qwazse

Sorry, Trail Life, USA.

Better than tweezers: thumb and forefinger. Squeeze, pull. You know when you've got the whole critter -- you can almost feel its pincers releasing, and you'll never over squeeze because your digits are optimized for picking all sorts of things. For the $ save, you can buy some stranger on the internet his coffee when he passes through your town!

I agree with @fred8033, that sometimes folks read the wrong thing into their titles. Any CC/SM who sees themselves as "gatekeeper" also needs to be very aware of the competition. Using different words, TL/USA is positioning itself as able to deliver on the promise of scouting to boys in ways that they claim BSA can't. My relatives are having a grand old time because they hear more "yes" from their TL/USA adults than they did from their former SM. I suspect some of that will change as the organization grows, and lawyers see the cash value of that target.

Further example: Scouts want to do an aquatic activity. SM says, "Review Safe Swim Defense, tell me what you have and what you will need." SPL/PL reports "We have youth with guard certifications and Fox 40 whistles, Med forms on 30 of 36 scouts, swim checks from summer camp on the 24 who attended. We need adult supervision, floats, and some way to track buddies." CC makes calls to (or better yet, provides phone #s of) adults with a solid track record of supervising scout aquatics, resources for safety equipment, and any roundtable/Powderhorn notes he/she may have accumulated regarding supporting activities like the one the SPL suggested. Together, SPL/PL, SM and CC set up a timeline for when and by what means the scouts can fulfill this particular vision of the pinnacle scouting experience of hiking and camping independently with their mates. So PL, SPL, SM, and CC don't have final approval authority they way most people think of it. They have an obligation to say "Yes, but safely."

Note on naturals: pay close attention for allergies. Small amounts can be serious antagonists for some people. Petroleum deriviatives are less likely to cause problems *if dosed correctly*. Whatever you use, practice first where there's a lake or shower to jump in (safely, of course) if there's a reaction. Obviously, at home is the best place to try this stuff out. You might not get a good idea of the critters it will repel, but you'll learn if your skin can stand the stuff.

As proud as she is of her kids coming up through scouting, she is no self-respecting Boy Scout. As for decency ... well ... her choice of mate has most folks wondering most days! However, I like your challenge. The Arab in me salivating for the chance to burn down some coals and make something like a kofta kebab with a cabbage wrap and brushed-on marinara. If it ever happens, I'll share the results.

Language note: where Mrs Q comes from rolled cabbage was called pigs in blankets. No idea what they called the hot dog treat, but the essential brand for the region has become Smith's. My father-law (God rest him) insisted that there be no grilling without them. They eventually made their way south to Pittsburgh, which made our lives much easier. I definitely like the grill-your-own idea. I'd up the ante and have them make the dough from biscuit mix. Patrols who don't like hotdogs can make a bread bowl and put stew in it.

Carry on with the good work of keeping the BS out of the BSA! What are they going to do? Walk around with sticky fours, grab a scout's sleeve and glue them on?

@towheadedviking, welcome to the forums! I have refurbished a medal or two, and simply replaced the ribbon. This strategy is successful if you can find a replacement in stock at a fabric store. Ordering online is a little more tricky. If you can remove the ribbon from your medal, a gentle rinse in a bowl of Dawn dish soap and water, then distilled water, should be enough to freshen it up. If there are stains, I'm not sure they'd be worth the trouble removing.

Um, @oldbuzzard, most backpacking is not back-country. The stuff that sells magazines, sure. But the majority of trails are within a couple hours of emergency extraction. Some of them are entirely country roads or railroad beds with a decent homestead every mile or so. My SM made sure that our entire scouting career was either backpacking or orienteering -- and that whole time I never saw real back-country -- not even my 1st 50-miler. That was a local trail along the rooftops of our county -- sort of a graduation present from him the summer before I went to college. Only a couple of scouts in our troop went to Philmont. It wasn't until I went to National Jamboree that I really learned about back-country minimal impact camping. And I only got to apply those lessons as a young adult. Maybe this is indicative of one of our problems as scouters. We've set the bar so high that we've taken the adventure away from throwing a pack on and hiking through town and camping in some tucked-away ravine in a community park. In the process, a lot of folks miss out on seeing boy scouts backpacking past their piece of sidewalk!

