Vicki

To elaborate on my earlier post - I "got it," passed it along to my fellow Bears, we passed it upline, and I still came away feeling used, especially after observing the other half of the troop that didn't listen and didn't "get it." Left me a little bit more cynical than when I started (and I started out pretty cynical - I learned "trust no one" at my daddy's knee, with my mother's milk - pick your metaphor).

As a staffer, that feeling was only magnified as I watched another troop go through the same thing (although nobody "got it" and nobody had the really extreme reactions as happened in my original troop).

It either needs to be completely revamped or done away with.

Vicki(This message has been edited by Vicki)

Sounds like a call to your District Advancement Chair is in order. He/she can give you some answers right now to how things are handled in your district and council. Then, as others have advised, training and Roundtable are great resources.

This forum is wonderful, but a district and council is a very specific tribe which very often has rules/traditions that may or may not march in lockstep with the manual. The advice you get here is definitely of the Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV) variety.

Vicki

Well, and ripmod may not have been a troll, but simply left because of the inhospitable response. His (?) historical view may have even been mostly right from his perspective but a couple of you were pretty rude. I also note that the two posts were yesterday - maybe he went camping. Pretty fast off the blocks there folks.

Wasn't going to dive back into this thread, but I calls 'em like I sees 'em.

Vicki(This message has been edited by Vicki)

ScoutNut, I believe she said she was in a small town (around 400?) - I may have misinterpreted something though, since 22+ seems like a big pack for that small a town. But, if so, that might make it difficult to visit too many other troops. Also makes the politics really problematic. Has to drive 1.5 hours for training.

Changes the perspective completely from, for instance, my place - 15 minutes to training (in two districts), 20 minutes to two of my council's offices (there are three), several troops within a stone's throw.

Vicki(This message has been edited by Vicki)

I agree with what everyone has said about the money issue - from the standards of the BSA, this is NOT how things work. That said, your CO is in charge and, politically, from what you've said, I don't see how you are going to win this one. Looked at from their point of view (which, to repeat, is NOT the BSA standard) they have what could seem to an outsider to be a perfectly reasonable argument.

So, I think I'm going to be a bit contrarian here, but here goes.

First, is anybody in your current pack (besides the 2nd year Webelos folks, obviously) active in this church?

The way this is shaping up politically you may want to consider the long view. It would appear these folks are in it for their boys, so this "troop" is going to be short-lived. By the time your now-1st year Webelos move into it (two years) I suspect it'll be gone. That's going to leave you with a chartered troop to move into when your version of the pack starts crossing over. They'll have to leave the camping equipment behind (a battle you'll be much better prepared to fight in a year or two anyway) so you should be all set. In the meantime, borrow the equipment - you won't need it that often.

Even if they're not gone, your parents will be infiltrating this new troop with their own ideas of how things should be run.

The trick is going to be holding on to those two Web 1's. Any chance of getting more of that age group involved?

Just a couple of thoughts,

Vicki

CRW, sounds to me like you have one of those "local variations" that some folks around here like to jump all over (thick skin is such a valuable quality). I take it you're in a small council? I'd say as long as it's a council-approved practice, go for it - I understand that the MBC system is a National "thing", but how it's enacted is handled at the council level. It's not the first time I've heard of this.

Shields up,

Vicki

I'll leave the book discussion to y'all - I don't buy coffee table books. I buy books I can actually carry around and read. Actually, I now have a Kindle, so I buy very few paper books at all - last one was to go to Sea Base this summer, for hopefully obvious reasons.

But the 'biners! Shortridge, I collect 'biners, they're small, inexpensive, practical (refer to aforementioned Sea Base trip and putting water bottles on the deck line). I have 'biners from all over. I WANTED to buy a BSA 'biner. Looked at it and just couldn't make myself do it. Really impractical design and expensive to boot.

Vicki

If a scout shows up for an initial meeting without a SM-signed MB card, I'll start him out. But I tell him that normally I expect to see a SM-signed MB card at the first meeting. That's how it's done in our council and how the card is set up - the SM is supposed to approve the scout as being ready for the MB in question. Camp-based MBs don't follow that rule, but once you're away from camp, if you didn't complete the badge, the rule applies. So, from a paperwork POV, I would have wanted to see a SM-signed MB card plus whatever camp paperwork the scout had.

On a practical level, if you have a climbing MBC in your troop, that person would know who was on that outing and may be willing to sign off on those requirements, take the camp MBC's word for the rest, and you're done. But he or she doesn't have to do it that way.

