenge of JASM is helping SPL and PL hone those leadership skills.

Have the older boys made OA? I've found losing that election to be a wake-up call for a lot of boys.

DON'T introduce yourself to one unit assuming you won't need to also introduce yourself to partner units. If there's a pack, troop, and crew under the same roof, be prepared to get three different opinions on everything and everyone.

DO follow-up. If you say you'll be visiting monthly, do so. If you only have time to drop in less frequently, be honest up-front.

DON'T state irrelevant agendas. E.g. ...

UC: "I want to make sure funds from unit X are not spent in unit Y."

UL: "Has anyone given you any indication that that's happened or will happened?"

UC: "No, I just want to make sure it doesn't!"

The result will be ...

UL to self: "Now where'd I put that static filter ..."

DO get yourself invited to an outing (hike, campfire, etc ...).

Can't resist ...

2 deep is there to provide accountability ... to protect the children from predictors

Because heaven help us if -- in front of impressionable youth -- an adult starts prophesying without another one present!

I think Venturing #s are still white on a red field. (Even on the new shirt which everyone avoids buying.)

Can anybody find a color guide for venturers? I'm terrible at navigating these sites.

BT: In any case, I'm going to have to do a lot of hand-holding and peacemaking in the meantime.

Yep. That's about it. And I don't mean this to be negative, but there will always be some kind of fence-mending going on in any unit you join. The good news is that 9 out of 10 times those fences do get mended.

And, my solution with chatty folks (in the same language as mine or different) is offer them a job to do. That puts an end to a bunch of useless conversation, and usually starts a few meaningful ones.

I think LB has a point, but E92 is probably a little overcautious.

Have your son run it by his scoutmaster. He'll be more aware of local custom. Remember it's your council that reviews Eagle applications. The district advancement chair may have a "rule of thumb" about how many signatures with the same last name would give rise to more scrutiny.

I don't think location will be an issue. The scoutmaster will probably take your word that they are registered in another council.

Our crew is pay-as-you go.

Some venturers are only shelling out $17 a year to stay on our E-mail list. (Covers rechartering expenses.)

Others are spending thousands for those high adventures.

As long as the separate and unequal outdoor programs that the GSUSA cranks out persists in depriving our daughters of premier experience, every other exec in the BSA will see the merits of a co-ed program. I doubt that many of them are up to promoting it.

Don't know if Bob is currently in favor or against.

P.S. - I don't think the inequality in outdoor program is entirely the fault of the GS-USA. I learned after talking to some elderly ladies that we have a whole culture of moms who lost that pioneer spirit.

Your adults need to have their own patrol 600' away from the other troop!

Have pan polishing contests: see if a patrol can get their gear cleaner than the Adults'.

At COH's have a troop award (maybe a travelling trophy) for the boy with the most counselors (i.e. # of different signatures on blue cards).

Somehow get it into the dad's head that his boy is missing out on a whole lot of opportunity.

Floated JTE by my crew, and they were pretty much okay with it. I'll probably have them complete it in October by way of self-evaluation. Won't bother about the ribbon unless my UC makes his appearance around then.

Hey Bart, we low-landers have more air to slice through!

But you are right about newbies and weight. I had one little sister of a lodge chief take her first hike with us, and I wasn't paying attention to how much gear she was volunteering to carry. At the first incline she was almost walking in retrograde! I grabbed her pack and it was twice as heavy as mine. Had to call my officers back, circle the group together and load balance.

I was used to scouts who (being younger, and male) talk a lot of smack about who's pack is heaviest. They usually sort themselves out.

I sent off to the office of Health & saftey the concern about med forms.. I asked 3 questions..

Q. Is part C required for Woodbadge if Woodbadge is broken into under 72 hour weekends?

Now, MT, why on earth would you go asking a question like that?

Next time just request, "Can you please give our volunteers more work to do and make sure they spend another $10 - $20 to do it?"

There's no box on part C for "Watching Movies on a perfectly good afternoon when you could be out fishing".

art - My daughter and I have the same tug-of-war with the kelly green venturing shirt. Because uniforming is not a method of venturing, and our crew uses t-shirts for uniforms, it's hard for her to accept that in situations where she is representing the council, the class-A uniform allows her to command respect. Without it, her colleagues become the "invisible officer's association."

