RainShine

skills not advancement, I like that. but he doesnt want to do Scouty skills stuff. Cant be bothered with participating in KP duty, sits in his tent eating sugar puffs. Everyone is tying knots or whatever, he sits by himself on his phone. But yes, thanks Mr. quazse, for the advice. You make a good point sir.

He goes on campouts infrequently, but yes he went this past weekend to Camporee. He participated some. And apparently the range officer asked him and his buddy to clean rifles at the end of the day, and they did it. Yes he can be disruptive at times. Bored with "scout stuff", he will change the subject to Ukraine war or whatever. He is a likeable fellow, funny and charismatic. No one, including me, would want him gone. His best buddy in the troop - they didn't know each other before Scouts - will certainly be Eagle someday. So he's not affecting everyone. But we have definitely se

Our troop has a Scout that cant be bothered with advancement. I'll call him Bobby. He joined before pandemic and he's probably 15 or 16 now. He told me, years ago, he didn't want to do rank advancement. I told him he couldn't disrespect it to the other Scouts. That's been our agreement. Sure enough, he's never done a thing (except I told his parents they had to do the Scout rank youth protection or he couldn't participate, so he did that). I have heard the other Scouts rib him for it, and tell him how embarrassing it must be, but it doesn't bother him. He wont do it. And sure enough, Bobby has

Yeah I was expecting Scoutbook and SignUp Genius, and Ive learned some troops use CheddarUp. One Scoutmaster I spoke with locally is enthused about troopwebhost for all this. InquisitiveScouter, you guys are light years ahead of us. If I quit my job and started now, how long would it take to set all that up?

How do your Scouts sign up for outings? And, is there a cut-off after which they cant sign up?

There are many activities my Scouts do outside the troop, hockey, skiing, loads of stuff. If only those coaches were merit badge counselors. Perhaps I could get in touch with them and ask. I always ask the Scouts parents to ask the coach but Ive never gotten a favorable response to that. Question: if the coach has already done youth protection from some other organization, would that count or does it pretty much have to be the Scouts BSA YP program? boy, not enough hours in the day...

The Scoutmaster at a nearby troop says they are all in with Discord, with a troop server, and each patrol has a channel or whatever its called, and a PLC channel, and a parent channel. He said wow its great. I've done a tiny bit on Discord and yeah it's good, and would be fun to use. So I brought it up at a PLC. Our SPL said it wont work because you have to be 13yo to use Discord, so that would exclude a good many Scouts in our small troop. I just found this reddit thread. I guess all those services have a similar age limit and we ignore it. So why different for Discord? Meet em where the

sure, whatever you think best

I.WANT.HIM.GONE dun dun DUNN! Last week I got a call from Committee Chair, great guy. He told me he was expecting Mr. Pillar at Committee that night. He's not on Committee, he's listed as ASM. I wasnt at the Committee meeting, of course. I was at the troop meeting. But apparently they took care of their other business then gave Mr. P the floor. I was told he started with I.WANT.HIM.GONE and then proceeded to attack me. They listened to him. Apparently he brought up the summer camp episode, the long ago, never explained suspicions from a Webelo mom, and the fact that a Scout

I agree. Ive learned a lot since then.

🙂 Thats cool. I'm just talkin' anyway. Y'all talk about important stuff on here. I'm not even looking for advice really. We can forget it if you prefer.

I will deliver a continuation from my earlier post later. But first, if it pleases the court, two stories: Story 1 My son was doing Arrow of Light and the den leader was flaking out so I took over, and I did a great job. 7 of the 9 guys got AoL and 8 of them crossed over to Scouts. When my son crossed over, I did too, and I went to the troop Committee. But I heard, back in the Pack, there were to be 16 Webelo Scouts moving to AoL. Wow that will be a riot. I offered to do another stint as AoL den leader, so there would be two dens, and this was accepted. Great. But when the tim

Sorry I couldnt today. tomorrow I will get out Part 2 - The Committee Meeting.

