T2Eagle

In the other current summer camp thread the OP and some others make reference to Brownsea Island and similar programs for first year scouts, and I wanted to have a discussion about their pros and cons.  Our camp calls it T21 -- The Starting Place, and although it is well run I'm not a big fan.

Rather than concentrating on learning basic scout skills in that kind of a classroom or structured setting, I advise my newest scouts to do things at summer camp that they're not going to get to do on other campouts.  I tell them to take at least one boating program: canoeing, row boat small sail, etc., something at the nature lodge, something at handicrafts, something at the shooting ranges, etc.

I do this because I think the best way to learn the basic skills is organically through doing them and by observing and being taught them by our older scouts.  If you camp with us through your first year you'll have a chance to cover all the skills these programs cover, and you'll do it by whatever fun activities we're doing on those trips.

Some of my fellow leaders feel differently and give different advice, and so it is left up to the individual.

How do the rest of you feel about these types of first year programs?

2 hours ago, RememberSchiff said:

BSA has Incident Reviews. I agree those one paragraph reviews could have more details.

https://www.scouting.org/health-and-safety/incident-report/incident-reviews/

 

Fascinating, I've never seen or heard of these, and I try hard to keep up with available materials.

Where would someone be told about or shown these if they didn't have RS to point them out?

I will go through them, at first glance there definitely is some good stuff in them, but they would be a lot more useful if they looked at the decisions leading up to the incident.  For instance, under boating-river paddling there is a drowning in cold fast water, if we knew why and how the decision was made --- or not made --- to check conditions before the trip we could then apply that to our own decision making process.

We will probably never know what happened, what decisions were made, whether they were good or bad decisions.  And so the rest of us will derive no benefit from the lessons that could be learned here.

I have long thought that BSA should send around after action reports on things like this so that other folks can see how things can go wrong, or right, and apply it to their own program.  Instead we get a G2SS that has rules, but we never get the real world lessons that can be used to make for better outcomes for everyone in the future.

23 minutes ago, mashmaster said:

Congrats!  I just hope your project wasn't yet another gaga ball pit.

Our last gaga pit has become the bane of my existence.  It was a good project, two pits for a yearly CYO/youth festival --- very popular, and they were owned by and stored at the CYO fields.  Fast forward a couple years, someone borrows one of them from CYO but instead of returning to CYO asks if they can return to us and we get it back to CYO storage.  We don't really have room for the thing in our shed, but sure a scout is helpful, we'll take it and find a way to get it back to CYO.  BUT, the festival no longer takes place, we can't find anyone at CYO to take the thing back, and now we're stuck with it.  People still occasionally borrow it for parish activities,  but it always ends up back with us.  As I said we don't have the room and so we are constantly moving it from one part of the shed to another depending on which equipment we need and it's in front of.  We don't want it, but nobody can bring themselves to throw it out. 

These questions look pretty much like the same ones on the JTE forms I occasionally bother to fill out.

22 minutes ago, Gwaihir said:

How does anyone know they have a limited pool of volunteers before a program has even been rolled out?  You have families chomping at the bit to get into scouting, to get their girls into scouting, but not a single one of those parents is up for being a part of it as well?  I highly doubt the question has even been broached to those parents.   From where I stand, it's laziness and dishonesty (from volunteers and from national) .

I agree, there are girl's soccer teams, softball teams, track teams, basketball teams, volley ball teams, etc.  There's even this thing out there called Girl Scouts.  All of which find enough parents of those girls to be volunteers to maintain their programs.  So what evidence is there that there won't be enough volunteers to have single gender dens or troops?  

He may be eligible to join based on age.  You can join a troop at age 11, you don't ever have to have completed AOL.

Our troop went through several iterations of views on electronics, from absolutely none, to OK to use them in a car on the ride there, to our current policy that phones are a tool, and like all tools need to be used correctly.

As with most things, it was the adults who had the hardest time adjusting to the evolution of this practice.

One example I use to illustrate for other scouters why our troop has the practice that we do comes from a Philmont trip a couple years ago.

A handful of scouts and two adults from our troop were set to go to Philmont as part of our council contingent.  The trek leader was going to be a scouter from another troop who pretty much makes the trip every year.  During the shakeout phase he told the scouts that they absolutely would not be allowed to have phones with them on the trek.  They would need to get cameras for pictures, wouldn't be allowed to contact anyone outside the trek, etc.  Why?  Because that's just the way you should do Philmont.  I know this scouter, and for all his virtues, he does often espouse the view that there is only one right way to do things.

