BAJ

As part of my Wood Badge ticket, I am trying to build some resources to help troops continue Scout-led activities while still managing COVID-19 risk in a way that works for them and their participating families.  The first is a resource on reducing COVID-19 infection risk in camping (I will post my query about the second in a few days to cut the length of this post).

What I am building is a menu of different ways to minimize infection risk during camping activities, starting from the guidance provided by National (mainly the Restarting Scouting Checklist) but providing many more options to further reduce the chance of transmission.

The intent of the menu — intended particularly for units whose COs have not been comfortable with them resuming outdoor programming or where there are significant numbers of families who are uncomfortable with the risk — is to help these units build a risk reduction approach that will work for them and let them resume programming.

My starting point has been as exhaustive a review as possible of all the Council, individual Council camp, troop/unit, and other Scouting program resources and guidelines that I have been able to collect (many of which have a variety of other approaches to further reduce risk beyond the National-level guidelines).  I have also done a handful of interviews with units who have developed their own risk reduction approaches.

What I am looking for from the collective wisdom here is

1. any insights from your units’ experience camping during COVID conditions about approaches I should include in the menu and the practicality of approaches you have tried (since any strategy will only actually reduce risk if the Scouts both can and are willing to implement it)
2. any pointers to particularly good resources I should review or units I should reach out to that might have approaches I should include in the final product

If your inputs are of interest to a broader audience and you are comfortable posting them publicly that is great.  If not, feel free to private message me and we can connect by email.  My intent is to share the eventual product broadly (I will post here if that is permissible) but if you are interested in the product feel free to message as well so I can add you to my distribution list.

9 hours ago, 5thGenTexan said:

 

Two of my five patrol mates had something similar to hold a good chunk of their gear.  :)   If you’d been in my patrol you’d have fit right in and I would have been the outlier with my avalanche of separate totes, backpacks, tent, etc. etc. etc.  

If they didn’t laugh at me.... you’re probably good.  Our SPL actually told us not to worry about over packing, since they wanted us to sleep as comfortable as possible so we’d absorb the sessions.  Have fun.  I hope you get great patrol mates... they were really what made the experience fun for me.

7 hours ago, 5thGenTexan said:

I don't know how to answer these questions. 

I had A very similar reaction to some of them before my course a few weeks ago.  I just went to my backpack (just got back from Weekend 2 yesterday) and pulled out my now rumpled version... rumpled because it never left the backpack either in Weekend 1 or 2 and so it was sort of crunched down at the bottom.  

Looking at what I wrote my “answers” to some of them were just a few bullet points.  And I had a real problem answering some of them.  For example, thinking about the question about a leader who had significantly affected my life, many of the “leaders” I have had weren’t very good and some of them significantly affected my life... negatively.  I remember sitting there going “If we discuss this at the course, I am going to really really bad being the guy who talks about how terrible person X was and why their leadership was a bad thing” ... so I sort of picked the most positive example I could find and wrote a half-hearted couple of bullets about him.  But we never had a discussion that referred to the questionnaire at all, and the fact that I had thought that thru — why some of those leaders weren’t good — actually was useful since it sort of brought me into the mindset.

I had some of the issues with some of the strengths questions too.  One of the ones I listed was “follow thru... I finish what I start and say I will get done.”  Seemed pretty lame as something to list as a leadership strength when I had in my head “leadership Strengths” with a capital S like “Inspiration” or “Vision,” but ... even though you will spend (a significant amount) time at the course talking about those sorts of things... having come out the other side and talked to a number of the other participants and thought again about other leaders I know, “Follow Thru” seems like a pretty good thing and might deserve capital letters too.

So having experienced the whole course package at this point, I would say that the 20 questions aren’t about the answers but about the answering.  We didn’t ever reference them in the actual course, but it was a useful exercise for me to think through some of the topics and issues, and it was actually some of the questions that I had the hardest time answering — and looking at my answers now, I don’t think where I ended up on them was all that great — that were most useful to have thought about.

I agree — I did some event photography over the years semi officially and the key is what Parkman said about being “purposeful and dignified.”  As I got better equipment, I generally went to longer/telephoto lenses to record ceremonies so I could still get good photos from the periphery of the event to limit how intrusive I was being as much as I could, but the key is how your behavior and body language convey that you are recording the event and the participants versus the now caricature of the cell-camera wielding parent blocking everyone’s view to get a snapshot of junior...