Yeah, I kind of miss the simplicity of look at the catalog, pick a patch, that's your patrol for years. On the other hand, I'm especially proud of one of the patrols in our Jambo troop's Swedish buddy troop. They were given (or chose?) names of importance to the historic center of town where they meet. The SM sent videos of each patrol introducing themselves, and of course I had no clue what they were calling themselves, except for one group whose name sounded oddly familiar and they seemed to have devilish grins on when they were saying it. The SM later E-mailed me the patrol names and explained that group was named the Swedish word for "Monks" but insisted on calling themselves "The Doughnuts" (the English, not Swedish, words). I gotta invite them for breakfast. One really shouldn't have coffee without them.

There are no BSA class B uniforms; there are, however, activity shirts. As much as I admire scouts who do all of their outdoor activities in ther field uniform, I've never found this a hill to die on. I've also never been thrilled with BSA's marketing material, so there's that.

Was the Den leader trained? If so, why did he/she not contact her SE and notify the authorities? Now, I would not want any legal action to be taken against the DL. But I would want her to understand that he/she did not follow her training to the letter. P.S. - I often ask myself if I would have the stones to break usual chain of command to address YPT according to training. But, I have it pounded on me from two spheres of youth work thanks to PA's recent travails.

I don't normally put labels on things, but I would say you were referencing. It wasn't a book, but you were telling your students, "I'm not the only guy you can count on to master this." You were referring them to someone else. But you do bring home a point. We'll never teach a motor skill (or most cognitive skills) without repetition. I've been trying to maintain all of the motors at my mother-in-law's place. It's a hassle, especially on hot days when that great lake is flat. But, more than once, I've had to break down and assemble the same motor more than once. It doesn't matter the number of manuals and videos and "explain me this" from the parts store, if I did it once last year, I don't know how this year. But, if I did it 2-4 times last year, you bet I know the page on the service manual, what wrenches to line up, where the spares are, and when supper will have to be so I can get that hood closed, engine run, and job done. (Well, except when Momma Mouse concludes that spark wire insulation is good for nesting.) So, I guess the ideal teaching method in my mind is something like: Reference, Demonstrate, Drill (Repeat). The nice thing about the patrol method and working with youth is that repetition comes as scouts mature a year to the point that they can teach younger scouts (and charm @Eagledad's skeptical moms in the process).

It's a pretty basic good method, but you can combine Explain and Demonstrate? Doesn't that mean a step is superfluous? If so, that implies there exists a method that is more basic and as good if not better. No wonder our old SM forgot what the first E stood for. I like how @ItsBrian recognized that his first-year depended on a four step method because of time constraints and scouts not bringing their handbook. But, when the scout leaves the trail-to-first-class area and forgets a skill and his buddy can't remember either, how is he going to refresh his memory? Suppose @ItsBrian explained, guided, demonstrated, and enabled wrongly. (We all have off days.) How is the scout going to correct or refine what he learned? I'm looking forward to finding out how our Swedish buddy troop teaches skills. Maybe they have to learn English first so they won't forget their EDGE.

I agree. We need to understand, however, the challenges of 100% compliance in the context of shifting rules. But, we also need to understand this harsh reality: predators are smart. A scout in a 100% compliant unit could still fall prey to a smart scouter with a deplorable sexual ethic. In the current litigious environment, it seems BSA will bear the financial brunt of that individual's actions -- for decades to come.

The problem was not about it being a bad method. It was about it being a nonessential, unproven method. Don't know CPR? Someone may die unnecessarily. Don't know EDGE? Someone may have to learn something by reading a book, or as you describe, by teaching it back to a teacher, or by dozens of different rubrics that a first class scout may deploy. It's not clear that any of those are worse. Oh, I got all worked up and forgot that there is more to my anecdote. So, at meetings, I'm loaning out my Jambo neckerchiefs to break them in so they they get a well-traveled look. One of the scouts who got my necker grabbed his phone, looked up the friendship knot, and started to work on tying it. Since he took the trouble to add reference to his teaching method, I supplemented by giving him a quick demonstration.

Rather than explain, let me give you a reference:

I hope my scouts don't read this. This is exactly what they're bargaining for, and they'll be mad that their leader has yet to deliver.

There are plenty of references that expound on the uses of cloth the size and shape of triangular bandages. Adornment? Sure ... the thing is swank. Importantly, we don't want our international visitors to think "cheap" when our scouts give one as a token of friendship. Useful? Maybe ... especially with the reinforced sides of this bad boy ... Check it out here. Now, that's an edge method that I can support (on my shoulders )!