By the time the actual trip came my troop's scouts were part of a different crew led by one of our adults and fleshed out by a couple of scouts and an adult from a third troop.

During the trek, soon after summitting Baldy, my scouts managed to find just enough of a signal to text me a photo of them from the top and a long heartfelt thanks for having been instrumental in preparing them for the great adventure they were on.  It brought tears to my eyes when I received it, and I since have printed and framed both the note and the picture. 

Any argument that their doing that was somehow wrong, given the pleasure it brought both me and them, seems totally absurd to me.

I've always read this requirement as being about the troop's internal rules.  Some troops have a strict no electronics on campouts or no electronics at meetings rule, some have different variations including little to no formal rules.  I think this is an opportunity to discuss troop specific electronics usage.

I just reread your original post, you said someone told you the investigation was ongoing and would take several months.  That might just be someone being officious, but if it actually means that the local police have been contacted and are involved, you should get a lawyer.  If things have gotten that far, no one but you are going to be concerned about the well being of your son, and you should frankly trust no one who may tell you differently.

We sometimes assume knowledge that not everyone has.  So let me lay out what the hierarchy is in Boy Scouts.

Your troop is sponsored by a Chartering Organization (CO) this is some sort of local community organization, I think by the numbers it is probably a church, it can also be a school, or some civic organization like an Elks Lodge, VFW Post, American Legion, etc.  This is probably where your troop meets.  That CO has an agreement with the local BSA Council to carry out the scouting program.  The local Council is the area representation of the Boy Scouts of America, their name is what's on the shoulder of your son's uniform.  They will have a local office, and they are headed by a paid professional known as a Scout Executive (SE).

The CO can determine who is and is not allowed to be in their troop, if they don't want you there it's up to them.  They don't need a good reason, they don't need any reason, they are in charge of their own membership and answer to no one above the organization regarding who's in their troop.

As DavidCO mentioned above, some schools, and probably some other organizations now, have a zero tolerance policy towards threats.  My own son ran into this and the response and fallout was nuts. Lose your temper and use the magic words and it doesn't matter whether everybody involved understands there was no actual threat involved, the system takes its course like a runaway train. Luckily this was before the very latest school shootings or the outcome, which was bad enough, probably would have been even worse.   If this is the situation your son is in you should be very careful.

It sounds like what is being decided here is within your troop.  If that's the case, there's no appeal process beyond your CO, and frankly it's probably not worth pursuing that.  You should contact your local council, ask to speak with your SE and find out about joining another troop.  Hopefully there is more than one troop near you and their leadership may either be more willing or more free to make considered judgments than your current troop.

I'm an Eagle Scout, 10 years an SM, was Vice Chief of Ajapeu Lodge in my long ago youth.  Currently, my troop is viewed as the somewhat radical troop in my district because of how boy led we are --- if it's not a matter of health and safety, or of BSA or my CO's policy, then it's up to the scouts to decide, plan, and carry out their program.  "Things we've always done" and "the way we've always done it" are not arguments for doing or not doing something now.  I tell that to my scouts, and I think it applies to most of life.

I have not been involved more than peripherally in my current lodge as an adult.  I'm friends with the guys who are; they seem happy with their role and my plate is full.

I'm glad that girls will now have the same opportunity to grow in scouting the way that i and my sons did, because I believe in the program.  And as I've told several people locally in recent discussions, if I'd had daughters instead of sons I would have spent the last 15 years mad that they couldn't have the benefits of scouting.  I believe in the unique benefits of our program as a character, citizenship, and personal fitness development program for young people.  There's nothing in our program that young women today don't need just as much as young men do, and there's nothing in our program that isn't appropriate for young women to do.  I am pretty happy with the idea of retaining single gender troops, if/when my CO goes that way our troops will be separate in their meetings and programming, but will have the material support and access to the fifty plus years of equipment, knowledge, and experience that our current troop already has.  If the decision was to go full co-ed I would have liked it less, but I think the benefits to our nation of opening the program up to the other half of our young people would have outweighed even the down side of losing some of the advantages of single gender learning.

