Spiney Norman

Amen

I like it!

On 5/15/2018 at 8:14 PM, Eagle1993 said:

Do you have some recommended parks?  We are looking for some good options in Wisconsin this July for a Pack Family camp.

 

On 5/15/2018 at 8:27 PM, Cubmaster Pete said:

Peninsula, Point Beach, Kohler-Andrae, Blue Mounds, Kettle Moraine North and South. 

If you can get into Peninsula you would not be dissappointed. Not sure how far you are willing to drive or where u are coming from.

The issue we have with the Wisconsin parks is that they charge a $11+ fee per car, per DAY, plus the camping fees. That gets pretty pricey for drivers at $20-30 per weekend. The resident fee is less and you can buy a sticker good for the year at reduced rates, but we don't always camp beyond the Cheddar Curtain that oftrn.. We have been able to utilise the Illinois state parks and find that we can usually spread our patrols out far enough to keep the patrol areas distinct. Some of our favorites are Rock Cut in Rockford, White Pines in Oregon, IL and Starved Rock has a fairly large youth area.

 Now if we can just get them to get a program together for us at that level, oh I don't know like what we already have in Venturing. What is so hard about this?

As a MB counselor I used to rely heavily on those worksheets. I never required them but would steer scouts to get hold of and use them. It seemed a way to help them get the requirements done quicker and with less fuss. Full disclosure I am a counselor for Family Life, Communications and Personal Management. The subject matter can be pretty dry and some of it does seem like schoolwork. What I found  over time is that their mastery of the subject matter began to slip until it almost became a fill in the blank type situation.

 

I've since changed my focus, required that the scout get hold of the MB pamphlet, READ IT, and fulfill the requirements as written, i.e. discuss, write, show. I have also challenged the scouts to "Wow" me and they have. I guess it all comes down to expectations. Perhaps before I was just looking for completion rather than mastery. The worksheets certainly are a good teaching aid , but by no means are they a complete package to a scout completing a merit badge.

Ken

I was just looking at the "20 skills that are dying out" thread and thought to myself, yes; a lot of these skills are dying out, but what about the technology skills young people have nowadays that we couldn't even imagine. Are IT skills a replacement for those or rather an addition to the list of things a well rounded person needs to know?

 

I like to think myself fairly computer literate, but still find myself asking those 30 something adults in my troop how to solve some of my trickier IT issues. To many of them it is just second nature.

I am looking in to some different high adventure trips for 2015 and came across this place. Anyone have any experience paddling this river? From the NPS website it looks to be rife with multi-day possibilities.

Our council tells us the cost for one scout is $260. The will accept any donation and are happy to have it. I was corralled to do a few presentations this year and it is decidedly not a high pressure pitch. You do get a special FOS council patch if yoou donate the asked for donation though.

I have den chiefs placed with our feeder pack. Sometimes 2 to 3 per den, but then they have 10-23 boys per den and that's a different story, and these boys earn their chops. Firstly they are placed for the cub scouting year, many go on to staff summer day camp, and most continue on for 2 years or more.

 

These boys get great exposure to leading a group and receive fantastic support and mentoring from the den leaders. We truly do have a really good pack! Every Den Chief is expected to complete the training and all do. These are the boys who become our best PL's. I know of no restriction on the number of den chiefs per pack or den.

 

And everything that Stosh said, ditto, diito and ditto!

I have a just converted to hammock camping in the last year or so. They work really great for backpacking and when you are moving each day or even for a day or two plop camp when you are travelling light. The cold can be an issue but I have taken to using my big agnes thermal air mattress below me for insulation. I have found that even at 50F and below you need insulation below you to be truly warm and comfortable.

I spent my week at summer camp in the hammock and rigged up a backpacking fly to act as an additional roof and also as a privacy screen of sorts. Summer camp means I pack a lot of stuff, heck I'm there all week and want to be comfortable. I'm still working on storing this stuff neatly and safely but I'm not about to give it up.

 

We are actually a merged council already. About 15-20 years ago, we were merged with a smaller council. Council kept both camps, one dining hall and one patrol based. both are located a good 3-4 hour drive from council. council also recently sold off their 'close in' camp ( a 40 minute drive) and partnered with an adjacent council in developing a cub scout focused camp about an hour away. The partnership is working out well and the camp is always busy. Not so much can be said for the summer camps. Both are not well attended and have what I have heard are weak programs.

