Sentinel947

It's important to have these reminders. We tend to get so invested in chasing the ideal of what we want for our troops and scouts, we miss the really important stuff that is going well. The last couple months of scouting for me have been somewhat stressful as I help the new Scoutmaster transition into his role. Its important to come to terms with what we can control and what we just need to stop worrying about.

Came across this article while I was scrolling through my LinkedIn today. https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/this-rarely-seen-leadership-practice-is-now-linked-to-happier-workplaces-motivated-employees-says-research.html I think it nicely supports a good deal of what we try to teach our Scouts about being kind to others and servant leadership.

I won't go that far. I've met a few really passionate and wonderful pros. What the YPT rules on communication lack is nuance. Should adults monitor a troop facebook page? Yes. I doubt any of us argue that. If there is a facebook or groupme or group text for the plc should troop adults be in on that? Yea. If the Scouts make some impromptu group to just shoot the breeze, should adults be in on that? The rules are well intentioned and say yes, but now I'm sitting monitoring the random thoughts of my scouts 24/7. Or they'll ignore the group and chat elsewhere since adults are in the chat. If the SPL texts his ASPLs about the meeting this week, should I be in it? According to the rules, yes, but I never insist on that. My troop wouldn't be able to operate without email. We teach our scouts to always copy two leaders or their parents when they write to leaders, and we do the same for when we write to them. Any adult who emails them privately is being questionable. Where does the troop end and teenagers being friends begin?

I vote to leave it alone. It isn't something that requires adult supervision.

Looks like his website is now down. Enoch posted on Facebook about it, looking to get it back up at some point.

I'm an ASM: My Troop's meetings are 1.5 hours a week. So lets say a typical month has 4 meetings. 6 hours a month. I also attend the PLC meetings. 1 hour once a month. Running tally: 7 hours a month. Our monthly outings run Friday at 5:30 pm till about noon on Sundays. 49.5 hours a month. I probably spent about a half-hour to a hour a week responding to emails, various questions, or coaching the new Scoutmaster, whether before, after, or outside of a meeting. Final total: 51.5 hours a week. Things I also do but can't really get a good handle on due to variability: Eagle Project Coach, Eagle Scout Projects, Eagle Scout COH's. Our troop has ranged from 4 Eagles to 12 Eagles in a year. I also support one of our other ASMs who handles high adventure by being an extra adult on backpacking trips. That's typically 3 times a year. Another 42-45 hours a month when those happen. I'm sure I'm missing things. The key, whether an ASM or SM is to build up some extra help if that's possible. No ASM or SM should need to go to every event the troop puts on. It will burn them out. If the leader has a family, they feel pressure to be at everything, and that may compromise their relationship with their spouse or kids... which is horrible.

Hey all, I attended a Course Directors Conference recently. I'm a backup course director for a NYLT course in 2019. One of the Pros from Irving was there so I was able to ask some of our favorite topics of conversation. I've figured we mostly had answers to these questions, but it's good to hear it straight out of the horses mouth so to speak. I've summarized his answers below. I was impressed by him. I was surprised National sent a pro from Irving out to Midwest on a Saturday, and he was at the event all day, and being available for 1 on 1 face-time. He had some real enthusiasm and energy. He was unapologetic about the changes to include girls, which was mostly preaching to the choir at a NYLT/Wood Badge CDC at this point. He said there have been about 40,000 girls into Cub Scouts this year. I'm not sure how that lines up with other numbers being reported. He also mentioned the program as "Scouts BSA" a few times, so I'm not sure when that nomenclature is going to take over. Q1. Asked about how the BSA decided on the two year separation rule in the recently updated YPT. 1 a.: Said the rule was created based on data provided by law enforcement, schools, incident reports from councils and information collected during calls to the Scouts First Hotline. I figured that was the case, so I'm glad there's some statistical backing to it. Q2. Changes to Wood Badge Syllabus, will those of us who took WB21 be expected to retake the new course? 2a. No. The changes are an update to the WB21 course, not a total rewrite. The material in the current WB is still useful and valid training, they're just tweaking it a bit. Other interesting tidbit is that there is an updated version of the "Time to Tell" videos in the works. I remember watching those back in 2005. He stressed to us that the next big focus of YPT is preventing Peer to Peer abuse between Scouts. National is pretty concerned about it. Most of our training and discussion about YPT focused on that peer to peer abuse aspect (maybe because we've had over a decade to figure out the whole adult to youth protection aspects of YPT.) Overall, the CDC was well done, and since it was my first one, I found it informative and helpful. I'm not sure I'll feel the same if I have to keep going to more of them in the future.

If you write a blog post online accusing me by name of a crime I didn't commit, couldn't I sue you? Not sure if it's "defamation" or if it's a different word.

Maybe its just local conditions. I'm 25. When former Scouts visit our childhood troop, they say hi to me, and after observing they almost always joke: "Wow, things really haven't changed much." They're both right and wrong. I think the BSA as an organization has changed quite a bit. I feel like that pace of change has accelerated. But I still recognize the BSA from when I joined back in 2005. My Troop hasn't changed much from all these policy changes. Requirements change, uniforms change, membership policies change, but the core activities and methods of Scouting haven't changed in my little pocket of Scouting, and I'm going to my best to keep it that way. We all have breaking points and decision points for our membership. I won't curse folks on their way out. I won't hassle newer folks who are coming in fresh. God only knows when I hit mine. Whether it's policies we don't like, life circumstances, or just aging, we all eventually leave the program.