Yes the way the SM's handled it was rude. But when your scouts are representing their lodge, they want to do so in a way that commands the most possible respect from the units they visit. The SM's that don't say anything may still judge your boys. OA reps that look sharp for those few minutes in front of a troop or roundtable may actually get SM's who work a troop's schedule around lodge events. Those who don't may get boys who earn a sash and then disappear.

So see what you can do about getting these boys uniform pants or shorts, socks, and workboots that are clean but look like they know the meaning of service.

When her daughters joined our crew, one mom was very nervous about backpacking with us. She felt she would drag us down because she was always left behind on family hikes.

She was greatly encouraged on her first hike when the other adult leader and I stayed with her the whole time. We'd catch up with the youth at any crossing. It took a lot to convince her that really was our pace and we weren't doing her any favors!

Her husband, a cross country runner, simply moved the girls along at a faster clip than most of us would care to hike. That pace suited most of my crew since they were all conditioning for sports year-round. To keep them in eyesight or earshot, I made sure I took them on poorly marked trails that would require a little "stop and think" on their part.

My SM and I recently decided, "we take bad kids."

So hearing dish on a boy transferring isn't an issue. Sometimes its the boy who politely transferrs from troop X that will cause more grief than the boy expelled from troop Y.

Regardless, our advancement committee chair would ask for the boys troopmaster records. Why? Because it saves typing and she's a nice lady so she's good at getting stuff like that.

Regardless, the SM or an ASM would look at the boys handbook and ask him about the identity each person who signed on it. Why? Because we frown on requirements signed by relatives (or other adults) and want to see if the boy really knows the skills needed to earn his next rank.

We may ask the boy up-front what kind of trouble he's going to cause us. Why? Because that way the boy will know that we do "cheerful" and "friendly" even when we know it might not be easy.

We won't have much else to ask, because my experience is that anything bad that can be said about a boy will make its way to us faster than we could request it.

Not jumping on your case SP.

E73, talk to your council about getting as many of your shooting instructors NRA certified. This is a huge bottleneck for any scouts who want to go shooting as a troop or a patrol.

It is possible that your council will require NRA certification before accepting an individual as a MB counselor.

And, brace yourself, similar certification from the NAA may soon be required from any expert on bowstrings and fletchings.

As for the details: somebody asked someone else to make a rule. And this is what you get. It's not getting changed back without much pain. But, if you think it will be better for the kids, start the crusade by giving a call to the national office.

(Now everyone who's tried this can jump!)

Tell your DE your troop hasn't saturated (reached all the 12-17 year olds in town who could be scouts), and because you'll jump through paperwork hoops for him, he'll jump through recruiting hoops for you.

Your boys need to do a couple of p.r. service projects. Here are some ideas:

- Build a pioneering "gatway" on the roadside into town. Weave "Welcome to ___, Troop ###" in the lashings.

- Help the veterans place flags on Memorial day.

- Hold a father-son event, like a fishing contest.

- Provide color guard at the opening High School Baseball game.

- Get a picture of your boys and the SM at a campout in the local paper.

- Offer to hold a flag retirement service on Flag Day.

Have your boys pick their three favorites and go for it. (Pick three because in all likelihood two will fall through.) These can also involve your Pack. The point is, you want people in town asking their boys (or young ladies asking their boyfriends -- it happens), "Why aren't you in that troop?"

Marriage has its adavantages. One of those is learning to say "I'm sorry" -- even when your sure you're right.

Your "English only" adults owe the chatty Polish moms an apology. Not because what you think would help them and their boys "get with program" was necessarily wrong, but because you really do want them to feel welcome and your complaints about the language made things worse, not better.

You do want things to get better, right? Then encourage each Anglo mom to invite each Polish mom over for dinner, or to go dress shopping, or a simple play date. You may offer to take their husbands (or other male family, they're single moms) fishing.

It takes years, sometimes, for people to feel comfortable talking in a language they have never learned from their youth. You could offer $1000 and they wouldn't get it. Offer friendship, and they'll do it in a couple of months.

Besides, that's the only way you're gonna find out if there's any real dish about the Cubmaster!

Yep, this would have come in handy for youth to know on several occasions. But, it's not that the youth that I'm thinking of weren't trained -- so, dS15, your real goal is to bring it the YPT points home.

I think you tell the kids up front: "I'm teaching you straight from the book because this is what we adults have to learn. You need to know how to expect us to behave, but you also need to know how YOU need to handle things."

If the camp director is around to lay out how he would implement YPT among staff, it would help nail your talking points to something practical.