willray

Is it possible, following the rank advancement criteria that all other scouts are held to, for a scout to have legitimately earned First Class rank within 40 days of joining Scouts BSA? Is it possible, following the rank advancement criteria that all other scouts are held to, for a scout to have legitimately earned Life rank, within a month of joining Scouts BSA? I think it's completely expected that we'll see many hard-chargers amongst the first crop of girls coming into BSA, as many of them have been right there beside their brothers and are chomping at the bit to start earning ran

I guess I'll keep playing - Here's desert, from the same weekend from one of our Boys' Troop patrols - Nobody in the patrol with less than a year in the troop, most 2 or 3 years, most 2nd-class, PL pushing star. They consider this to be their best effort with a dutch oven to-date, and a great success for the meal. It really did taste better than it looks. (ah, and the greenish cast is not their fault - that's mood-lighting courtesy of the green dining fly)

I am certain it's necessary to keep the patrols single-gender, and I'm reasonably convinced that it's necessary to keep the troops single gender. I do think that we will discover opportunities for opposite-gender units and patrols to cross paths and interact in fashions that are at a minimum non-damaging to traditional program, and that we will probably find ways to play them off of each-other such that it enhances program in manners that were not previously possible. Of course, I'm also concerned that we will screw it up... The collaboration bit however, I think is interestingly diagn

I consider myself a rather traditional scouter, and I am near-violently opposed to program modifications that dilute, or significantly change “my” scouting program. As a result I’m opposed to mixing the genders in ways that dilute my ability to provide “traditional” program/program incentives/levers to the Boys. That being said, professionally I work with a lot of just-post-scouting-age youth, and have, let’s say ‘a few’ years of experience in mentoring teams of youth researchers with an assortment of mixes of genders in my lab, and I think I have a reasonable perspective on how to suppo

It's probably worth mentioning somewhere, that we're seeing some really interesting differences between the psychology of the patrols in the Boys' Troop and the Girls' Troop. While I staunchly believe that anyone deserves every opportunity to try to be successful at anything they want, and that it's abhorrent to try to define for a person what they should be interested in, or want to do based on their sex, I am also absolutely not one of the idiots who insists that there is absolutely no difference between the sexes. I'll be one of the ones that the feminists put up against the wall and

Sure, why not 🙂 Competition is good, and probably more importantly, an informed notion of what various people and units might think are reasonable expectations, wouldn't be a bad thing. I'll start. Our Girls' Troop first campout was last month, and they wanted to focus on outdoor cooking skills, so we threw them an assortment of interpatrol cooking challenges. Now before you say "they're girls, of course they're good at cooking!", I'd like to point out that A) My son, at 10-12, on pure skills, could probably cook circles around any of the girls in our Girls' Troop, indoors or o

By the way - they actually do say "drat!", and "oh, shoot!" They're like 1960s comic-book super-hero sidekicks. I'm sure it'll wear off, but at the moment it's hilarious.

Actually, I said we were doing everything possible to put advancement opportunities in front of them. They are learning the skills - solidly, and at what I think is a completely reasonable and believable rate for the skills to stick. Of the dozen girls in our girls' troop, I am pretty sure that 3 or maybe 4 of them are going to make tenderfoot by our court of honor at the beginning of June. And absolutely, they're being tested - more rigorously than the boys in our boys troop, because the SM of our boys troop lets any first-class scout sign off on requirements, and I am only letting

As I mentioned previously, I would never challenge a girl who achieves first class this month (or any scout who achieves it 90-ish days after joining) regarding the integrity of their advancement. A bit unlike @SSF, I expect the girls, at least initially, to be more motivated and focused than the boys usually are, and to move through requirements in a more purposeful way. My problem, and the blow to the girls in my troop, were girls elevated to "trainer" positions at a council JLOW course, wearing First Class patches, a month after scouting opened to females. In my opinion, these were

I have quite a lot of respect for your thinking and opinions, and while I've only recently registered on this site I've learned a lot from reading your postings over the years. However, I think here, you might be bringing a bit more maturity to the analysis than what a 10-year-old AOL crossover comes with 🙂 I think we'll get them there - if we don't, we're not doing our jobs - but at the same time, they were clearly hurt, and hurt in a way that I haven't seen the boys in our boys' troop hurt by suspicions that others were "cheating".

I am utterly loathe to call BS on what is possible. If we had a girl who was interested in accomplishing this, our unit would find a way to make it possible. At the same time, I know it's uncharitable of me, but I cannot see my way to saying "you go girl!" to those who claim to have accomplished that collection of requirements in 28 days. What I think concerns me more in the long run, is the number of people who don't see red flags in "girls units are probably focussed heavily on advancement, so it's not surprising that their knocking out requirements really quickly". We will bend

One's worse in the moment, and the other's worse after some time, maturity and reflection. Obviously, I opt for the momentary pain and the belief that they'll eventually understand and appreciate the value of the whole process. That doesn't make it any less demoralizing in the moment, for the girls (or any scouts) be forced to work/participate with other scouts who have obviously taken liberties with requirements and who are being rewarded for it.

As much as it pains me to say this, at the moment, it's more problematic, even if not more prevalent, with the females than with the males. Scouts cheating themselves out of program is never a good thing, but with the defined start date of the Girls' troops, there are fairly clear boundaries about what's possible/believable/etc. It's a serious problem for morale when you've got to explain to the girls in your troop why you're not going to let them short-change themselves just so that they can keep up with the girls they've seen in another troop that is playing a bit faster-and-looser

Depressingly, it's also not unheard of that the rank requirements were not exactly adhered to. We had female scouts with first-class patches on their uniforms at the beginning of March 2019.