As to OA, for me it was an opportunity to hang out with and spend time camping with older guys who shared my interests and ideas of fun.  It was then and should be now an honor society for scouts who are above and beyond the average.  Allowing female Venturers has been overdue for a while, and I've heard that from the female venturers in my council.  Frankly, my lodge would be stronger if some of them had been allowed membership.  As long as they've done the camping I'm fine with letting them in even outside of the Scouts BSA pathway; I don't really have an opinion on Sea Scouts and suspect the numbers are so low that their participation is irrelevant.

9 minutes ago, Hawkwin said:

Assuming it is Ellie:

From 2015:

http://www.wacotrib.com/waco_today_magazine/waco-couple-leads-boy-scout-troop-by-example/article_ca663709-2685-5ce1-b722-cb7ca4eadf2b.html

I like this quote about her:

"She thinks the boys need to respect and learn how to work with women"

This was a sentiment expressed by one of our Council's key 3 in a talk he gave to all the leaders at summer camp a couple years back.  He reminded us that, in a way that probably wasn't true even for us,  our kids will grow up in a world in which our scouts will have to work with women as their supervisors and superiors, as their peers, and as their subordinates, and if we aren't providing them models for how to do that than we are skipping a big part of what they are going to have to know in life.

On 5/21/2018 at 7:03 AM, Eagle94-A1 said:

Still in there.  Page 92 has this

Note: Pioneering projects, such as monkey bridges, have a maximum height of 6 feet. Close supervision should be followed when Scouts are building or using pioneering projects.

I don't understand why people seem to have a problem with this one.  A friend of mine is a physician who is a VP for a Fortune 500 firm.  Our troop was building a monkey bridge a few years back and we got talking about the height limits.  He said he had read the science on this and it's unassailable, there are a lot of stats he had at his command that I don't remember exactly, but a fall from above five feet or so is the place where you stop expecting broken arms and start expecting serious closed head and traumatic brain injuries. 

Arguing against this rule is akin to arguing against seat belts and life jackets.

A couple of changes, or just discrepancies, that I see between these guidelines and even  the brand new YPT I just took:

“Youth sharing tents should be no more than two years apart in age.”  There’s no mention of siblings.

“In all other programs youth and adults tent separately.”  This precludes a youth sharing a tent with a parent.  This isn’t a common occurrence, but I’ve had it happen.  Certainly cannot think of any way the rule makes sense.

23 minutes ago, carebear3895 said:

You know why I think it is that way? Most if not all SE's were DE's like in the 70's, 80's,or 90's. From my understanding, the norm back then was to treat DE's pretty much like dirt. My guess is those SE's today don't see a reason to treat current DE's any better, because of what they went through.

 

I'll admit there is a huge culture problem in the profession. On the plus side, I actually do see it getting better on a council by council basis. 

I've had that conversation with a couple of SEs that I'm friends with who were bemoaning the "kids these days" DEs working for them.  "I had to  (move a lot, work too many hours, take on too many tasks personally, etc.)"  A common problem with any organization that never hires laterally from the outside is that there just aren't enough new ideas that people have actually already tried and used.  

The current system is premised on the idea is that if you put up with the hardship long enough you get rewarded by becoming a SE with good pay and good working conditions.  But with the inevitable downsizing that's going to occur with the loss of the LDS that promise simply won't be able to be kept.

I'm curious if any of the LDS community members here have any sense of what LDS professionals will be thinking once the relationship ends.  Will they feel an obligation to leave scouting even if they don't have to?

On 5/18/2018 at 11:48 AM, David CO said:

I don't think this program will take off. Despite what the priests and nuns might want, even the most devout Catholic men and boys don't want to spend every waking moment of their lives saying the rosery.

I've known a lot of priests and nuns, including some close relatives.  They didn't want to spend their lives saying the rosary either.

3 minutes ago, bob_kins said:

A good ol’ green canvas ten, it does have an outlet though.

In that case you want a fan that will blow across you at night, both for cooling, but more importantly mosquitoes.

Before you answered the question about electricity I was going to say that 10 weeks in a tent is very different from one week.  You need to be sharp and on your toes all day, think hard about what you need to do to get a good night's sleep every night.

5 minutes ago, Tampa Turtle said:

Taking the online training today....awfully long...site is overly complicated to work with. I think the demands of sitting through this is going to cause a loss of registered leaders. Again, good content...just too long.

