blw2

this is generally the model I envisioned back when I was an active CubScouter a few years ago.... separate dens but I think rfd536 is likely spot on about separate on paper only...at least for a majority...and at least in the beginning I don't necessarily thing though it's driven by meeting space. Maybe in some cases sure....but I just don't think numbers will support separate dens. We struggled a couple years to support a full den compliment in a couple age groups as it was. 1-4 kids doesn't make for a meaningful and functional den or patrol.

i think you bring up some interesting perspectives..... most of which, well.... while I find likely plausible, give me heartburn quite frankly. If I had given my son some money (or better had encouraged him to earn money) because his patrol wanted to buy some gear..... I would not in a million years ever feel like I owned a share of it....or feel that he owned it either. Maybe different if it were a group of five friends from the neighborhood not associated with some organized group in any way, but for a scout group..... I can't fathom not looking at it like a donation I think your point is funny about people not being reasonable....and I think that if I were in this position and I had one or more parents belly aching about their share in some beat up old scout tepee..... I would deliver said teppee to their doorstep with a smile. Let them work out fractional ownerships and whether or not the others abandoned it. as for new scouts buying in....I personally would not want to touch that with a 10ft pole if that new scout were my son.... smells like buying into a stink-pot to me....so I wouldn't expect others to consider it. It just smells bad on several levels.....

i agree with others...scouts "put" into a patrol raises some red flags my take on the ownership question... I think it not so different than considering what happens to the troop gear if the troop dissolves. If a troop dies, the equipment and assets go first to paying off any troop debts, then the balance goes to the CO for future scouting use..... if deemed ok by CO and council, it can be given to a different troop, etc..... So what happens when a patrol dissolves? Why not look at it the same way....it becomes troop property, to be assigned to another patrol at an appropriate time! We have a system put into place long before my time, where the scouts pay $1 per week. This was above an beyond the regular annual dues that "parents" paid... this was an adult contrived method to help teach these "boys" responsibility..... because the "boys" were not to be trusted with the real money.... so let's let them learn with $1. Anyway, the adults would take this money every so often and either put it into the troop pot or buy something.... I pushed for the patrols to decide how to use this money. If you want to use it for grub on the upcoming campout, fine....if you want to save it for a tepee, great! If you want to donate it to charity.... I'm happy for you! It never really took off for much so far..... but the reason I bring it up is that in this way, the pot is clearly patrol money however I get the sense that in the OP's example, the parents feel like they (personally) did the paying for this thing.

hey, you know.... I think that is great! It's my opinion that nearly every meeting should run EXACTLY just like that. "what do you want to do? You have the run of the building, the field outside, all the kit, the knowledge of 5 adult leaders who are here. Go for your life! " Perfection!

yeah, I'm not convinced IOLS does anything on that front either regardless....maybe I too, am just cynical, but it'll just be more of the same..... except the endless talking, trying to listen and power points will drag on past dinner time. If you're lucky, it'll be in a nice outdoor setting but likely it'll just be sitting around the picnic tables under some picnic shelter someplace.... They will probably all be released at some point to go set up their tents.... or maybe they do that at arrival...then at some point later, they will sit through a 45 minute lecture on tents, how to by a tent, how to set it up, and how to care for it..... hey, wait a minute....don't they already know that? I have always gotten a laugh when I think about the BALOO course I took (after about 2 years of trying to find one) It was a class about taking the scouts outside, right?.....but we stayed INSIDE the WHOLE day.... it was a nice day out as I recall too.... and most of us had brought our camp chairs too, since we were told to bring them at signup.... but we sat inside of a fellowship hall at a church all day. Didn't even get to go outside to cook the tin foil soldier meals that we assembled in the kitchen. Some staff member took them out and grilled them for us.... Seriously...SNL could do a skit on that.... Regardless I'm all for it being an overnight....outside but I don't think it needs all the sitting and talking/listening stuff. Maybe a reasonable session covering the rules and requirements stuff...while sitting around the campfire and then perhaps a few hands-on real world sessions for skills...but mostly that stuff should be covered just by the fact that they are out there....in the woods..... camping already.

