Tokala

I've heard that both the Summit and Indian Summer will happen next summer. I've already been recruited to staff Indian Summer.

NOAC will be at Michigan State in 2012. I've heard rumors of it returning there in 2015 or back to Indiana (if Indiana gets all the dorms rebuilt in time).

It might become an annual event like Trail Crew or Wilderness Voyage. There's a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built first. Councils were surveyed a little while back concerning their support of ArrowCorps5, if they had held a similar event locally, and if they would support something in West Virginia. Looks like they got enough people saying "yes" that they went for it. NOAC will be in 2012 and 2015. It's tough to compete for participation against NOAC.

Announcement at the national Meeting that the Order of the Arrow will Summit Corps next summer in the New River Gorge. The project will last for 4 weeks and will do trail work that connects the New River Gorge with the Bechtel Summit. I suspect that some work may be to help prepare for the 2013 National Scout Jamboree.

I am working with the OA Management group. My understanding of my job is that I will be hauling all of the equipment/gear that the OA needs for their 3 subgroups: Service Corps, Mysterium Compass, and Indian Village. I report July 19th. I'll probably be driving around in a rental box truck for 17 days.

It's the second troop in about two weeks to have their trailer and gear stolen. A troop in Clearwater had there's stolen. They even have surveillance video of the truck that was hooked to their trailer.

I've been hearing some rumbling that people are being turned down for staff. I do not know anyone personally that has.

As a longtime OA member (ordeal in '77) and a current Associate Section Adviser, I'd have to say that the theory of the OA stealing youth members has some merit, but is also an urban legend. The one factor that will determine which it is in your Council is how well the Lodge emphasizes that a member's key responsibility is to promote camping, especially in their unit. Everything else is bonus material.

I reviewed my local Lodge's recharter papers and noted that with a little over 400 members, we contributed $1250 cash to FOS, over $2200 in materials to camp and nearly 4000 hours of service to camp. Personally, I wish they weren't so self-centered and spent some time doing service around the community.

I think since the organization went from the "Brotherhood of Honored Campers" to the "Scouting's National Fraternity" the program has been diluted and dumbed down. When I was young and eligible, the OA seemed like a very special thing to get involved in. Now, it's just something else that people view as consuming what little free time they do have.

Two things that I never leave home without: Gold Bond and Imodium. Those two can salvage the worst trip.

When the Founders Award started in the mid-1980s, my lodge decided that the Lodge Adviser would select the youth recipient and the Lodge Chief would select the adult recipient. It has remained that way. I've been encouraging the Lodge to form an awards committee. This committee would be responsibile for selecting the Vigil Honor, Founders Award, and a couple of ther awards that the Lodge bestows. For some reason the Founders has not been included yet.

Father Abraham is a good one.

eaglescout1996, you're probably correct. While recruiting for this course, I encountered people that the schedule didn't fit their unit program. I suggested that they check Gulf Ridge and Gulfstream because I knew that both were running courses around the same time. I know of at least 2 that enrolled in Gulf Ridge's course. While their attendance here would have helped fill the course, I do not regret encouraging them to get Wood Badge training elsewhere because it will help their unit which is in West Central Florida. A win for everyone!

"Based on my two minutes of presentation time, I bet I didn't make the cut. There were a couple reasons that my two minutes fell a little flatter than I would have liked, some internal, some external."

You may find it odd, but we tend to put more weight towards group dynamics and how people respond to the stress/team development than your presence in front of the troop for 2-3 minutes.

NeilLup, you are correct. I took my job to be train and develop the team that trained the troop. Once the course started, I was simply monitoring the activity. Most decisions were made by the SPL and the ones that weren't were either a small group consisting of myself, the SPL and my mentor or the entire staff.

My Council is very small geographically. I believe it may be the smallest Council in the BSA since it's merely about 15 miles wide and about 50 miles long. We run one Wood Badge course every 18-24 months. We do not operate Wood Badge in a vacuum. At the conclusion of each course, we develop a list of participants that we think would make good trainers. This list is distributed to the Council and District training staffs.

I am aware of the "ad-lib" piece in Sunday's service. Apparently they forgot the part about knowing the audience, even after I mentioned that there were nonChristian people in our group. Thank you for your maturity and kindness. I will add your comments to the assessments since I believe that they are definite areas for improvement. I have no doubt that there aren't more "artifacts" under some of that underbrush.

