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Treflienne

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Everything posted by Treflienne

  1. I would argue that the younger teen and pre-teen girls don't really understand how people react to what they are wearing -- they are just wanting to look "in", and probably care a lot more about what their female friends think that about what boys think. What I don't understand is the parents who don't advise/enforce appropriate clothing for their girls. These kids are not driving themselves to the store to buy their clothing with money they earned themselves.
  2. Actually, they had tried modernizing, repeatedly, especially starting in the early 1970's and continuing into the 1980's. Those uniforms were terrible. I really did not appreciate being mistaken for a flight attendant when in uniform.
  3. But what scale is appropriate at what age? I still like the old version of the Brownie Promise "I promise to do my best to love God and my country, to help other people every day, especialy those at home." This was for up to age 9, and helping at home was something that girls could really do. In the newer program, the Junior Journey "Agent of Change" (for girls starting at age 9) is encouraging civic action. An example that is held up as a model is persuading other people to volunteer at an animal shelter. I'd rather the younger scouts get in the habit of actualy helping peo
  4. Nine. The first nine points of the BSA law summarizes these nine (at least if you think that "Kind" summarized "A Friend to Animals".
  5. Another questions is do we in scouting (whichever branch) want to promote "civic action" or "servant leadership"? Which focus do we think is more appropriate for training middle school kids?
  6. This piece of Girl Scout advice has been around for a while, and it lowered my opinion of GSUSA. I feel that it is very important for kids to realize that even well-meaning adults are occasionally mistaken, and a kid needs to be able to (hopefully politely) correct a teacher in certain circumstances. (One circumstance that comes to mind is the kid with food allergies -- he knows what he can safely eat much better that the teacher does. ) But school dress codes are a terrible example. I am happy that our local high-school has at least a few rules (no spaghetti straps) that disc
  7. As I am familiarizing myself with the rank advancment materials, one thing that has impressed me is that every rank along the way to Eagle is worthwhile for its own sake. So if an idealistic new scout says "I want to earn eagle" but ends up not doing so, then she still benefitted from as much of the journey as she did. Work on improving your physical fitness? Great. Learn to swim? Super. Try taking on a leadership role in the troop? Valuable experience. It seems to me that we should help each scout grow starting from where they are at -- but certainly not expect that all will have t
  8. As a new scouter, I found the Aims and Methods helpful as a summary of the current focus of BSA. Yes @qwazse the 3 aims are mostly a restatment of what is in the oath. But (as an outsider) I wanted to know whether the oath was regarded as just a historical relic or whether it was really still emphasized. And really, the aims of citizenship and character development (and even fitness) go back to the beginning, to Baden-Powell. Scouting for Boys, p 337 "Peace Scouting is suggested as an attractive means towards developing character and good citizenship" Aids to Scoutmastership,
  9. Is there any better way? Alternatives I have seen are: storing everying in a trailer parked at a different location than your meeting place, and storing everything in someone's garage. Both seem worse.
  10. I agree about patrols having their own gear and being responsible for it. But why not put a wolf on it? or a cobra?
  11. Not necessarily. None of our girls had brothers already in our linked troop. (Several had brothers in several other troops, one of these brothers has since switched to our linked troop.) I forsee more boy-girl sibling pairs in the two troops in the future, as more kids come up from cubs.
  12. Assuming that these experienced parents will continue volunteering, it sounds like mostly what you need is more girls -- who will likely come with inexperienced but willing to help out parents. Anecdotes are just that -- but in our troop we have no Venturers, no highschoolers, and no crossovers from cub scouts. Only 6th-8th graders. (Our area did not have early-adopter cub packs.) And yes, about half the girls in the troop are there because they were invited by a friend who was already planning to join the troop. If you want to be sure that the new local girls' troop is
  13. Does that mean they'll be crossing over to scouts in two years time? Hopefully by then there will already be a troop going that they can join. Consider critical mass. Are there other girls troops starting in your town or school district? It might make sense to join with them instead of getting another new troop going. (Or maybe there will be enough interested girls for another new troop.) About this "stated commitment to start a linked female troop". What is backing this statement? General goodwill? A willingness on the part of the troop committee to help with the administrati
  14. We were caught by surprise by the requirement that all the committee members submit a new adult application to be on the committee for the "linked" troop. As things now stand, some committee members are registered as committee members for both troops, some just for the girls, and some just for the boys. (Why? because of the paperwork hassle.) The committee (committees?) does (do?) meet as a single entitiy with a single meeting each month. I suppose if it ever came down to a vote on a contentious issue it might matter who was registered for which troop. I agree. Maybe the BSA
  15. Also the online training at my.scouting.org was still listing only three aims of scouting as of spring 2018 when I took the training.