They'll need to be counted as adults for YPT if they are "participants" after 18 in my understanding of YPT. But this is only going to be a situation that will last until 2021. At that point there won't be any Scouts who qualify and are working their requirements under this extension.

It seems to me that the extension will only be long enough to give them the amount of time necessary to earn Eagle depending on the date that they join. I'd guess it'd be enough to give them the minimum amount of time needed to earn Eagle from Scout-Eagle. "The actual extension will be based upon the individual’s registration date and age at the time of the request and will provide not more than twenty-four months from the date of initial registration to complete all requirements." My amateur guess is if they join at 17 years old and 11 months, they'll get the full 23/24 months, and it'll scale back from there to 16 years and no months. My troop isn't supporting a Troop for girls at this time, so this scenario is going to be exceedingly rare for us.

For a medical inhaler? That's terrible. At least in my council, I never saw that behavior at Wood Badge, and it's prohibited at NYLT, at least the courses I've staffed. Again proof that training results vary from place to place, and having taken Wood Badge doesn't automatically confer some special expert status on a Scouter.

If you do not attend a church, you could use a parent. My Scouts commonly use the troop chaplain. I used the facilitator that led the classes for my youth religious medal program in Scouts.

There's only so much retraining you can do with older Scouts. I try to avoid telling stories about my troop, because every situation is unique, so there's a chance this can't be replicated. I joined my Troop in 2005 as a new Scout. The Scoutmaster at that time was finishing up his Scoutmastership and was done by 2007. He had us running a great patrol method troop. He was a stern but fair man, and what he excelled at was giving youth leadership room to make their plans and fail or succeed. He was always available to coach the youth, and if the SPL wanted to, he'd have weekly phone calls with the SPL to walk through the meeting and guide the SPL in making a meeting plan. In 2007 one of the committee members took over as Scoutmaster. He was a good man, but he didn't know the behind the scenes aspects of being a Scoutmaster, and when the troop program started to disintegrate without the coaching from Scoutmaster 1, he ended up consolidating things onto the SPL and the adults. The Troop lost most of the it's patrol method aspects (like patrol boxes) aka "The Boys can't be trusted to keep their dishes clean, so we need the Quartermasters to be able to review all the dishes." We went along with this "Troop Method." system the rest of my time as a Scout. I went to NYLT and became SPL in 2009. NYLT was shocking to me and it struck a fire in me. I wanted my troop to be like my NYLT troop. I wanted the autonomy, I wanted the patrol culture and camaraderie that I felt at NYLT. Scoutmaster 2 didn't really understand what went on at NYLT, and 16 year old me wasn't good at selling my ideas to skeptical adults. My initiatives weren't supported, and being 16, I wasn't able to carry them across the finish line myself. I floated into a JASM role after my term, and I spent the next two years helping following SPL's tinker around the edges of our program. In 2012 Scoutmaster 2 stepped down, and the Committee Chair at the time became Scoutmaster 3. He was even more green to the Boy Scout program than Scoutmaster 2. Most of the ASM group had left when Scoutmaster 2 did, since their sons were all around the same age. The Scoutmaster group dwindled to our Scoutmaster 3, and 3 ASMS, two of which had sons in junior year of high school and weren't around as much. At that point, I was 18-19 years old, and was still hanging around the troop to help my younger friends earn their Eagle. Long story short, I became an ASM because I was around. I spent much of my time coaching the SPL as I had done as a senior scout. I did my best to start selling patrol method ideas with Scoutmaster 3, but he still didn't "get it" until about 2014 when his son went to NYLT. It was really a metaphorical lightbulb moment for him. All the gibberish that I'd been trying to do clicked. We had a group of 5 Scouts that were in the same grade and became SPL's back to back for 2.5 years including Scoutmaster 3s son. Scoutmaster 3 and I started working with those 5 youth, all NYLT trained, to start putting the pieces back together on the patrol method. Some of the older Scouts and adults resisted. They didn't see the point or they thought it would take away from advancement, or being unsafe, or other stuff like that. I actually went to a Committee meeting and basically did a Patrol Method presentation to get buy in from them. Our youth sold their peers for the most part. From 2014-2016 the troop really ran itself thanks to those older Scouts. Scoutmaster 3 and I went to Wood Badge together 2015. We started building an ASM culture that would support the patrol method. This year, 2018, Scoutmaster 3 stepped down. His son had aged out in 2017, and it was time to pass the torch. Scoutmaster 4 has been in the job for a few months, but our culture we've created has made him far ahead of where Scoutmaster 2 and 3 were when they started. We still have a great ASM team in place for at least another year, and we're actively hunting the next generation to join us. Our youth leadership is engaged, but there are always challenges with youth, that don't go away. Even with a youth lead troop running the patrol method, it's not all rainbows and unicorns. (I just got home from a Troop meeting.) So @AltadenaCraig for your troop. Don't abandon those older Scouts. They really don't know what they are missing, or what it will mean for them. They're like adults often are, resistant to change. You'll need to sell them. The same goes for adults. Adults are key, because they can block your progress either overtly or on accident. Keep building that nucleus you have with your younger scouts. When they hit the leadership positions in your troop, the dam will break, and progress will catapult forward. I don't like this story because I feel like I'm tooting my own horn to much. It's not about me really, other than I had the vision and sold others on it.It's not than NYLT is some magic bullet, although it was certainly part of what fast-tracked us. The takeaway I want you to get from this is that there's a broader framework to this. Sell your adults. Find your older Scouts that will buy in, keep developing the patrol method with your younger Scouts. Start building that culture. Sell your vision to anybody that will stand to listen. It will take time. My Troop is finally hitting where I'd like it to be after we started putting the pieces together in 2014. If you're the Scoutmaster, you've already got a big part of it down. If your an ASM, you have an additional hurdle to clear to sell the Scoutmaster first. I'm happy to share some documents I've written with you, have a phone call to discuss. PM me if you'd like.

