Col. Flagg

To your first point (first paragraph), my point there is that the material covered is adequate enough, the materials BSA provides are extremely lacking and the training they give to trainers below sub-standard. My best example comes from one of the ILST training docs. They discuss "best practices in leadership", but rather than giving SPECIFIC examples of leadership and discussing their merits/detractions, they simply say "Lead a discussion in leadership best practices." Really? If these folks know zero about leadership how is this discussion going to take place. You need to give the trainer s

Only that it is not the same program that we've been running here.

Depends on each person. Usually where guys need help is on the project plan, especially in figuring out their resource planning or developing their phases. Also, the fundraising form tends to throw guys for a loop. The biggest problems are 1) not reading things fully, and 2) not asking questions. That's where a good advisor comes in and makes the Scout think. It doesn't (and shouldn't) feel like they've had a big impact, but you can bet an outsider might see it differently.

Hmmm. Not sure I agree. Most units have ASMs, former Eagles or other volunteers. Good units have folks they train on the GTA and the Eagle process. The effective coaches really help the Scouts navigate issues such as this, as well as helping them to think through their projects and developing effective project plans...something the BSA documentation is sorely lacking. Lastly, it's been at least a decade since I have seen Eagle advisors/coaches in regular use, so I am not sure I would call them fairly new to the process. Again, maybe that's just my area.

I have never found BSA training to be wanting in time consumption. That's one of their biggest problems is the length of time they take. They take 6 hours to teach 2 hours worth of material. Material is their next problem. It is inadequate and out-dated. Training the trainer is the next deficiency. Their materials for teaching delivery -- and actual course content -- have few good examples and don't teach trainers how to teach well.

Your training in Wisconsin has a bit of a reputation in my neck of the woods. See how that works? For the record, if you trimmed off the coastline of CA and let it fall into the ocean all that "specialness" in CA would magically go away.

The only difference I see is that men have experience in being boys and women don't. That can be both a positive thing and a negative thing, but there is a difference. It is through training that we can help both experienced and inexperienced adults of both sexes deliver the program. Even training is no guarantee of good leadership. We have all seen lousy "experienced" leaders and great "inexperienced" leaders. There is certainly a spectrum. I will argue that in my experience the vast majority of helicopter parents are female. Maybe that's just in my local area, but I'd wager it is close

I am really glad you are reading the documentation as close as you are. That says a lot for you. As an Eagle Coach (and former SM), I always advise my Scouts to make sure they get their Eagle Coach AND their SM (or when needed, the district advancement rep) feedback on any and all questions? Why? Simply put, it covers your rear in case some adult somewhere decides they want to read more in to the rules than is there. Your questions is valid: If the Beneficiary is providing the funds/materials, is the Fundraising Application even needed? Below is taken from the first paragraph of the

Just came from a PLC last night where the PLC passed a "rule" that said only registered Scouts and adults could camp with the troop, and that only perspective Webelos looking to join could camp with the unit.

Not the "Family Scouting" argument again. I thought we resolved that BSA had not yet defined what it meant by Family Scouting. Or as some like to say "we agree to disagree". The official position, such that it is, is here. It is clear what they mean as it applies to Cubs. It is unclear what this means for Boy Scouts and Venturing.

@Mattosaurus, whatever you do you need to be honest. You skipped a step. No biggie but you do need to own up to it as other people have advised. The Guide to Advancement (the book Scouters are supposed to consult when they have advancement questions) allows for instances such as yours. Contact your Eagle Coach today, as well as the district rep. Let them know your issue and your project timeline. In most instances they will be happy to approve your completed form, but they will advise you on your next steps. Document your interaction with them via email and confirm both in wr

As to your comment in red, I think that's an odd statement. *I* am a long-time Scouting volunteer AND the father of a daughter, so I make your statement true. But that's not what we are talking about. We are saying that NEW volunteers are allegedly going to come from 1) parents of only girls who are new joiners to the program, b) parents of boys in the program who will now have girls in the program and all of sudden will now want to volunteer, or c) people who have never volunteered who will miraculously all of a sudden want to volunteer. I think the most likely pool is either a or c, but I wo

Sorry, but why should he step down to avoid spreading his ideas, and yet others here with different ideas are not offered the same option to step away to avoid spreading their ideas?