  16. The 2017 printing of the Troop Leader Guidebook (which BSA was still selling in 2018) lists only the three aims, not including leadership.
  17. The Girls' Guides and Journeys books are available to anyone willing to shell out enough money at a girl scout shop. (Or at your local library). But worse are some of the plans for, for example, how to do the Junior Camper Badge in two meetings without ever going camping. See Junior Planning Guide | Girl Scouts River Valleys Volunteers and in particular the documents it links to such as Camper Activity Plan 1 and Camper Activity Plan 2 Admittedly this is from a council website, not from national, but since I am not currently a junior girl scout leader I cannot see what national ha
  18. We have a one-patrol troop. PL and APL but no SPL or APSL. Initial terms of office were for three months. Next elections in May. The scouts did dole out most of the standard positions of responsibility. Some of the scouts are growing into their roles. (The instructor is enthusiastically studying the scouts BSA handbook so she can teach the others.) Some of the roles we probably should not have had. (The librarian has nothing to do yet because the troop owns no books -- but since no one is first class yet, no one is getting advancment credit for a bogus job.) The scouts may w
  19. Non-disclosure of what? the contents of the volunteer toolkit? In my service unit, there seems to be continuous attrition from about 3rd to 6th grades. Some troops hold together long enough for the girls to transition into the "older girl" troop (A local 6th-12th grade troop) but others troops just fold leaving their girls without a troop. It will be interesting to see how many of these girls will try Scouts BSA. I haven't been to any service unit meetings (as a parent) since Scouts BSA started in February, since I've been too busy with Scouts BSA, but prior to that I did
  20. The link was specific to the person taking the survey -- so yes the respondant can be identified. If I remember right, they said that your answers would not be shared with your daughter's troop leader. It will be interesting to see if my family gets any further surveys, or marketing targetted to the dual registered group. Another survey question, if I remember correctly, was whether the survey respondant's daughter was planning to re-register with GSUSA for the coming year. (It is currently early-bird reregistration season). Since the GSUSA registration year starts in October
  21. Moderaters, please move my post if you think it is in the wrong forum but . . . GSUSA is now, perhaps inadvertantly, advertising Cub Scouts and Scouts BSA to at least some of its member families. I was, as a GSUSA parent, sent a link to a survey for parents asking a lot of questions about my family's opinions of and experience with GSUSA. One of the questions was "Which other activities or organizations will your girl be busy with? (Select all that apply.) . . . Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts (Scouts BSA). . ." So if I had not been aware that Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts were admitting girls
  22. I can see three possible styles of camping that need three different types of equipment 1) backpacking. lightweight backpacking stoves. 2) front country camping where you want lots of time for other activities, and so want to cook quickly, using a propane stove, which is boringly similar to cooking in the kitchen at home. 3) front country camping somewhere you can build a campfire for cooking, on a trip when you have time to build a campfire for cooking. And then you need to keep this stuff organized. For #2 or #3, any do you have any recommendations between a)
  23. Well I guess it would be. At your suggestion I went looking and found that Bryan on Scouting had already thought so: https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2019/03/05/what-do-you-do-if-a-leader-is-too-quick-to-sign-off-requirements/ Revocation of authorization really sounds like the nuclear option. Have you ever seen it done?
  24. How to "flex their position of leadership muscle" while still remaining on good, cooporative terms -- that could be tricky. I think another go-round of attempted gentle persuasion first may be in order. I am still learning the interaction styles of the other scouters, and how hard I can push and have it still perceived as friendly, not hostile. Have you ever heard of the "tact-filter" theory? ( http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html )Nerds (scientists, engineers, etc) apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear -- and when nerds interact with nerds everyone is happy.
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