This may be one of the key differences in views on what's possible - our troop is almost completely lacking in senior scouts above the patrol-leader level. Once they've been patrol leader, they either go on to be one of two ASPLs, SPL, or they wander off and disengage from the troop. We have some former scouts registered as JASMs, but I don't think they've attended a single meeting since being appointed to the role. If we had senior scouts who could keep an eye on things, I think I'd feel differently about the wisdom of having adults in that role. As it is, our troop actually does not

I should absolutely caveat that all of my thoughts, are in the context of ASMs who are well-trained, and "on board" with the idea of a youth-led organization. There are absolutely more adult-induced failure points in the system, if there are more adults in the system! Our Boys' troop has an abundance of quite well-behaved adult leaders who "get" the culture of youth-led troops, and who largely self-police in terms of keeping out of the way as much as possible. With this troop, I think we fail the scouts more by the extent to which we keep the adults away from them, than by the extent th

In general, I'd say our troop (well, at least our Boys' troop - the Girls' troop is coming along but our adults on that side still need to learn to sit on their hands) does fairly well at being scout-led. It's not unusual for them to get an hour or more into a troop meeting before noticing that the SM is absent that week, and we were well into the second day of the annual planning/ILST campout before any of the adults even spoke to any of the scouts. That being the case, we still have issues where, for example our SM is trying to mentor our SPL to be a little less hands-on with the indi

In my opinion, and I'm aware that this is not necessarily shared by others, it's useful to place ASMs at the patrol level, so that the SM can concentrate on the SPL/ASPLs/other troop-level youth positions-of-responsibility and overall troop guidance. It requires quite a lot of focused attention to really understand each patrol's (potential) issues and to ask the right questions/apply the least-invasive nudges to provide appropriate mentorship. Someone with too many irons in the fire, as many SMs would be if they were trying to actually mentor everyone themselves, is more likely to come a

Would that all patrols were capable of this level of autonomy. While it's absolutely true that having an ASM perpetually "in the scouts' business" is a sure route to the adults taking over, it's equally true that some patrols/patrol-leaders can get into behaviors and situations that are destructive to the mission of Scouting if they operate in a vacuum of mentorship. The "perfect troop" is only possible if all of the scouts are perfect scouts, and I'd guess that very few of us have been gifted with a full hand of those...

It's certainly not going to happen often, but if it's possible, it'll happen eventually. In the case of our troop, even with 8-10 crossovers coming in each year, we've had a few near misses on this situation in recent memory. The usual cause is a lightly-attended campout with someone getting sick and leaving, or unexpectedly dropping out at the last minute. Our overall troop roster probably has 11-12 as the largest age group, but on most campouts we're probably heaviest in the 13-15yo range. It's not too unusual for only a couple-three of the crossovers to attend the early campouts

My big worry is when we get the lone, just-crossed-over 10 year old scout on his or her first campout, ineligible to tent with any of the other attendees, alone and terrified in a tent in a thunderstorm. I don't know what we're going to do when that happens - plans and first-contact and all that make it not worth trying to strategize much before we get there - but National can show me to the door any time they like, if they think I'm making that scout sit alone and cry all night.

I've got to say, I think the people who are going with the "For us, it's just 2 integer years in their declared ages" approach, are going to be in for a world of hurt. 24 months (born within 2 years of each other) is easy. It's once and done. "Yes, Tim, you can tent with Jeff", or "No Tim, Jeff is more than 2 years older than you, so you can't tent with him". Done, finished, forevermore. Two integer years apart in declared age, and suddenly it's "Oh, but Mr. SM, I just turned 12, so for the next 3 weeks I'm within 2 years of Jeff, so we can tent together this campout, right!?!?",

I have not yet persuaded our boys troop SM and SPL to address the fact that we now have a girls troop under the same roof, to the boys troop. (I actually think this is going to end up being a festering source of problems, as the boys are inventing their own dialog regarding the purpose, relationship/etc of the girls troop to the boys troop, and in the echo-chamber of their own fantasies and paranoia, quite a lot of things are "becoming fact" that just ain't so.) Unfortunately I think this is one of those "the perfect is the enemy of the good" situations, and our boys troop SM is cogitat

With the exception of the fact that we've got linked troops, this is the direction we are going - I think, perhaps, unfortunately quickly, and in a fashion that is going to cause us some unnecessary challenges (we have one adult who is, shall we say, exceptionally dedicated to tearing the troops apart as quickly as possible, which I personally believe is completely irresponsible). One of the resources-based challenges to that, is that - and maybe this is actually the crux of the matter - we have a single equipment storage location. As a result, there is "a pile of dutch ovens". If the

We are running into some complications, but at least at this point everyone seems willing to work through them amicably. I'm expecting the drama to increase as our girls troop ramps up their camping, and inevitable squabbles over patrol equipment/maintenance/etc break out. Scout-led is wonderful, but sometimes, like when the troop quartermaster feels empowered to scavenge all of the patrols' equipment kits to pull together the best equipment to give to his old patrol, we have "interesting" learning moments, and since the girls aren't "part of the gang", I expect they're going to react to thi