I was told by our DE, and so not an authoritative source, that part of the reason for the new length and some of the new content is specifically to be in compliance with a number of state laws that require this type of training.  

38 minutes ago, David CO said:

At my Catholic school, all teachers, coaches, scout leaders, etc. are required to use the school's e-mail addresses on all school business. A copy of all communications is automatically copied to the office. 

We have a Christian Brother as an administrator. So yes, Big Brother is watching you.

 

Do you know whether other Catholic sponsored troops are required to use parish emails (between youth and adults)?  The newest policy may be requiring that for us, I have to parse it a bit more carefully.  As an alternative to every leader in the troop having a new email, I may see if we can have one parish email and copy all leader/communications to include that email.

Out of curiosity, it's never been clear to me, is your school parish based, run by one of the orders, or something else?

I received an update today from our Catholic diocese regarding electronic communications with youth.

These rules are always more complex than BSA's because they cover everyone from clergy, through teachers, on down to volunteers like us, and so there are lots of caveats and qualifications to cover that spectrum of roles.  But the gist of it is that the same rules of always copying another adult on any email, text etc., now are mandated by the diocese as well as by BSA.

To answer the question who is the NCCSA and what authority it has, it's useful to understand the hierarchy of the Church itself.  Although there is a national organization, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), that organization does not have the authority, strictly speaking,  to dictate to its member bishops, rather the bishops are responsible to the Pope and to each other. "As Christ's vicar, each bishop has the pastoral care of the particular Church entrusted to him, but at the same time he bears collegially with all his brothers in the episcopacy the solicitude for all the Churches. Though each bishop is the lawful pastor only of the portion of the flock entrusted to his care, as a legitimate successor of the apostles he is, by divine institution and precept, responsible with the other bishops for the apostolic mission of the Church."

Because of this structure there can be no national organization, scouting or otherwise, that dictates policy for the country.  Within each diocese, the head of the diocese, for simplicity's sake the bishop, is responsible for all things Catholic within his domain, and so "each diocesan bishop oversees arrangements with scouting organizations in his diocese."

Having said that, it's a bit disingenuous to dismiss the NCCS.  If they were providing guidance that was contrary to the teachings of the Church as understood by the USCCB they would lose any affiliation with the USCCB, and to the extent that the folks there are clergy, they could be admonished to speak differently, either by their bishop or by their order.  

I have found summer camp is actually a good time to train new leaders as to how little they're supposed to do.  

Through the week the scouts pretty quickly fall into the rhythm and routine of the camp, and that routine is the safety net the adult is used to providing  so it's easier to pull the adult back and say "hey.let them go, they'll figure it out" and then actually show them that it works.  Also because the camp is running most of the program there just isn't the opportunity for a new adult to interfere.

You need to set the expectations explicitly up front.  Do a briefing with all the adults about what the expectations are for them going in, and then use that as the basis for pulling the adult back.  "Remember, this is what we talked about, let them do it even if they're getting it wrong."  If the adult is particularly challenged in learning their role, because summer camp really has so little for a typical Sm to do, it actually makes it easier to divert the adult explicitly because, frankly, a SM doesn't have much better to do than train his new adults.

So I would say let them come and use the opportunity to make them better.

From he Eagle Project Workbook here are the approvals necessary for a project to proceed.

Pretty clearly the interactions are supposed to be between the SM and the scout, not the SM and the committee.

Unit Leader Approval

I have reviewed this proposal and discussed it with the candidate. I believe it provides impact worthy of an Eagle Scout service project, and will involve planning, development, and leadership. I am comfortable the Scout understands what to do, and how to lead the effort. I will see that the project is monitored, and that adults or others present will not overshadow him.
Signed

Unit Committee Approval

This Eagle Scout candidate is a Life Scout, and registered in our unit. I have reviewed this proposal, I am comfortable the project is feasible, and I will do everything I can to see that our unit measures up to the level of support we have agreed to provide (if any). I certify that I have been authorized by our unit committee to provide its approval for this proposal.
Signed

I'm with Q and Parkman, interactions with the scout should be between the Sm and the scout.  If the committee has questions they should go through the SM.  The scout answers to the SM, the SM answers to the committee.  Lots of different adults asking questions of and getting answers from a scout is never a good idea and will be open to a lot of different interpretations.