Spiney Norman

Something he should have said a long time ago. Hopefully his bully pulpit will result in something positive.

Thank You Terry, for this sight as well as your well reasoned insight.

After the second round of this game I sat down, looked at the scoring rubric given us and proceeded to write out the equations for scoring. I know I 'm a geek. Seeing the proofs convinced me to recommend to my patrol to with group in mind every time.

An old course director noticed what we were doing and asked me if I had somehow seen the game before, I hadn't, and told him how I came to my conclusions. We lost horribly, even after most (except for one) patrols figured it out. I did get pretty steamed at one fellow and told him exactly how I felt. DO YOU HEAR ME JOSE! I felt I did learn something about myself and my patrol mates.

I did have fun and I do think it is a valuable exercise. I don't think it is hazing and we did have a serious discussion on the purpose and aims of the game afterwards. Some folks even got a little extra counseling.cough cough Jose!

I miss my old collarless shirt. It sure helped me keep track of where my necker and slide were.

I miss being the size I was when I wore that collarless shirt even more.

DS, PLC meetings are well attended and fully supported by the parents of the scouts on them. We purposely hold them on an off meeting night to devote them the time they deserve. PLC meetings are very open and could even be said to collegial. At presen this is not our problem.

Stosh, I see your reasoning as far as High Adventure goes for allowing those scouts who could "handle: it to go along. Unfortunately, parents sometimes think that that their scout is capable of more than they are and we very well could end up with several scouts along on a trip that is well beyond their capabilities. Hence the setting of an arbitrary bar for the trips. additionally we do vet the scouts as to their capabilities and stress the need to be ready. On our last HA to the Apostle Islands we stressed in no uncertain terms that all scouts and scouters attending must exhibit strong swimming skills. I's rather leave a scout at home bring him home early or not at all.

I do appreciate all the sage advice here and continue to read and reread these comments as i plan to sit down with parents, MC's later this week to discuss this.

As for this discussion of our scouts not being ready for BWCA, that is not at issue. We do plenty of canoeing in the troop and prep work towards all of our HA trips. I do appreciate the suggestions for canoe trips, they both sound like lots of fun.

I have been trying to work towards having more and more mini-HA adventures. We did just do a two trip through the Kettle Moraine South unit in late September. Quite a good trip that we had planned and shook down for before hand.

We appoint our patrol leaders. This happens after they have been through our Troop's TLT course and they have served as an assistant patrol leader or den chief. Their tenure usually runs any where from 9 mos to a year or even two years sometimes.

The adults do decide who goes in what patrol, perhaps it's time to change that. It sure could prove messy.

I do get the sense from some excellent posts here that while we may think we are using patrol method we really aren't, not in it's fullest sense anyway. Perhaps we adults are just organizing the boys into manageable units for serving meals etc and calling it the patrol method.

And as for the fun thing, yeah I see that that. If meetings or campouts aren't FUN and there isn't a buzz about them why would anyone want to attend.

Last night at committee we had a long discussion about a rather disconcerting trend in our troop of 60. We are presently configured in 7 patrols with an ad hoc leadership corps patrol. Troop meetings have been running quite well with the patrol leaders planning a topic for each meeting, more often than not scout skill related, followed by a game of sorts. The only time an adult speaks or has any control is at the very beginning with upcoming announcements and very briefly at the end for reminders. The meetings are well attended with well over 45 scouts at every meeting.

We have a functioning PLC that meets monthly and all PL's are required to plan and have monthly patrol meetings away from the regular troop meetings. Over the past 4 years these scouts have gotten much better at planning and informing their patrol members of where and when these meetings are. Strangely, attendance has gone from poor to abysmal in the last year. For the most part the patrol leaders are stymied as to how to get the other scouts to attend. We have informed the scouts and parents that patrol meetings are just as, if not more, important as troop meetings.

The same can be said for our monthly campouts. Including summer camp and High adventure the troop camps 9-10 months out of 12. We set the calender in August and post it on our website and send copies to every family. Out of the 60 scouts we very seldom exceed 25-30 scouts on a campout. And yes, when it comes down too it we recombine patrols on campouts and I see no good reason to change that policy. We will not leave 1-2 or 3 scouts to flounder all weekend.

Summer camp is well attended and has been for as long as I can remember with upwards of 90% of the scouts attending. However, response to the high adventure trips, which is selected by the PLC every year has been disappointing with only 4 of 22 eligible scouts signing up for a week in the boundary waters. This happened a couple of years ago too.

So we formed a smaller subcommittee of parents, MCs. and ASM's to look into this, study it, and hopefully make some recommendations to help the program along. We're thinking of surveying the parents and the scouts for input, anyone here ever do that? Anyone here ever have a situation like this? We sure would like some constructive suggestions and insight.......

Ken

Ok, so Mea culpa, my beading ceremony was at a Council Camperall at the Saturday firebowl. Along with three other WBers the ceremony was the first thing out of the blocks. Standing there I was pretty proud of myself and as the ceremony wore on, and it DID wear on, I could see the scouts and scouters starting to lose interest as their bodies began to list to one side or another.

Seems the lessons we learned in the course about communication don't translate to the ceremonies. Something about knowing your audience or some such nonsense. Now I just feel plain embarrassed to have taken so much of the scout's time that evening. I've been to three or four of these things since joining the WB club and the ceremony never changes. Don't get me wrong, most people who take the course work hard to finish and the deserve some recognition and , yes, the scouts need to be made aware of it. Just tailor your message so it has some sort of impact and meaning for both the sender AND the receiver.