I think you make some excellent points. One thing though.... about the "fun" part. I think it imperative that it's more then just certain few events. Much more From my perspective.... my son has completely lost all interest in scouts.... it seems to me that the scouts need to be encouraged and allowed to have fun at almost every meeting or gathering. Not adults setting up a fun program like for cubs, but they need to be free to do it. I've heard some of our adult scouters say before something to the affect of it's not all about fun, when referring to other dropped scouts in the past, saying that some guys just want to come and play, and that's not what this is about... I observed my son have fun on almost every outing, but dread the meetings. Fun outings are not enough.

I had a few years of the reluctant Tiger parents with no leader. One year, I was one phone call away from changing gears to let them all know the den was dissolving. After asking a few times with no luck, I ended up setting up a den meeting and lead it myself, as an example. I was CM at the time. I ran a den meeting, tried to make it fun and also show an example of how it plays out.... I really tried to stress the shared leadership of the den with these parents in followup conversations... a scout parent pair would take the meeting for the week or all for the month and do most of the work. So the Den Leader would just be their over seeing....and doing a bit of coordination... but somebody has to be registered and trained. I think it was my last call, working through the list of parents to follow up and ask them to step up, I had a dad say, yeah he was thinking about calling me. he reluctantly did it. he was a good guy, but that den really struggled. they met very infrequently and dwindled down to just two scouts I think.... I tried all sorts of things to encourage more frequent meetings....and several times suggested that he and the wolf den merge into a shared meeting format.

shouldn't the scouter be approaching the PL or SPL and asking him to send little Johnny over? Seem to me that at least theoretically the PL are the ones that need to know where they are and the SPL needs to know where his PL's are....

It goes back a few years no for me...so things have changed but We did a hodgpodge of stuff. I heavily researched options back in the day. Most of those sites for cubs had a huge focus on advancement tracking and record keeping. I eventually decided that all of that was a bunch of work and effort for nothing. At the cub level, it seems more important to just have the scouts' track their own in their handbooks and focus on instant recognition. The only exception i can imagine is the huge pack with multiple dens at each level, where it might be good to have some sort of system to help streamline the job of the person buying all the patches. I played around with the trax spreadsheet templates...don't know if those are still out there and supported....but honestly it wasn't a huge help and we used emaildodo to set up email groups for each den, for the scouters, and for the full unit With the troop, we use troopwebhost. Pretty sure he has a pack version now. Excellent tools for group emails, for the troop calendar, and for the treasurer to keep all the money logged and visible. I would not be doing the treasurer job , personally, without the transparency it offers. My opinion is ignore the advancement tracking for cubs. It's not that important.

I read a lot of memoirs and autobiographies...military stuff. This reminds me of one of the Navy Seal guys I read... He talked about his medic training. I don't remember for sure, it might have been but I don't think corpsman was his MOS, but he was the platoon medic (don't remember if that's the title he used... but you get the general idea). I don't know...it's been a while, maybe he was a corpsman. Anyway, those guys were taught real hands-on stuff....not counting the real-world experience...just the training before they go out there..... The goat lab is what really stuck in my memory. They would buy goats from local farmers. The instructors would take a goat away from the students (around the corner or in the next room), and do all sorts of brutally bad stuff to it. Then bring in the student. Take off teh blindfold. Real world real timeline. No goofing around.... They had to assess and treat, and keep the goat alive for a specified amount of time. The goats would then go back to the locals for use as dinner I don't imagine the average family medicine doc has ever been exposed to that sort of thing. Sure they might be full MD, but different theaters of operation all together. Not even close. Except for perhaps an ER doc, I can imagine the doctors, the smart ones anyway, would let the military medic step in first almost every time.