3 hours ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

When we had our kids in private school, this was the case.  The school said pay an additional fee now, and if you volunteer x number of hours, we will refund you.  And it wasn't pro-rated...reach x number of hours, or no refund...

I really like this idea.  But I would have that pool of funds focused on defraying costs of participation, rather than stipends.  The active volunteers could choose to apply them to their scout’s costs — or, if they had the means — to have them defray the costs of others.  Could be a model that both provided incentive for volunteering (a good outcome) and/or an alternative stream of support to allow scouts from more socio-economically challenged backgrounds to participate in what we have been observing is becoming an increasingly expensive activity.

Since this discussion picking up again reprompted my interest, I did a little Googling.  On the BSA licensing page (http://licensingbsa.org/trademarks/) they do list “Boy Scout uniform, insignia and emblems” on the list of example BSA trademarks, suggesting some level of trademark interest in the look of the uniform.  

In the brand identify guide (https://filestore.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/310-0231.pdf), they do flag specific hues as defined parts of the BSA branding (and helpfully put “Scouting” in front of each of them... e.g., Scouting Tan and even Scouting BSA Olive.).  

Not saying they should file a counter suit, but it would be nice if this could be used by skillful legal counsel to reduce the credibility of the suit against BSA that alleges potential brand confusion based on the relative placement of the words “Scout” and “Girl.”  I am not a lawyer, but it would seem that if the relative placement of those two words could create confusion, the relative placement of the hues “Tan” and “Olive” in a very similar looking, potentially trademark-protected scouting uniform design could as well.  

Two wrongs may not make a right, but perhaps “two oppositely directed brand confusions might unmake a legal suit?”  One fewer creditor couldn’t hurt in the proceedings...

8 hours ago, TAHAWK said:

Wood Badge does not devote five minutes to explaining The Patrol Method, saying it teaches " by example."  So BSA is using the "DGE"  approach to teaching?  HARDLY.  Wood Badge does not "guide" or  "enable" the trainee,  Instead, the remote authors of the Syllabus, through the  "ADULTS (Staff) exert near total control. 

This is an interesting point — having just gone through the revised curriculum, I mostly agree with you, though the program did have some elements that I think attempted to do this.  There wasn’t that much explaining of the patrol method in great detail, but some of the activities did try to get the ideas across.  And I think part of the issue is time constraints — I’ve only done Weekend 1 at this point, but there was a lot in there and not a lot of extra time.

Thinking about this, I am struggling a little with how I would change things.  I get the patrol method, even though I was less of a free range kid than some here (and was also a scout that was advancement-focused even when I was a kid, no parental pressure required.  They do exist.). But it seems like there isn’t a ton to “explain” (admittedly simplifying some here to avoid too much typing) — the scouts are a group, they need to work together to solve problems and make decisions, their youth leaders need to (learn how to) facilitate that process and get the group to function together, rinse and repeat, and leaders need to butt out and let the scouts try, as needed fail, rinse and repeat.  The problem is truly communicating that to adults who don’t intuitively  see the issue with being more involved, solving the kids problems for them so they have “fun,” etc.  I had the advantage of a really good trainer in my SM-specific training which I did in person rather than online... which I think helped a lot.  I have no idea how one would successfully communicate these ideas in web videos and PowerPoint slides.

To really “teach” that at something like the patrol method at WB what it almost needs a difficult task that the group of adults involved has truly never done before (since a group of scouts together is doing a lot of things they haven’t done before) and the troop guide doing what a good scout leader would do as they figure it out — asking questions that help the group think it through, standing back and resisting the urge to “help” etc.   And then, once done, a discussion with the WB patrol about why they did things that way, how that had affected how the patrol approached the problem, etc.  The challenge is — given at least my WB class had people with vastly different experiences and scouting tenures, what that “difficult task” would be.  It may be that we will get something more like this on Weekend 2, so perhaps I am speaking too soon.