That said, it is up to the MB counselor to accept the previously done work, or not. For me, it's a case-by-case basis and, as John and others noted, it's my signature on that line. If a scout comes to me and wants me to sign off on requirements for Personal Management, well, we're going to sit down and talk about the requirements - all of them. If he "remembers" enough from his prior experience, then I'll sign off. If he doesn't, I won't. If it was a written requirement, and he doesn't have the paperwork, I'll quiz him pretty closely as to how he prepared it and what he did. I'm much less likely to sign off on written requirements unless he has something in hand. After all, if you weren't done with the badge, why didn't you hold onto your documents?

emb, I've known of troops that issued Camping MB cards when a scout crossed over, just to avoid any problems down the road.

But, as Dennis Miller says, that's just me. YMMV.

Vicki(This message has been edited by Vicki)

I'm somewhere between Ed and dgadams - since the SM is, in theory, supposed to assigned a MBC to a scout, the SM has a role to play (an aside: in our council, all the MBC are online and the SM has almost nothing to do with the selection of an individual MBC). But it is up to the scout to follow through. In this case I can see where the SM might want to call the selected MBC and present the background.

May be a really good, relatively cheap life lesson for the scout in question (assuming, as you posted, Pete, that they all passed) - follow up and don't assume the adults got it right.

Vicki

Wow. Nope, that's not the way the program was presented to me. I was very clearly told that it was up to me if a participant had completed a ticket, but that I was to render all possible aid and accommodation. Accommodation does not mean rolling over.

Of course, the Council Advancement professional is a retired Marine officer - that might have something to do with it. Wonderful gentleman and his standards are high.

Vicki

"If he had said, "I think that I've done my best to get it in and I'm comfortable with that.", we would have been done with that ticket item. I have a problem with that philosophy. "

Are you saying you would have signed off on that ticket item as being complete if the participant had used those words? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't.

Vicki

OK, NE-IV - I understand and thank you for the clarification. You have cited one case of someone who is obviously helpless. At the risk of sounding confrontational, your statement as you wrote it sounded to me like it was generalizing your one case to all current participants in the program?

While the participants I've dealt with (as a participant and as a TG) have had greatly varying degrees of outdoor skills, they've all had some basic level of problem solving ability that exceeds what you describe. Maybe it's something in the water:

John in KC wrote, "Of our 8 methods, the one where we are having less and less adult experience these days is the Outdoor. I've seen folks come to an overnighter at Scout Camp with seemingly 100lbs of gear."

I will certainly second this statement! My first outing with Son 2's new troop was summer camp one year. I showed up with my backpack - my one concession to the wall tent being my Coleman mushroom tent light. Several folks asked where the rest of my gear was and a couple obviously thought I was a bit odd.

Now I do understand the SM or other adult who shows up for a weekend with fishing, cooking, or other gear which, on a troop level, can amount to quite a truckload - but the amount of personal gear some folks seem to "need" is truly amazing!

Vicki

I hesitated to move into this thread, but I flat-out don't understand this statement, "As a WB ticket counselor, (snip) I find it difficult to understand how just thinking about getting the job done, and not actually getting it done, shows leadership skills or ability."

I'm current a WB troop guide and ticket counselor (my council combines both jobs), three of my patrol have been beaded. They wrote their ticket around their scouting position, did the work to complete their ticket, and earned their beads. Three more are about to finish. So I don't understand what you mean about "not actually getting it done." Clarification, please?

emb, I agree with you, for the most part. Realistically, though, at least in my council, it usually takes people a year to get through the adult leader training cycle. It would be possible for someone to take the fall adult leader training and then go into WB for the spring course, but then you are still talking about a cycle that is at least several months long. Generally adults coming into the program don't know enough about the program to be aware of training before the spring course the next year, so you build even more time-in-position that way. Of course, there are the go-getters, but those folks are the ones who generally "get it" anyway so you want them trained as soon as possible. Just my two cents.

Vicki

Pack, you beat me to it! Hal, that was great - I'd never heard the godfather angle. And, Pack, I wasn't referring to the cowardly part when I said hi - I was referring to the sexist claptrap of God as a "he" - sexist claptrap being our favorite joust as we wander from fire to fire. Obviously got a little obtuse there. But as long as we're on the topic - I'm not sure the Y endowed folks have the passive-aggressive market exactly cornered:

Bacchus, I think the problem is that wonderful irony to which another poster referred - gay couples can't marry in the ELCA church. This is the way other denominations have managed to exclude gays from ministry without actually coming out and saying it, "Gee, to ordain you, if you're in a relationship, you have to be married - you're not, so that solves that, now doesn't it?" How cowardly is that?

Vicki

So, God is welcoming a new person into heaven and, as they're walking past a closed door, suddenly God says, "Shhh" - person, of course, says, "Why?" God says, "because they think they're the only ones up here."