Yeah, I tend to think like you, in theory anyway. In practice I think most are probably like my son was.... I tried to encourage him to visit the other troop options just to see. He really had no interest but we did visit one. Our pack was split, feeding essentially two troops. some years more would go across the street and few would stay with our CO's troop but when we were there it was flipping back the other way....we were feeding our CO's troop. Complicated, but the other troop was out of consideration for my son but the troop we visited was "fed" from his school's pack (our CO is our church) Most of my son's friends were going to our CO's troop He was familiar with the building and surroundings, since it's our church and also where he was a Cub for years.... He was familiar with a majority of the scouters involved... ....a natural feeder situation. Meanwhile the other troop was a bunch of strangers for scouts a bunch of strangers for scouters a strange meeting place yeah, that aint gonna fly.... BUT, to the OP's question.... You've been involved a lot longer than me, but when I was active in the pack, we were on a strong down cycle.... parents wouldn't step up or step in, membership was waning... I figured it logical that these things are cyclical. Wait a couple years till a new crop of energetic parents come aboard and things will swing the other way. My other observations.... - people won't step up to fill a job if someone is already doing it...even if they aren't doing it well. - and the best thing long term to maintain membership, to me anyway, seems to be have a strong program. Recruiting doesn't do it. A strong program being whatever it is that the boys want to come for. They would be having fun....and I think yes, patrol method may not be that draw of appeal on the surface, but if done "right" it really seems that it opens freedom that any boy would enjoy.... then they just need adults willing to take them on these adventures they dream up. then, word of mouth kicks in, friends are recruited... Boils down to this...If a scout isn't having fun, then he's not likely to invite a friend to join him....

honestly....I think this thread points to the one major root to the problem with scouting today, and more close to home for me...why my son has lost interest in scouts. Not enough freedom to explore and grow. He's getting nothing different in scouts than he gets anywhere else. If they were allowed to "go"...I think things would be different.

I'm with Chisos...don't overbook. Boys need time to just be boys in the woods so to speak. although I do think it's nice to do a little something. I remember doing scavenger hunts a time or two. Mostly when we camped it would be at a destination. Once we camped at Florida Caverns state park. Did a cave tour (ranger guided). Otherwise maybe hike teh park's trail....that kind of thing. Otherwise let the boys have fun. We often would do family camping at state parks, just reserve a block of sites, with one site set up as the pack site for group cooking and gathering.....other sites would be one or two families per site to camp. We had a bunch of families with RV's, so that way they could RV "camp" with us. We are Florida, so Disney's Fort Wilderness was a hit. Have to be careful with the group sites for cub camping. Since it's family.. potable water and toilets are needed. Some group camps are a bit primitive. In my thinking though... the best "camping" was at the council camp outs. Cuboree, etc... Often food was taken care of, and activities planned. They took care of registration, no reservations, etc...Easy all around. BUT the most fun and best attended were usually the ones I called overnights...not camping. Overnight in Sea World sleeping next to the whale tank, Kennedy Space Center sleeping under the shuttle, Patriots Point sleeping on the aircraft carrier. Zoos do them, all sorts of doors are opened up for groups.

yeah, my sons didn't fit either when he was APL and then PL...that was when he was still somewhat gung-ho for scouting. I think his shirt was size small. I was going to just help him clip the patch but he never wanted to sew the thing on..... he could care less about patches even then.... I think clipping the POR patch might be the only option I can come up with....