The youth were a great group with a very wide range of personalities.

"Something we did to accommodate an added patrol member was hold a patrol leader oath ceremony at closing flag of weekend 1. This allowed for a PL for the mid-course patrol meetings and for a large leadership role. I was pleased with the result of doing that."

We use the patrol leader installed at the opening assembly on Day 3 as the patrol leader during the break between weekends. We attempt to still use the PLC as the primary method of communciation even when we aren't in camp. Our Council has decided to bring back the permanent patrol leader (from Boy Scout Wood badge) as a way to keep the SR-1022 PLC functional over the next 18 months.

I wish more councils took into consideration that the 30% staffing request is just that -- a request. If it means short-changing your course to have a perfect ratio of old:new staff, it's only penalizing the participants of the best program that could be given.

It's simple to draw up a list of names that meet that criteria and submit the proper paperwork to area/region. Honestly, after that procedural requirement I began to recruit. I believe after the recruiting and beginning staff development, having some staff drop out, I ended up with only about 25% being first-timers. There's really no way to adjust staff after your team starts workign together to meet an arbitrary ratio. There is not a problem with folks hanging onto Wood Badge staff in West Central Florida Council. If you get to serve, the most courses you'll serve on will be 3-4.

I did find that my Area Wood Badge Coordinator to be a level of mid-management that is unnecessary. He never contacted me and I only contacted him when I had to file my 30 @ 30 form. He doesn't seem to be a resource or have any concern for what happens in Wood Badge. The 3 previous Course Directors from my Council had the same impression.

Thanks, nolesrule. It was a wonderful experience for me and an emotional one as well. It began to sink in Saturday night that it would be my last time on Wood Badge staff. I would be happy to have you add any extra input to your course assessment. I have them around here in one of the myriads of piles of Scouting and Wood Badge stuff.

I appreicated the hardwork of my staff and hope I guided them well. Honestly though, without people willing to sacrifice their time away from family and jobs, there is no reason for a staff or a course director. We were there for the participants. Hopefully, when reading the course mission statement, I can feel confident that we met that mission.

I will make sure that Santa Bruce hounds you about your tickets in the next 18 months.

Ken

Part 'gotta do what ya gotta do" and part trust in the staff that I do have. The guides really did a good job. I would have liked to spread the work out, but none of them grumbled about having 7 or 8 patrol members.

I had discussions about shuffling some staff around to get back to 6 or 7 troop guides. It didn't leave us with enough people to cover the remaining material and responsibilities. My Council does an excellent job of moving staff through and not going back to the 'old guard'. I had lined up 2 previous staffers that could fill in as troop guides at the last minute, but they both decided that if they weren't good enough to be 'on' staff than they didn't want to be 'standbys'.

NeilLup, SR-1022 has 39 participants. One dropped at the last minute due to his landlord selling his house out from under the renter. Forty was max for the course because I ended up with 5 troop guides.

We also encourage them to discuss their ideas with their units during the break between weekends. If they have an idea and it gets approved by their Troop Guide and the unit refuses to let them work that part of their ticket, then we haven't accomplished much. Communicating with the unit during the break can save lots of headaches on the second weekend.

nolesrules 2nd weekend is March 26-28. We highly encourage the participants to work on writing their ticket during the break. The diversity item is usually reserved until the second weekend when they are given the presentations on diversity.

Good to hear nolesrule.

By the way, I took care of that scheduling conflict of Yom Kippur and the Commissioner's Conference.

Finally got my report date: July 19th. Holy smokes, I didn't know I was signing on for that much time, but it'll be fun. I always have fun staffing national events. It's 80% attitude and 20% hard work.

Thanks, Joe! I hope we can do just as well for the troop on the 2nd weekend. Now, go write your ticket Sorry about the ham & cheese. The cooks have been flogged for ignoring my instructions.

Funny how perspective changes observations. I noticed a couple of minor gaffs by the staff, but it's nice to know it was transparent to the troop. My staff really has made my job easy.

I will always be a Bobwhite....that's Mr. Bob White to you!

They did mention that they are looking at Penn State.

If it's not at Indiana due to the significance of the previous anniversies celebrated there, I suspect it will be at Michigan State. At the Section Officers Luncheon they introduced a gentleman that was a key contributor to AC5 and is one of the muckity-mucks at MSU.