Lots to say but first, I recognize this could have been a lot worse. Waaay worse. The kid could have said I touched him or myself or something. In fact, having thought about it (and thought about it, and thought about it...) I mean, his story... think about that... that I came over and leaned over and looked down at him. He was in bed. I think he dreamed it. Seriously. I think he dreamed it. A branch or something cast a shadow on his face and he dreamed it, and he probably sat upright scared out of his wits. full on nightmare type thing. The only knock on that theory is the guy is 1

Hey there folks. We have a small troop, 12-14 active Scouts. I became Scoutmaster in January 2020. Our charter org is a church in our neighborhood. There is a man at the church, very active in the church, a pillar of the community, I guess. Mr. Pillar used to participate as an ASM before Covid, as his son, Billy, a young Scout at the time, participated. When covid hit, we went to Zoom meetings like so many troops did. Their participation dropped off and then stopped. Understandable. Over time, well for brevity I will just say, despite covid, lots of Scouting happened. Finally things retu

We've never had singing in our troop. We go off to summer camp or Camporee, other troops are heartily singing. Our guys, nothin'. So when I became Scoutmaster, I vowed to bring singing to the troop. I got the keys in January 2020, then covid hit, uhg. Then we got busy, everything takes longer than I think! Okay... whatever... here we are, still no singing. I've learned chords on guitar and heck I don't sing either but I'm going to do it. I got some good tunes that I think they will like, and I play them in the car on the way to campouts. But I'm plenty scared. I could seriously fall flat on m

We have a troop of 20 Scouts, probably 15 are actually active. On any given outing, like the one this weekend, we'll have 8-12 guys. We will have, probably, 12 to 14 sign up for summer camp. We've never done a high adventure camp AFAIK. Like, never. If we had a group of, say, 8 or so older guys, go off to high adventure camp, what would the other fellows do? I suppose they would go to regular summer camp. But wouldn't they feel abandoned? Or do we send all of them to high adventure? Some of those guys are 11 or 12yo, just fell off the turnip truck, never been to a Scout summer camp, just

Yes. No, the camp set the menu and provided the ingredients each night.

An unfortunate update on my post: its a few years later and that patrol of young Scouts are older now. I hate to say it, but they don't remember the patrol cooking favorably and don't want to go back that camp. As an adult, I thought it was great and I observed the guys made a lot of progress and it was good for them in every way. But in our troop, the Scouts decide which summer camp to visit and they have firmly crossed that one off the list. <heavy sigh> This year's summer camp dining hall food was uneven, at best, but they don't want to cook at summer camp.

Hi there, thanks for the follow up 🙂 Think about everything that has happened since ParkMan's comment in October 2019. Wow, a whole world of stuff. And well, for one thing I am now the Scoutmaster. Yes much progress in that we now have patrols. Every guy knows what patrol they are in, that's for sure. After I became SM, I made rectifying that the priority. In fact I've encountered a little bit of push back from the Scouts. They like patrols, and they value patrols, and there is some patrol spirit, no doubt. But perhaps I came on a little strong. At the July camp out, one patrol arri

I'm fairly new to all this and unsure about requirement fulfillment for first aid. The first aid rank requirements use the word 'show'. So, like, show first aid for nosebleed, pretty straight forward, each Scout can do that. For another example, Scouting.org says this of venomous snakebite: Immobilize the injured part of the body. Gently wash the bite with soap and water. Seek medical care immediately! Carry the victim out, if possible, because their reduced activity may slow the spread of the venom. Okay so do you have the Scouts wash an ankle or something then practice carrying a

Yeah thats what we did. You have to have a Pro account and you have to turn on the feature before the meeting. And yeah it takes practice.

Regarding zoombombing, I found it necessary to remove some permissions for my own Scouts. The one fellow was sharing his screen, trying to do his Cyberchip presentation to the troop, and the other guys were drawing on his presentation (the Annotate feature).That quiet guy was the worst 🤨 Also that guy was sharing his screen, kept popping up a picture of a video game character. It wasn't real bad but he could have shown anything. I gotta talk to that Scout.😠 Zoom has a great feature called Breakout Rooms, perfect for patrols, works well although I need practice. I sent the guys off to thei

They're 13 and 14yo's and capable and competent to do this hike. If we quit Scouting and went to that state park with those same buddies, I would not hesitate to send them on that hike while me and the other dads stayed in camp. When I was that age we got on our bikes and were gone for the afternoon. uhg sorry this makes me frustrated.

I saw a post here where a person was saying, if the situation was right, the adults could stay in camp while the Scouts are on a hike. We have an outing this year that would be perfect for this. We have a group campsite next to a lake. There is a trail around the lake, 4 miles, flat hiking. No road, just trail, nice woods. I was hoping to stay in camp while patrol A goes clockwise and patrol B goes counterclockwise. I intend to have a PLC that morning to review the map, and then send them with walkie talkies. Then pour a cup of coffee and read the paper. Thoughts?