I'm reminded of a summer camp experience...way back in ancient times when I was a scout. One night, we had a capture the flag sort of thing...at night scouts started at one end of the camp, scouters and staff at the other. If you got through you won. My team...4 guys I think, decided to take the path down by the sound, where there was a steep bluff along the shore, knowing adults wouldn't go there.... we were well on track but someone fell and got hurt (not on the bluffs as I recall)... and we had to forfeit and carry him out.... 1st aid and all of that. A fond memory. We were stupid by adult standards I suppose, but we found our way, learned to lead....

yeah, I don't doubt that much.... seem plausible to me.... that the YMCA, or organizations like it, would use sports with that purpose. My kids participated one year in an Upward sports Basketball league at a local Baptist Church. They were all about "fun and purpose" I was very impressed with that operation.... But are you saying that YMCA actually invented these sports games basketball, baseball, football, volleyball, etc... all for the "purpose" That seems like a bit more of a stretch to me, but hey if you say so.... Other organizations certainly invent games for their purpose.... AWANA is an example that comes to mind of a group that has it's own gamebook all for a Christian purpose. I used to work with a fellow that was very active in that for his church. This was when I was volunteering with the pack, and I spent quite a lot of time comparing notes with him.... But, taking things to the modern / current mainstream interpretation.... from my perspective anyway, sports is about the game first, at least most of the time

That's not the "documented" I meant.... I agree with you. What I was getting at is that with scouts, the "documented program" that we are all trying to follow focuses on it....the game outline for scouting is doing this stuff with character in mind but while sports coaches might make their own efforts....leagues might even... but I don't think that the focus or reason for playing the game is character. They are there to play the game first, the game is the focus, not character building but again with scouting, the documented program is all designed around character building... I agree with you that so much of the program has leaned towards paperwork and book work too much...

the sports thing is interesting to me.... I'm not a sports guy at all. I'm the guy who's eyes gloss over as soon as someone talks about the game.... I find it rather pointless to watch others playing a game. The games to me are pointless, and it drives me nuts the importance that so many folks give it. I also hate that so many of the so called role models in that area are overpaid uneducated and downright trashy people but the thing I have observed over the years..... many exceptions of course, including the over testosteroned and rude sports folks.... but I'd have to say that a good many of sporty folks I have observed over the years seem to be perhaps socially better adjusted than non sporty types. Sporty kids are often polite and well mannered, confident, and have larger groups of friends I'd have to guess that just as with scouts, there is a huge variable in that some coaches are much better than others, but I'd guess that most coaches try in their own way to teach character...it just may not be such a consistently documented "part" of the program.....they aren't all singing form the same hymn book like we in scouting are.

personally I wouldn't care for that. Units could be all over the map as far as food goes. I'm reminded of my first few trips out with our troop. First couple times was as a guest when son was WEBELOS. Back in those days, the SM of the time had it set so that the SM's and visiting adults just ate whatever the patrols ate. For one, I didn't much care for the feeling that I was mooching from them.... not their job to work for me, and all of that..... but more than that the quality of food and cleanliness was ....well an adventure. I said to myself then..."never again, I'll bring my own food form now on...". Later, the new SM changed it up so that the adults would do their own thing as a patrol, and that seemed much better in my thinking form all angles. So, I would think it better for the staff to do their own thing. I have no experience on that side of things but it seems to me the choices are every man for himself form up staff patrols that take care of their own in small groups or, do up a bigger production in the dining hall for all staff together

I was just thinking about this thread..... the TV show or youtube idea...and that book I read Rocks in my Backpack... The statement was made that troops can't do high adventure all the time. true enough and really high adventure doesn't have to really be all that "high", especially for kids, for it to be adventure and fun... But if there are enough BIG trips spaced out through the year....like 2-4 maybe.... and then there is some genuine preparation done for those trip between not just talking about what you're gonna do...but hands on learning and doing.... not reading from the handbook...but actually get outside and build a patrol teepee for use at the next camp.... or practicing snow shoeing leading up to a big overnight treck.... Then that might be enough.... so the thought I had, related to this thread and marketing.... what if there was a show that would visit various troops...not only on a special outing but more routine meetings too.... the show might do features on a particular scout or patrol or troop.... maybe follow them through a couple preparation meetings leading up to a survival campout for example.... or an overnight canoe advneture Would your troops meetings as they are now make for exciting TV? Would a boy seeing it say to himself, hey I want to join them and do that?