For the scouts, I could definitely see an element of rank requirements for planning and executing tasks or little projects as a patrol — where at the lower ranks the requirement is describing how the group approached the problem and the role the scout played, and at the higher ranks it is about how the scout contributed to guiding others or (for the PL) leading the effort.  Scouts in positions of responsibility could fulfill similar requirements to draw on members of their patrol to help execute tasks, where there could be more explicit thinking about how the small team worked together.  This would be a different flavor for requirements — now they are essentially individual tasks/activities (though some must be done in the group/patrol context like “cook for your patrol on a campout”) the framing is still very individual.

We do a little of this in SM conferences — where one of the topics we always cover is how the patrol is working, the role of the scouts in different activities the patrol has done, etc.  So, even without explicit requirements, there is at least that venue as a way to reinforce the patrol method and patrol functioning.

Reverse image search found a listing for it on a Spanish language internet marketplace:  https://listado.mercadolibre.com.co/insignias-scout   That was the only place I could find a listing for it for sale.

So, an interesting thing to add to the mix — it looks like a council is actually exploring a model of lone-ish scouts meeting in a virtual troop.  I came across it since part of my Woodbadge tasks are related to scouting during COVID, and one of my goals is related to thinking through the combination of the virtual and in-person scouting since different families may have different risk tolerances vis-a-vis exposure and therefore different willingness to participate in-person.  

It is in the Northern Lights Council and they are calling it Scout Point.  Web site is here:  https://scoutpoint.org/about/  They describe the pitch as focused on serving rural scouts, but I have had the thought that in a post-bankruptcy environment, there might be more areas where potential scouts don’t have troops nearby and virtual options could potentially attempt to backfill for that lack.

This is the summary text from one of their other COVID specific pages where I found the effort initially.

Our staff folks were really nice to us... they recommended not bringing too much heavy personal gear, but also said that if we had to bring a heavy tent or something, we could add it to the stack of the patrol cooking gear that someone would be kindly transporting down to the campsite for us.     (That said, I think this was only going to be a issue because of the relative positions of our campsite v. the parking lot at the relevant camp.)   Other than that, there wasn’t any guidance that we needed anything special — the main difference highlighted between Weekend 1 and 2 was that each patrol would have to manage their own cooking gear.

Congrats to you and him — glad the weather held up.  With COVID meaning things are so much safer outside, weather dependence is really becoming more of a challenge.

23 minutes ago, DuctTape said:

Initially thinking is that a scout  signs up and commits to the season just like they do for soccer or the school play.

That is a really interesting idea.  In our small troop, we have a subset that essentially did this, a set that committed to “scouts first, everything else as they could,” and a set juggling the two.  I wonder if the juggling set would have dropped out for half the year if this was an explicit model, meaning a net much smaller troop during that ‘season’ though.  It would align with six month leadership terms, and annual planning could move to two six month terms — with a ‘pre-season planning’ period before each season started.  And summer ‘season’ would be open to everyone.  An interesting thing to think about.

Orienteering boxes could be an option too — set of compasses, a few versions of laminated maps around the property, and either having permanent markers or markers in the box that a senior scout would need to run the course first and place at their designated locations on the map.

Edit: jut read closely enough to see you already said map and compass.  Long day.

Certainly looks nice, though adding the shoulder loops and the design looks.... strangely familiar.  Any chance BSA had a design copyright on the uniform where BSA could give them free license for making their new uniform shirt and green bottom combo look rather Scouts BSA like (what’s the copyright term?  Potential for brand confusion?) and they could drop their suit for the use of the word “girl” In too close proximity to the word “scout?”  Just a thought...

3 minutes ago, carebear3895 said:

This is actually starting to regain traction in our virtual setting. 

17 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

Now, one thing I have heard Councils doing is to have lone scout "troops" and "patrols" but I am not sure if that is widespread.

This is actually related to something that I am toying with as an element of my Woodbadge ticket.  We have a couple of Scouts who can’t participate in-person due to health concerns even though our unit has restarted in-person meetings and outdoor program.  We’ve been experimenting with ways of keeping them as part of the troop/patrol (not sure if I mentioned in other posts, but we are keeping a virtual connection to troop/patrol meetings, actually had a virtual connection to our first COVID-campout, and have tried virtual scout led skills teaching).  Some of the experiments have worked better than others and we are learning some technology and other lessons.  One element I am thinking of trying to have on my ticket is collecting best practices — including things that have worked for other troops — to try to get more of a knowledge base together on this.  Taking on board the critique I’ve read here about the issues with virtual Scouting, the notion is how to try to address as many of them as possible to make it more like a real experience, even if it will never be as good as the real thing.  I’d appreciate any pointers people have to places that have been doing things like this — whether they are working well or not, since maybe as much to learn from what doesn’t work as what does.

