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@Scoutmom1989, welcome to the forums and thanks for all you do for the youth. Have fun, make friends, and don't be disappointed about how little wood is actually harmed in the executing of this course.

Our SMs and ASMs keep lodge business out of the troop except to encourage the Chapter Representatives to fulfill their obligations. It's up to the CR to relay the vision of the lodge to the youth. Our adult arrowmen have enough work exhorting adults like me to put some muscle behind he lodge. @SteveMM, your son needs to be plain spoken (both to the SM and to over-zealous arrowmen) and reply "Sir, I have no intention to persue brotherhood this year." A shrug is insufficient communication. Learning to state your position clearly to these types of leaders is a good life lesson.

No worries, I'm an MC too because some registrar couldn't be bothered to catch up old records even when I turned in my 2003 certificate! WB? Wilderness? Ha! It ain't no orienteerinng club (if only)!

We're moving to yearly elections, so this should be simpler for me. Unfortunately, ILST remains an "optional" activities for my SM's. So, I slip a little into each PLC meeting and cracker-barrel. The obvious downside is that scouts receive scatter-shot instruction. The upside is that scouts who come on as leaders mid-year (usually to step in for an absent leader) get at least something. The personal upside for me is I'm forced to think about how to translate this to each troop activity, which has helped me be better at addressing leadership challenges on the fly. IMHO, in your situation, @RainShine, if your leaders from last term are still engaged, encourage them to join the ILST. Maybe they can help lead it with insights from "The School of Hard Knocks." This is basically what I did with my daughter and her crew VP when we delivered ILSC for the council VOA. They had been in office for a while, never got the training formally, but had attended other academic leadership training programs, and they were pretty good natural instructors. Teaching the course filled in some gaps for them.

@Eagle94-A1, the organization dare not admit that this was a sanctioned part of the program lest 20 years from now a class of injured files for reparations. Far better to pay lawyers to delay discovery ....

The lodge/chapter chief (if you are a youth) or lodge/chapter advisor (if you are an adult now) should be your go-to for how things are done in your area. Unfortunately, it might be a little late to sort things out for this weekend. But if you give these guys enough lead time, they'd figure out a good plan B for you.

We've generally applied the same principle to the troop as to the crew. The issue is will insurance cover the troop for a guest? Until recently, I've heard yes. Fact is, even if the prospective scout registered today, no insurance fees would be collected until the coming year. But, times change. As far as inviting anyone to join the troop for ice cream, or to come sit by your campfire, if that person happens to be in the vicinity ... there's nothing that says you have to build an impermeable bubble around your scouts. In fact at last check those oversized balls were prohibited. ;) However, I will say that this strategy is not the recruitment boon that people make it out to be. Why buy the cow if the milk is free?

@jsychk, from the school of hard knocks: nobody has to get WB soon. Some scouters have to some time. That's it. Honestly, we need ASMs to master first-class skills, develop their camping style, and then be nuts about one hobby that they are willing to share with their scouts. That hobby can evolve over the years. I've gone from kayaking to backpacking to sailing to orienteering to international scouting. I was fortunate to fit WB in, and grateful for it. But I was also grateful that I didn't waste time doing it "soon". A few years as a cub dad, a year or two with the troop, two more with the crew, then it started to seem like the right time to me. Frankly, you've just started to see your son enjoy scouting -- enjoy watching that for a good while. You'll learn just as much by paying attention to your other SM's/ASM's leadership styles.

LOL, "traditional" for my Aunt who was a Campfire Girl during the depression era was multiple weeks under canvas, with hikes in the Catskills. In general, I'm not a fan of big ticket scouting. That said, on our big-ticket years, I also ASM'd summer camp. This year with world jamboree was the exception, but that was because there were plenty of ASMs to step in, so getting myself "out of the way" seemed like a good idea. My strong preference is for older boys to take what they've learned at an HA base and apply it locally. Home-grown trips are far more cost-effective, making summer camp and the super-activity affordable for the cost of one Summit week. But, even then American youths' schedules are all over the place. So even if they can afford more time, they might not have it. If this sort of thing persists, ask around other troops and see if you all can buddy up your younger scouts for summer camp. Just because you are dividing an conquering, it doesn't mean you are divisive.

If someone donates the materials, having the scouts build bird houses/feeders could be fun. But remembering the fun things from the handbook ... Another idea would be puppet making. Half of the booth could be the puppet "factory" with the crafts needed to assemble a variety of puppets. The other half of the booth could be a stage where the puppets could perform. If you have a power supply, you could video the plays and have scouts post their favorites online. (I'm pretty sure you don't need release forms for puppets.)

Ummm,, I'm pretty sure those activities were in my and in my boys' Cub Scout handbooks. (In addition to model rockets, boats, rock collections, etc ...)

This isn't a parent problem. The scouts on the "outside" need to speak up for whatever adventure they want to do. If they aren't listened to, they may call for elections. Then they can see what it's like to pick an adventure that only a half dozen of them will commit to.

This would have substantive cache if the National Venturing President and National Lodge Chief were the facilitators. With both of those offices, the mentor-ship of both Professionals and Volunteers is a given.

Thanks @RichardB, but the FAQ is disingenuous at best. It would have been more honest to say that, as recently as 2012, BSA publications presented dodgeball as an activity to look upon with admiration. (See https://headsup.boyslife.org/epic-dodgeball-game/ "Check Out This Epic Dodgeball Game" where Boy's Life writers proclaim, "Students at the University of California, Irvine recently participated in the world-record “Largest Dodgeball Game,” as 6,084 students launched little red balls at one another. Sounds like a blast!".)