Oh, and the singing of Gilwell, unless you are in a room full of WBers with very few other non-believers just don't do it. Nobody cares, REALLY, NOBODY CARES!

Respectfully,

Ken

I used to be a bear, and apparently a very cranky one.................

Ok, so Mea culpa, my beading ceremony was at a Council Camperall at the Saturday firebowl. Along with three other WBers the ceremony was the first thing out of the blocks. Standing there I was pretty proud of myself and as the ceremony wore on, and it DID wear on, I could see the scouts and scouters starting to lose interest as their bodies began to list to one side or another.

Seems the lessons we learned in the course about communication don't translate to the ceremonies. Something about knowing your audience or some such nonsense. Now I just feel plain embarrassed to have taken so much of the scout's time that evening. I've been to three or four of these things since joining the WB club and the ceremony never changes. Don't get me wrong, most people who take the course work hard to finish and the deserve some recognition and , yes, the scouts need to be made aware of it. Just tailor your message so it has some sort of impact and meaning for both the sender AND the receiver.

Oh, and the singing of Gilwell, unless you are in a room full of WBers with very few other non-believers just don't do it. Nobody cares, REALLY, NOBODY CARES!

Respectfully,

Ken

I used to be a bear, and apparently a very cranky one.................

'bout time! I think I still have my cooking mb patch with the all important white border stashed away somewhere at home.

TT you're right, this is one of the skills parents think important for their scout to succeed in life. And while my son never earned this badge while in the program we considered cooking an important part of program in our troop. It's very evident now that he is a young man. He can cook well enough from scratch to take care of himself without resorting to , as I call it, meal assembly of prepackaged, precooked garbage. Now, idf only he could clean the kitchen as well as he cooks.

1984

Stranger in a Strange Land

Fahrenheit 451

Slaughterhouse 5

Brave New World

A Clockwork Orange

A Wrinkle in Time

Sci fi much?

Don't focus too much on what others may call it. I too call it drinking the Kool Aid and I just received my beads Saturday.

You're right though, there are different levels and I do believe you get out of it exactly what you put in. Hopefully, you have written tickets that are meaningful and challenging. Honestly, I didn't ever think I'd pull my diversity ticket off, but now , after the fact, I don't understand what I was so worried about. Perhaps that's the training, I don't know.

Work your ticket and remember it's not a race.

Good luck working your ticket.

I used to be a Bear.

Go Bears! Congratulations!

I had my final meeting with my ticket counselor Monday and will be receiving my beads at the council camperall this Saturday.

I used to be a Bear..............

Mine Too! I finished the last ticket item last night's troop meeting. That dastardly difficult diversity item. It actually went quite well.

I invited representatives from several different faiths and asked them to give a brief talk on their own faith as well as how scouts can be and show reverence. We ended the night with a presentation on the religious medals program.

Another member of my Bear patrol and I are working on the getting the beading ceremony scheduled for the council camper-all in a couple of weeks. It's important to me that me ceremony be in the outdoors. I have asked an older scouter and woodbadger whom I respect to do the deed. He was the one who pushed me to do this in the first place.

Good for them! I do believe they have held this position for a while. We shall see what does or does not happen now.

I received a report from the JR Leaders that one particular scout was chased down by them, forced to wash some clothes in the wash stand and then shower. Apparently every stitch of clothing he brought with was completely rank as was the scout. This was causing quite a stir with his patrol and tent mates. He was one of the older boys, but I know that he resides somewhere on the spectrum and so I was was not too surprised.

I only heard about this after the fact and must tip my hat the to our JR leaders for handling it so discretely.

Basement, too late. Here is the chart, http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/680-022.pdf , we were given these cards at Summer camp last year.

I'm sure the online training isn't far behind. though in BSA's defense I've seen quite a few scouters who lack common sense in the outdoors. These are the folks who cause the rest of us all the problems

Yay! These couldn't come at a better time as we are taking 10 scouts up to kayak in the Apostle Islands through the auspices of the Samoset council this August. Earning one of the newest MB's is just icing on the cake for the scouts going.

Now, hopefully the council will be up to speed on the requirements and be able to supply a MB counselor. They seem to have things pretty together up there so I'm not too worried. All the same a phone call or e-mail is in order.

Big Munson Island = the most God forsaken place in all of the Florida Keys.

But I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Our Troop has never done a "lazy" weekend.

The PLC understands that every campout must have some programming that is scout related, be it patrol competitions, hikes, orienteering, or some other skills programming. That being said the boys are also adamant about scheduling free time after the the program part of the campout is finished. This usually ends up being after lunch on Saturdays.

We will inevitably catch flak from some of the newer parents to the troop but they usually see the light after a few campouts.

When children's days are increasingly scheduled free time becomes a valuable commodity.To our scouts I think it becomes an escape from they're already hectic days and gives them time to be boys. Try that on a football or baseball team and see where it gets you ;p

So as a general question, how long do you think the average WB'r takes to complete their ticket?

Some of the ticket items I've seen other folks come up seemed to me rather easy, I think I truly tried to make my own ticket personally challenging and I know I won't be finished till almost a year later. Some folks, a few, are already done. It makes me wonder sometimes.........

Oh and GO BEARS!

Just wanted to say #2 of 5 done. Three will be done next month and #4 in May.

Sounds like our summer camp. Heck, it sounds like our weekend campouts. At summer camp we also have a fireman and wood gatherer as we use Shepards stoves. Mmmm, smokey pancakes.

Thanks for the article, it gave me the goosebumps as I remembered summer camp.