It only has a negative connotation that you give to it. Religious practice is absolutely made up of behaviors. Religion or lack their of is a choice. It is a behavior. It is based of our feelings and ideas about life and our purpose for living. To suggest otherwise is to suggest we do not have free will in life. That our lives are the outcome of genetically determined sequences that we have no control over and that's all we'll ever be. One's sexual preferences are not a choice in my opinion. But what behaviors I engage in because of those preferences are a choice.

Nursing and HR as well. I've always worked on Female majority HR departments since I graduated from College. Most of my supervisors have been female. Not necessarily good or bad, just is what it is.

That's in theory how the program is supposed to run. Boy Scouting age 11-14, Venturing 14-age out. As other's have said, if you're going to run your unit(s) that way, you need to go all in. Venturing is about leadership, and the youth really drive that program, even more so than boy scouts. A crew really is a separate unit from the Scout troop. What you're really looking for is engaging your older Scouts. @Eagledad talks about better in his posts than I ever can. I wrote out multiple paragraphs, and they were basically saying the same thing Eagledad was, just longer and less concise. This paragraph in particular jumped out to me: It's really easy in theory. It's hard in practice. Most Scouters know that it's a program designed to teach Scouts character and leadership, by allowing them to be with their friends, camp in the outdoors, work on service projects, challenge themselves and develop their troop/patrol. So why is this so hard? Well, because it's unnatural. Scouts don't always have the leadership skills or the camping skills and need to be trained and developed. Adults are also often missing those skills, and are supposed to mentor and coach youth to have those skills, some of which they don't have either. In short it comes down to training/coaching (this often is informal rather than formal) the older scouts, listening to them about what they want to achieve for the troop, and giving them the support for them to lead. Part of why older boys flock to Sports and band and ditch scouts is that many scout troops never leave stage 1 or 2. The program becomes about advancing 11-12 year olds, and the older boys aren't allowed to take the lead on the program and challenge their skills and leadership, so they go find something more challenging. So we're back to my original question @AltadenaCraig. We have these training curriculum for Scouters, but getting a youth lead, patrol method troop still seems to be alluding us. Where's the gap and how can we fill it? Maybe we're all overthinking things to some extent. It's hard to give advice for other people's troops, because I don't know your Scouts or their parents. Happy to give my two cents if you think of something.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Welcome back.

Granted. I guess I should say, in my unit, it's a total non factor, our Scouts have a harder time following it than our leaders. Parents are supportive.

How about a little more patrol method out of national? 😂

Fair point. A lot of us are really jaded. Including myself. I saw the other day the BSA newsroom post about YPT applying to digital conversations between adults and scouts. It was three years old. All the comments were gloom and doom. Today, that rule is rarely complained about.

This is what IOLs, SM specific,Wood Badge and the like are for. But we all know those don't entirely solve the problem. What would you add that would fill in the gaps?

I agree, but that's not what the situation is. This is the parent doing all the talking for their son. Possibly the son isn't involved at all. All for talking to the son and his dad together. Parents have a right to be involved if they choose, but the broader point is, by doing it for their son, they are doing him no favors as life as a real adult looms.

Maybe we have differing definitions of Purist. I don't think a purist is inherently inflexible. There are underlying goals, guidelines and methods to this program. Following those is being a purist in my mind. You wanting the Scout not the dad to talk to his MB counselor is being a purist, but it's not to be difficult or unreasonable. How will that young man approach a college professor with a question when mommy or daddy road graded everything for him previously? At 11? Sure, maybe mom or dad need to coax a shy boy. At 17? Really? Maybe if that 17 year old has a disability. But that's probably it.

I'd love an opportunity to hit that pitch. "I am a Scouting purist. Your son taking responsibility for his own needs and communicating with adult authority figures will be critical when he enters college or the workforce. I'm a purist because I want him to learn these skills now." Maybe this is why I'm not a SM or CC. My smart mouth would offend some parent and they'd pull their son out. "How dare you tell me how to raise my son!"