I just got back from Weekend 1 on Monday (“I used to be a... I guess I still am... an Eagle...”) and am working away on writing my ticket.  My weekend 2 is coming at the very beginning of October.

It was.... a lot of fun... and good.  And, given that I had absorbed some of the Woodbadge skepticism found some places on the internet, I went in with bit of a jaundiced eye at the start, so that’s really a rave review (think the “clearly real 4* reviews” on Amazon vs. the 5* ones that don’t ring true).  I think my daughter summed up my going in skepticism in a sort of funny way — when I was describing what I’d seen about the activities before I went and told her “It looks like it involves a lot of singing camp songs” and her response was “I am so sorry Dad, I know that will be very hard for you.”  I even sang crazy camp songs (poorly, in full disclosure) and came out the other end thinking it was a great experience.

Joking aside — look forward to it.  They told us we were the first group testing a new curriculum and so there have been some changes from what you can find online.  We got some of the growing pains in terms of timing and logistics hiccups from the fact that change was being implemented, but I thought the curriculum was really pretty good (and I have gotten variations of leadership training/mediation training/etc. at different points in my life).  My patrol is awesome — maybe the best part was having a group of engaged Scouters who are in the trenches different places to go through the process with and to be able to talk to for an extended period, and I got some perspective about where things are and where they might be going that I absolutely hadn’t gotten elsewhere.

I admit that it freaked me out some to be in the largest group I have been in since COVID happened.  Scouters are much better at keeping their masks on right and being careful than Scouts are, but was still a biggish group.  We did a lot outside, but the weather meant that we had to do a good part inside too.  Life in the time of COVID is a life of risk management, however.  (One of my ticket items is likely to be about that which I will probably ask the forum here for help with — and it was clear that “managing to scout through COVID” and get troops and packs and crews out the other side in one piece was going to be part of others’ tickets too.)

And working on my ticket writing last night, I realized I was actually excited.  I think I am coming up with things that will help my unit (and maybe others) and some pieces of my plan have as a core part getting the scouts involved in helping me do it.  We had a troop meeting last night (that I joined virtually out of an abundance of caution) and I let them know that I was going to be coming to them for help because now I had requirements to work on too... and I saw at least a scout or two sort of perk up at that, so maybe that part of my plan to use my working my ticket to get them more energized will work too.  

Have fun — it will be great to hear your reactions too.

When my daughter joined, I was relieved that joining at the point where she was earning AOL meant she had the option of just starting in the tan uniform.  I had visions of having to replace a whole uniform set after only a year of use...

Scout Vespers is one of my memory triggers from my time as a scout.  Our troop sung it so many great places, it brings back memories like a light switch going on.  

I have been giving a lot of thought to COVID and scouting as our troop is starting back to some in person activities and our annual planning cycle is starting.  I am actually going to Wood Badge next weekend (put off from weekend scheduled early in the pandemic) and so have been thinking some about what my “COVID scouting ticket” might look like.

At our round table, there there were troops that talked about their chartering org not letting them do anything in person.  Other troops did something like a summer camp.  I’ve read the postings of others here that did things like that and tried to read stories I could find of other troops summer activities, and it is clear that they — and the level of infection control they thought was necessary for “safe scouting” — varied a lot.

From our experience, it is also obvious that individual families, even within the same area, are doing very different things with respect to exposure mitigation and have very different levels of concern about COVID.  Some are being extremely conservative, others in the middle minimizing going out to stores/other contact, and others have seemingly resumed near normal activities.  So in thinking about troop activities, I realized that one can never assume that the other families connected to the troop are thinking about this the same way I am or the same way the Scoutmaster is, or whatever.  We did some things like instituting a form that has to be filled out that the scout isn’t sick/has a fever/been exposed to suspected cases recently, but that is less about a paper trail than at least trying to make sure people at least think about their kid’s health before they bring them to a troop event.  But our local school system did a small summer day camp program that pretty much proved that those don’t work — in a couple weeks, in a group of 50, 4 people directly misrepresented their situation on the form (two kids with fevers, two with parents at home waiting for COVID test results) so their kid could go to camp.