We are talking about starting a second unit. Whether 10 or 50 girls, you are talking about a second organization. This second organization will require leadership and adult support. It will require logistical and operational support, among other things. BSA is assuming two things: 1) Either current volunteers and COs will take on these units and provide the services they do today, or 2) A new set of volunteers will spring up and help roll this out. Both of these assumptions are short-sighted on BSA's part. Experience with the current program shows that new volunteers are very hard t

Adding a second boys unit to an already large Boy Scout unit would be a significant issue in and of itself. But adding a new girls program, with 20-40 new girls who don't know how Boy Scouts works, would be like taking on a new Scout class of 20-40...and their families. And it wouldn't stop at the end of Year 1 like it does now. It would continue for a few years until you get a full crop of girls through the program. You'd have to train Scouts and parents alike. You can make light of the excuses that might be used, but you cannot dismiss the fact that these are very real issues. Issu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_rabbit_rabbit

It is a nice idea but I can hear I can hear the complaining now. Why do girls only get one week? Why can't we get x week instead of y week? Not just from the girls but I imagine the boys as well. We hear it already when camps have partition weeks. This also assumes units are all one sex.

In my area 70 Scouts is considered a "medium-sized" troop. When we go to summer camp with 40-45 Scouts people think we are large, then I tell them that's 60% of our unit and they gasp. We've been as high as 80. Our biggest "problem" is retention...we just seem to keep guys in an active status until they age out. Nice problem to have. Personally I would want the girls too, BUT I would want them for the Venturing Crew. Our meetings are activities unless we are planning a Tier II or III activity. It's more like a high adventure club, so we really don't need an active meeting locati

According to the YPT rules being discussed here, the girl would not be able to do that in the US unless there was at least another female leader along on that trip.

The shower times are the easy part. But with our local camps having showers and laterines in the same area (literally sharing the same common area), what happens with the opposite sex needs to go urgently? The easiest way to handle that is having male facilities and female facilities, that way you only need to separate adults from youth and not add in separating by sex too. So using my example above, there are four facilities in camp. Council would need to make two male and two female (or devise some ratio based on registration by week). My point being that in either case it will be much

@GoingTheDistance there is good advice above. As a unit leader in Cubs, Boy Scouts and Venturing, I would never have just let a group of Cubs go off on their own without a qualified Den Chief and at least two adults in tow. Safety and my own liability are the primary reasons. The Scouts are in my care as a unit (or Den) leader, so it is my responsibility to bring them home safely. But this is also Cub Scouts, so the parents (Akela) should be active in their Scout's activities. I get the idea of wanting to trust the boys and let them go out and have fun, but there is the reality that if so

Having a handful of women attend a summer camp and having several hundred women attend a summer camp are not the same thing. Any given summer our local camp has maybe 25-30 women in camp. The highest number of female staff we'd ever had was 15, so that's less than 50 women. Male Scouts and adults were around 500+. The difficulty even in this environment were the shower and toilet facilities. The camp's shower/latrine facilities contain both the latrines and the showers in the same common access area, thus making it impossible for adults to share a facility with the youth so adults were o

Gear and logistics is not an inconsequential issue in a 70+ Scout unit. The amount of effort to put out a call for gear for a second unit is a substantial effort. I was SM when our unit did a gear drive for a local unit that had its gear and trailer stolen, and it was a monumental effort for the boys to handle alone. Even with adults assisting it was a rough go. Another good point is sharing leaders. I don't know about you lot, but when I was SM I was already ploughing in a good 20+ hours a week in to our troop. I have started up units before and I know what the time commitment is for tha

Agree. But the irony here was that Remind was suggested by the PLC because they didn't want to use email. The adults had been complaining that they never checked it. The boys made a big deal about how they check texts messages "nearly instantaneously" but only rarely email, so Remind was suggested as a way to get in touch with them faster. The reality was that teenagers don't check (or at least don't bother to respond to) texts either. I suspect if we used Snapchat they'd eventually find a way to ignore that too.

What was so disrespectful in my response? Really?