And who says God's a guy anyway - God said "in my image" and then created man and woman. Hmmm. And don't give me that, "using 'he' is a linguistic convention which includes men and women." Not buying it anymore, gettin' too old for nonsense.

Hey, Pack, how's it goin'?

Vicki

Our largest scout ranch(S-F in the Greater St. Louis Area Council) has four camps. They rotate usage of the camps on a three-year basis so that NYLT has exclusive use of one of the camps. The main reason is to allow the camp to recover from the high-impact use that summer camp represents - NYLT is a lot lower impact. The camps are far enough apart that it's easy to keep the programs separate.

As far as staffing is concerned, NYLT staff are volunteers and set up on a completely separate track from camp staff. Camp staff works all summer. The four weeks of NYLT have four separate staffs - admittedly there are several youth who work more than one session, but that's not the norm.

That said, I've staffed NYLT twice - I don't see any way to effectively blend any sort of NYLT experience with summer camp. One of NYLT's goals is to get scouts away from their home troop for a different experience. Not to mention that the syllabus is really busy (similar to Wood Badge).

I will say we are blessed to have a lot of very engaged youth in our council.

Vicki(This message has been edited by Vicki)

If you are at all "crafty" a few things would be nice along the lines of leather roping, beads, blank leather medallions, y'know, stuff my Cubmaster sister has coming out of her ears...

Vicki

C-12-04 Go Bears!

C-4-08 Bear in a Bobwhite suit(This message has been edited by Vicki)

Wood Badge experiences differ - I can tell you that half of the troop figured out what was going on in my course. We Bears were sitting in the back, of course, and had the opportunity to observe how odd this appeared and decided this wasn't a hill worth taking. Having had some management courses as well as an Outward Bound type experience, I mused, "what doesn't fit here"? With the questioning process started it was short work to get to the answer and pass it around. Wood Badge was a blast for me - both as a participant and a staffer.

The other half of the troop didn't get it and refused to get it - one patrol member got so mad she ripped up the cards and threw them at the rest of her patrol. That patrol, and her, are now a Wood Badge horror story. Wood Badge was not fun for them.

As far as economics is concerned, read less Keynes and more Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman. Wealth is NOT a zero-sum game, with a "set amount" available in the world.

Vicki

Well, as a moral philosophy, libertarianism simply means that humans have free will and are responsible for their actions (as opposed to determinism).

In terms of a political philosophy, here's the URL for the platform adopted in 2008

http://www.lp.org/platform

OGE, I think you were possibly overstating your position for effect, but libertarians have a very definite stand and, for instance, would not welcome either Barack Obama or George Bush into their ranks, nor would they welcome anyone who infringed on the rights of the individual in terms of privacy or through redistribution of wealth.

Just a couple of thoughts on the topic. As relates to the topic at hand, if I had a daughter I would most certainly not put her in AHG, but that would be my personal choice.

Vicki

To answer an earlier question concerning adherents of Islam (Muslims) - Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day at specific times - loosely, pre-dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset, and evening (just before retiring, usually). If a prayer is missed, it can be made up in an honest spirit of repentance, but it's not required. Requirements as to how specifically the prayers are supposed to be timed varies depending on how the Quran is interpreted (in Christianity, we would say depending on one's denomination). Another basic requirement is that the person cleanse themself before prayer (at least wash hands and face) and be in a clean place (outdoors or in). A prayer rug is optional.

That's it in a nutshell. How this is interpreted among Muslims varies around this central core just as much as Christian interpretations of our requirements varies. Any further instruction from a Muslim within our group would be gratefully and humbly welcomed, this is simply my understanding based on my own interaction with Muslims and study of their faith.

I think it's incredibly important to understand the basics of other faiths. It's one thing to preach tolerance and respect, it's quite another to practice it. This is where I'll touch on John-in-KC's position - I haven't looked into the Chaplaincy cert process yet (I'm going to), but I would hope it broadens the perspective of those participating beyond Christianity.

MBee - as to your issue, it sounds like your son is OK with camp but I would consider putting off the membership ceremony until after the camp season is over. Especially if, as you wrote, he seems to communicate in as few words as possible (my oldest is the same way). That style lends itself to misunderstanding.

Vicki (edited for typo)(This message has been edited by Vicki)

Oh, for crying out loud Prairie! I'm not even sure how to respond - this is so far over the top.

Vicki

Thanks JoeBob - succinct and bang on (so to speak)!

Vicki

(This message has been edited by Vicki)

"you just don't touch women you don't know really well. How 'bout we just say you don't touch people you 'don't' know really well?"

Missed a "don't" in there, too late to edit...

Vicki