I thought I'd drop a quick anecdote about signing off for Life Rank #6. There are a number of quiescent threads on this topic. I'm resurrecting this one in particular because it was spawned by our beloved OGE (R.I.P.). SM and I were chatting about the super-cool US contingent World Jambo neckers (the largest I've ever seen from BSA) when along comes a Star scout asking to sign off a couple of remaining requirements. This scout is more action than words. We weren't sure he'd stick around, but he did and is a genuine quality youth. He said, "I taught so many kids this stuff, do I have to do one in particular?" We asked him if they learned what he taught them, he said they did. I asked if he used the EDGE method, did he even know what it stood for? He gave me that "really-do-I-have-to?" look. I then asked the outgoing SM (who had actually consumed a troop meeting to teach EDGE) if he could tell the scout what the method was. The guy tripped over the first letter. "Uh, Engourage?" I concluded. "Seems like you know it as well as Mr. Old SM. Get your signature from him and ask Mr. New SM for your conference. Oh, and keep teaching our scouts as well as you've already been doing."

Most of these suggestions are part of Thurber's toolkit. And I do believe they lower the average level of homesickness symptoms. But averages can work in two ways: they can reflect low "background" symptoms getting lower without reducing incidence of disorder. In other words, all kids might have apprehensions about camp, but only a few kids have them to the point of misery. Any given treatment (in this case changing parent behavior) might lower every kid's apprehension a point or two. That makes a study look good. But, it's possible that the kids who would never be miserable enough to get "diagnosed" as homesick are the ones whose scores actually improve. Or that couple of points improvement in the kids who are likely to get homesick might not be enough to keep them willing to stay in camp. In other words, without a really well designed trial that actually tracks incidence of youth going home in a study of randomly assigned treatments, we don't know what works to keep kids in camp for a full week. There have been some studies that actually track cell phone use and severe homesickness in college students. But, those exposures are much longer than one week, and obviously in adults, not children. So, we have never really measured how frequently (if at all) certain parent strategies that help the average youth feel better also help the homesick-prone youth avoid being miserable at camp. That said, it is nice to be able to tell parents that there are a few things they can do to help the average child feel better about their first week away from home. And, it is nice that some of those suggestions have made their way into camp manuals.

Had a discussion with our new CC. She said the cellphones were a concern of hers. I told her it should be determined by whatever the new SM can stand. I did not go over the legalities of theft, even though we might find ourselves camping on her family's property in Ohio.

Which ones? All of them! (Mostly.) You're kind of asking for answers which I don't think I'm allowed to give. Judge not, lest you be judged. Sorry, I didn't write the rules. Here's the thing. Time and time again, I've seen scouts who've done these projects be the ones "in the room" (classroom, job, theater of war, community, or church) when the next big project rolls around. And, they are the ones who say, "We got this!" It's really not about the project. It's about the scout. Are we setting our most ambitious scouts on a trajectory where they start their first major project while we are there to guide and challenge them? This is one of the main reasons I would like scouts to hustle up and make Eagle earlier in their tenure. IMHO. that project for rank advancement should be the first of several before entering adulthood. Non-scouting example: Sunday's sermon was from a fellow whose youth director set his fellowship in pairs to walk the streets of Baltimore to talk to homeless people for an afternoon. This was when he was 13 years old. By the time he was 18, he and another college classmate decided to start a ministry to the homeless in our city. It has been going strong for 17 years, and lots of other youth (including our own) have volunteered in places where some of my fellow scouters fear to tread. So, was going down the street and chatting with a homeless person a grand project? You could ask the folks in Baltimore, if they are still alive and willing to talk about the past two decades, how much of an impact those kids had. Or, you could ask the thousands in Pittsburgh and every other town where those youth ultimately set up home. A service projects impact is a function of how much it molds the scout, not how many people are served by the actions taken in the span of a few weeks.

The statistician in the forum has doubts: If I understand Thurber's research (Thurber C, Walton E. 2007. Preventing and Treating Homesickness. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 16 (4), 843-858), it is based on a sample of convenience in a camp in New England with no controlled trial. Most of us aren't talking about treating homesickness. Most of us are talking about preventing it. And from the time we walked with our SM and our homesick buddy so he could use the payphone to call his mom, we should have learned that the phone isn't the problem. His study suggested that there were ways to blunt "homesickness intensity", and much of that involved preparing the parents. So, that's a great job for your CC. But, it's not at all clear that the incidence of homesickness (i.e,. percent of boys actually withdrawing from activity and/or asking to go home) was reduced. So far, I have not found a multi-center randomized trials of cell-phone strategy that would test if setting policy one way or another would reduce the % of scouts who need to head home on day three of camp.