Set up the hammock and tarp on the ground. This really isn't hard. And, it's a good way to keep track of your hiking poles. The real take-home lesson from hammock-eters is that we need far less tent than we think. At least most of us. @Buggie, gravity always wins. I take a long look at all of my rigging to try and guess when it will fail. When mine actually did (on my 50th birthday), a buddy was borrowing it! I slept through the "thud." So, point gravity. Until the next night, when rain swamped my tent, and it was actually drier ripping the top off and crawling underneath the floor-turned-lean-to. He slept comfortably through all of my cries for help. Anyhow, I suspect there would be a way to rig the CPAP. I often strap my pack to a tree, so I could imagine you doing something similar.

Call your council HQ. They might have supplies for recruiting events, fliers, other literature, and sometimes even spare patches that you could use for prizes. Do whatever your scouts do best. That could be mixing trail mixes, playing rope games, carving (for community days use bars of soap and butter knives!), or fire starting.

Discussed:

In other words, EDGE is an insufficient tool for mastering a skill. The student needs a reference. This is what will keep him/her on the long march out of the Dark Ages. Who'd have thunk it? I never thought of this advancement issue to be similar to EDGE. But the parallels are striking. With internet advancement, there's this presumption that the scout always has to be dependent on an adult referees for each step in his progress towards rank. In fact, he/she only has to be dependent on a handful of adults: the one's who wrote the program requirements, and the typesetters and editors who made sure the books were printed correctly. He/she will need an SPL/PL to help with the occasional translation of the written world into practicality, and the SM and committee are really only needed for personal growth conferences -- steps in the advancement process, but not the process itself. There's a list, work down it, advance. The main thing scouts need are cheerleaders telling them that they can do this, if not now, then after they grow just a little through participating in troop/patrol activities. Lets be frank. IA, is a way for BSA to save money by streamlining the ordering of awards. A pleasant side-effect is it helps adults get an overview of which scouts may need us to specially cheer for them. It's also a convenient back-up in case their handbook is lost. But it and the data-plan and required devices are far more costly than pen and paper. So in conclusion ... @sst3rd, as a scouting mentor once told me, you're probably crazy, but you're not wrong.

Thanks for passing on lessons from the school of hard knocks! What would be really nice is if the course coordinator could give you time for an intermediate and advance class. The prerequisite would be having completed the MB. Yes, scouts should be allowed to "re-take" a class where they've already earned the MB. I've had scouts who've done this routinely. Maybe part of the deal would be they serve as your assistants for the basic class. The advanced class would learn to use the advanced tools and maybe work on one project of their choosing. The other thing that would help is to know other leather workers in your council and get them registered as councilors. That way, the scouts who partial on the badge can have a formal way of completing it with someone in their community. With your display items, do you have a card that displays the amount of time and types/cost of materials needed to complete each project? That kind of information would really help a scout get an idea of what he/she might need to take this up as a hobby.

@ArmyScout, ask yourself a simple question: What do I have to offer that would motivate 14-20 year olds in my community to be constantly supervised by myself and one other adult? Is it worth them giving up their jobs, extracurricular activities, and other activities? Could they do just as well hopping in a couple of cars and going off on their own?

Congratulations! And, thanks in advance for all you'll do for the youth in your new position. I think as a UC, your focus is the key-3. Keep your CC, CoR, and SM in the loop. Encourage them to attend roundtables. And, encourage them that they set the tone for their program. Your starting out with continuing parents, so they are coming with visions of how things should work. Most of those are probably good ideas. So, the hard work is telling them that not every good idea can be rolled out at once. FInally, find out if you can tag along with a UC you trust as he/she attends to a unit. I'm sure you'll do a fine job.

I think it boils down to two things: When you don't urgently need shelter, neither does the bear. Hang first. (I use a dry-bag.) If a bear can learn to associate tents with food, you're at the mercy of everyone who camped there before you. Hammocks and backpacking tents do have the advantage low visual profile, but once a tarp is strung up, all bets are off. More importantly, the odds of a tarp holding smells. For you all who drink cocoa or coffee in your tent, turning your tent inside out and taking a hose to it on a sunny day is a good idea. Throwing your hammock in the wash ain't a bad idea either. Of course, if you're like me, your hammoking when the temps plummet below dewpoint after a storm and the winds push all that moister up under my tarp and into that "hanging water trap".!

Not just western territories ... A bear raided a friend's campsite as she and her buddies were setting up in broad daylight for a ladies' weekend in the hills of NC. The critter knew to strike before the food bag got hung! The rest of her weekend continued in a hotel. I guess this bear heard @Jameson76's mantra too!

Suggestion if using this for orienteering: pack the ice cream in dry ice. Include safety gloves for handling it and assign that to your more mature patrol. It might be a while before the scouts find it ... longer before they find the rendezvous. Alternatively, the course could end by the freezer! Note around here that as far as root beer goes 1919 is the scouter beverage of choice, mainly because it's good, but also because we don't find it elsewhere on the eastern seaboard (click here for coverage area). Navigating to the distributor is itself a GPS adventure! Not anywhere near a good 1919? Consider dead drops for all of the ingredients for dry ice rootbeer (this recipie is on my bucket list)!

Not sure what it actually is (plaque, patch, handshake) but the Keystone Trails Association has several awards for PA hikers https://www.kta-hike.org/hiking-awards.html I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's actually tried this.