The scuttlebutt is that the recently retired CE was not really on top of fundraising on the corporate end. I would tend to agree. We have several major world wide corporations (ahem, Big Mac) located within our council boundaries and I never heard of any attempts to solicit support from them. we have a Regional guy here part time now and I have not heard of a search for a replacement, so perhaps this is a fait accompli.

What a great idea.I'm with you on this but good luck selling this to council let alone parents. We have all been trained to look upon advancement and MB's as a gauge of a troop or program's success. This is a lie, the true measure of success is more subtle and harder to gauge. Sometimes you may not see it for months or years.

 

I once spent a few days at a camp in northern Wisconsin near Rhinelander after having to get off Lake Superior because of weather. This was a full blown, high energy, high program dining hall camp. Everything was on a BIG scale. Kids were encouraged to bring their bicycles so they could get to "class" on time. Meals in the dining hall were high energy, loud raucous affairs. My scouts and I were truly blown away. Two days later we were of a different opinion. To us it seemed like a Webelos 3 and 4 camp with no challenges for older or even 3rd and 4th year scouts. We realised that everyone's time was very programmed. It wasn't camp it was a small town.

 

Our troop is very adamant about attending a patrol based cooking camp. The unfortunate thing about it is patrol identity seems to begin and end at the activities centered around meal times. Cooking, cleaning and gathering wood for the stoves. I would like to see our camp change it's Campwide troop competition to a patrol based competition. Granted you may have those troop that can only muster enough scouts for one patrol, but wouldn't that even the playing field when going up against larger troops?

 

The advancement end of camp seems to have taken over and becomes what drives the activities as opposed to the other way around. Activities should drive the advancement.

 

I really like your ideas. They would really help the boys "get it" as opposed to the one and done attitude that programmed camps engender.

After our CE retired after 18 years and several changes on the board we were informed via an on-line post from our Council President that their charter is in a provisional status. We are a small council with 1 too many summer camps, two total, that between the both of them are open only 5 weeks.

Anybody ever been through this? what can we expect. I've heard from some folks on the inside that a merger is in the works.

Our troop hadn't done it in a long time. Several years ago, the SM did something he called TLT, but it was some 3-hour PowerPoint he made. Last year an ASM did it, but gutted it and pared it town to a 1-hour lecture--both with predictable non-results.

Your last option is flawed in that it implies that a troop must or is doing TLT if they send boys to NYLT, which is not the case. We require NYLT of any candidate for SPL.

While TLT is not required for NYLT it is part of the ILST/NYLT/Nayle continuum. NYLT covers a lot of material quickly, I would think sending a scout that is not familiar with some of the concepts and could inhibit how much they retain.

Take a look at the new ILST course. It may just change your mind...................

WELL THAT DIDN'T WORK VERY WELL...............

I had a short conversation with the course director for NYLT in our council last night. He seemed to be very surprised that we conducted ILST/TLT in our troop and had been doing so for years.

So here's my question, I'm trying to get an idea of where folks are at on this subject.

 

 

Oh, sure! let's try this poll option.

 

 

Godspeed, Old Grey Eagle, your sage advice and level headed attitude will be surely missed.

I wrote our own TLT/JLT syllabus several years ago. The new, national syllabus is comfortingly similar to ours to the point we gave then new syllabus a try. I thought it went well.

 

I'm sure we will modify it for next year. We always do, even when it was our own. In part, to keep it fresh and keep the boys returning year-to-year but also in response to issues which arise in the tro

A recent modification was the communications module. The old sender>receiver>acknowledgment thing is a yawner. We our version focused more on medium (phone, email, text, smoke) and message. This is concrete stuff the kids can use. Kids all seem to believe texting is the answer to everything. Through skits we demonstrate different examples of where different media is appropriate. Then we give the boys a written message which is purposely long and complicated. We ask them to convert it into a phone message, email and text. We give them a list of phone numbers (the numbers of the course leaders) and have them call. One call gets answered by the "Scout's" mother who goes on-and-on with detailed questions. Another call gets answered by a answering machine. Another is answered by a four-year-old sister and another by a hard-of-hearing grandfather. It makes the point and is a lot of fun.