That gave me pause, and made me step back and think about what the right response should be.  Some families have already decided that they aren’t doing in person things, and so we are trying to have what virtual engagement with them we can (we streamed the campfire on our first campout, and it worked... tolerably.). But for the ones that are willing to participate in physical events, the question is how to appropriately balance the fact that people clearly have different risk perceptions, and even if they have the same perceptions, different tolerances.  Add to that the concern about what COVID spread at a scout event would do in this environment, liability, etc. and it doesn’t surprise me that there are COs and leaders who are trying to put some guardrails around this.

So, I was less shocked by a group of parents coming up with a list of ok events than other posters.  Sure, everything could be scout initiated in annual planning, but then you might get a proposal for (a) a campout at a site so far away families can’t realistically drive their own scout there to avoid exposure in the car, (b) a scheduled lock in “social campout” in a poorly ventilated building during flu season, (c) a fall activity involving bobbing for apples, and (d) patrol games night where there is so much scout physical contact that everyone will leave with every virus brought to the event.  You could let the scouts propose that to the troop committee and have them freak and veto everything, but that seems like it would undermine the lessons scouts is trying to teach as well.  I admit, I am exaggerating to make the point.

A middle ground is coming up with some parameters and guardrails — “we are only camping within an hours drive of home” — and also make clear the types of infection control that will make things ok with parents for scouts to participate.  That emphasizes to scouts their responsibility too... if we go camping and people can’t keep their masks on, it may be that camping ends up being off the table... since if everyone wearing a mask is the parents’ price of risk reduction to let their kids be there (not to mention government policy in some areas) then it doesn’t matter if we are “allowed to camp” if no families will let their scouts come.

The “adults recruiting scouts to go” piece is odd to me, though I also wonder if that may not be as bad as it sounds either.  Before our event, there was more parent contact than usual for a scout trip.  We needed to know that the parents were ok with the safety planning (and, if needed modify the plan to respond to different risk views) and would allow their scout to participate.  Was that adults recruiting scouts to go?  It might look like that from the outside, but I would also put forward that just scheduling something and only realizing that parents were uncomfortable with it when their scouts didn’t show up wouldn’t have reinforced what youth leadership is supposed to be teaching either.

So, a long winded attempt to say — maybe let’s not be as fast in making judgements on this.  Safety planning in this environment is different than planning for severe weather, and getting together now involves risks that COs and leaders are still figuring out how to manage.  We know that when a severe thunderstorm rolls thru camp, experienced scouts (potentially prodded by their leaders) seek more substantial shelter than tents and higher ground if we need to... to manage a risk that, if it happens, will only affect us and the scouts who are there.  We are managing a risk here that affects the community, and family members and others too... and one that even means that our usual ways of managing thunderstorm risk are tougher (on our campout we had to see if the solid building we could retreat to if we needed was big enough to distance while inside it.).  If scouting is going to happen in anything like what we want it to be, it’s going to have to navigate different risk perceptions and ways of managing them, and getting adults on board — and figuring out the terrain in which we are ok with the scouts leading by themselves —is going to be needed.

28 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

Not sure where that is coming from, is there a source?

It was just conveyed verbally at our Roundtable.  That’s all I’ve got.

1 hour ago, carebear3895 said:

This is pure speculation, but I think COVID-19 is being used as a scapegoat here for something else. Especially when OA's Momentum is happening in August and the Summit HA base will still be in operation. 

I had the same thought.  At a recent Roundtable, there was mention that National was running a budget deficit currently above $100 million.  My speculation, admittedly not knowing the exact planning and spending timelines for major national events, is now was the time when expenditures were going to start for preparation... and there might not be available capital or credit to cover them.  Potential scary cross relevance to the Chapter 11 thread elsewhere on the forum?

This was a screen shot posted on another (non-official) BSA posting board.  Poster is identified as verified as National Training Staff.  Link is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BSA/comments/ho9w9z/the_bsa_plan_announced_on_ceo_town_hall_today/