I ran a regatta once. I did it much more casually though...... as an activity for a pack meeting. I set up 4 gutter runs so we could run two races at the same time outside so they can get messy made boats using pieces of swimming pool noodles pre-cut in half axially then to length Supplied stuff to make masts and sails and a few things for decoration. straws for blowing were available as option Threw out the stuff, and said make boats race in 10 minutes or whenever you're ready.... scouts could line up any way they want in the 4 lines, race whoever they want, race as often as time permitted Asked den leaders to play up the winners and make sure the gutters didn't get dumped over...but nothing formal and nothing too controlled keep it simple....no winners recorded it was loud, it was chaotic...but there were smiles all over the place.....

oh boy...grab the popcorn.... sheath knives is a hotly discussed topic. It is in the realm of folklore that they have been banned...even though they have not. Thing is, many scout reservations have their own rules against them....so.... it might depend on where this event is held.

Barry I think you touched on a lot there.... Thinking back a couple years ago when my son first joined the troop as a webelos crossover.... wow he was gung ho...not about advancement but about the fun. He was on cloud 9 literately...wanted to be patrol leader, taking the ILST class voluntarily, going to everything..... Going camping, running around playing zombie tag with the older scouts....grinning ear to ear... he resisted the advancement stuff and all the excitement was quickly squelched. Meetings doing the same lame 1st aid drills that were more talk than do... that he did many times even as a webelos quickly became boring.... what little bit of "high adventure" was starting to get focused on the older scouts about that time... excluding the younger guys....and even that really wasn't all that high.... he was capable of most of it and was raring to go....but couldn't He crossed in January of 2016. He is still Scout rank...and no longer wants to go to meetings or anything. Not even interested in fun outings such as canoe trips and such.... I really think the adult driven stuff, advancement and such squashed it for him.... Some of the guys are still going wit it, so I think it's a personality thing with the scouts, some tolerate this stuff at different levels.

I think the show, or whatever it is... would have to show both adventure to hook-em, but the character building clearly there but not "in your face" so that parents will see it and thing, hey I want that.... but not so much that it ruins the adventure! Helloooo This is Stampyyyy. Welcome to another.... ha ha... a few years back that is all I heard!!! I got quite good at doing that british "Stampy" imitation.... dead link...but I'll make a mental note to go look for it.... must have been on cable tv. I love watching those survival shows and obviously like scouting...so I'm surprised I hadn't heard of it. We cut the cable at home many years ago so I'm out of the loop on many thing I suppose....

Not sure what this is referring to.... Was it the "tougher than a Boy Scout" thing that was on TV a couple years back? That was a nice attempt but missed the target IMHO. Hitting that target is hard I have noticed, with TV shows. I can think of a few emergency room type doctor shows as examples that are pretty good....but there's something subtle about the way they are produced that make them obviously tiers below something like the old "ER". You can tell they are trying hard, but they just miss a subtle something that makes them come of as fake or not quite real.... oh so true! One year while I was Cub Mastering.... our DE position was vacant so the director did the DE's role for the school visit. We had a very good turnout with lots of new scouts..... that didn't last long. Apparently they were lead to believe that they would be shooting BB's at every meeting and once a month they'd be camping out in the NFL stadium in town watching movies on the Jumbotron.... As hard as we tried, they were disappointed. and Camridgeskip, I think you are right about that.... it doesn't have to all be adreneline rush stuff.... but regularly it could be. I was reading a book a while back, "Rocks in My Backpack". Long time scout master, troops took regular backpacking trips, overnight canoe trips, snowshoe and ski overnights, snow cave camping, exploring peublo indian ruins..... they were blessed being in Colorado with lots of opportunity so they are probably not a fair thing to compare, but still.... It's not like they were doing that stuff every week.... Anyway, I'd guess the biggest limitation is adult volunteers willing to do that stuff....