 

Another modification was to add cooking. At one point we felt the troop meal planning was very weak and needed a boost. Instead of ending the training with a cookout, the Scouts did all the cooking. One of the morning sessions was to go through a stack of camp cookbooks and find a dish the had never made before and wanted to try. We told the boys to really stretch -- McDonald's is a half-mile in one direction and the grocery store even closer in the other (we run this at our Scout House). It's a fail-proof environment, so try something challenging. Interestingly, we got a lot of Italian (chicken pharm, lasagne, home-mades spag sauce), Mexican and Asian. But one kid said he had never grilled a steak and wanted to learn how. Another wanted to spit-roast a chicken. One kid wanted to make gaspacho! At lunch we send an ASM to the grocery store with a list and all the boys start cooking about 4:30. Dinner ends up being a pot luck of everything. Some of it is really bad, but some is quite good -- the gaspacho was fabulous! In the end, the guys get to try some dishes and techniques the would have tried before. It's always fun when you see these items trickle down to patrol menus.

Seems like our troops ran a similar path. we rewrote the old TLT and amazingly it come out a lot like the new curriculum. Though in my opinion it looks like they took a lot of the practical games and exercises from the old JLT video course and added them in to the theory heavy TLT. I do like the new course though and we too have added an entire session just on meal planning and cooking. I like your idea of a cook off. Alos, have you documented your communication module. It looks interesting and if you could forward me a copy I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Ken/Spiney Norman

Hi Spiney, I'd be interested in seeing your syllabus for scout leadership training. I've struggled with using the standard syllabus because it seems too vague for a scout. How to set up a duty roster is concrete. The importance of communication doesn't really help with a scout that doesn't want to help clean dishes. The vague concepts are important but there are some common situations that a patrol leader should know how to handle.

Hi Matt,

I can send you the documnets we use to run the course. As for the nuts and bolts of operation the Patrol Leaders guide is a good resource. I also have older experienced scouts present this portion.

 

Send me your e-mail addy to ken_knasiak@hotmail.com and I will forward you the attachment

Spiney Norman

I handle the ILST(TLT) for our troop. Over the course of the last 4-5 years the course has progressed both by my individual efforts and the updated training material published by national. One of my WB ticket items was to take the current ILST and tailor it for our troop and present it.

Currently we have a syllabus which takes 4-5 weeks of one hour meetings culminating in a weekend campout for those participating in the year's course. Every year we have more and more scouts return to help out with the program after they have "finished" the course. we have added a lot of practical stuff not in the official course such as meal planning, event and campout planning, and lots of stuff about the nuts and bolts of the patrol method.

When presenting I am very careful to keep it fun and have lots and lots of help from the past graduates in presenting the material. Anymore I am only there to keep things on track and make sure the older scouts who are presenting are covering the material. We finish off the course with a campout they have planned and executed. I'm proud of what our course has become and even prouder of how our junior leaders have embraced the importance of training the up and coming leaders.

 

We do a lot of the same things from year to year. People get attached to doing things the same way, including both adults and scouts. We do try and mix things up, such as alternating a canoe campout with a bike ride campout every other year. We, and I mean the PLC and the Committee try to do something new every year. Sometimes it's a success, sometimes not. The fun/well attended events will be repeated while the others are reviewd and either filed away or jettisoned.

 

I will say though that too much interaction between a pack and a troop isn't such a good thing. I think it dilutes the cache of working towards being a Boy Scout for the Cubs and holds back those older Scouts who may feel that Scouts has just become an extension of Cub Scouts. No wonder some lose interest.

Would it be possible to put a button to advanc/changee pages at the bottom of the page as well as the top, where it is now? It would make for a much smoother experiencei when reading through topics that are several pages long.

 

 

Welcome aboard. I'm from Des Plaineds Valley, just next door. Perhaps we'll meetup somtime at the Adventure Camp In Rochelle. (FYI for those not from around here, Three Fires and DPVC co own the local CubScout camp)

You omitted a third option. A national policy that requires units to present homosexuality as an example of morally straight to all of our you.

I'm not sure if you're serious about that statement but good job pushing something to a ridiculous conclusion.

How very disappointing that they would delay this decision; whichever way it was going to go. Shame on the board for not taking the time to get the feedback from their councils and major partners before creating such a kerfuffle.