Blog Goals

Here are some of the goals that I have put together about my blog and this year in regards to Boy Scouts. First, lets look at my goals for the blog:

1. Posts;  For the First Six months of 2012 my goal is to create 1 to 2 posts a week. Then in the last six months of the year be creating, editing, and writing 3 to 4 posts a week. The first part of this goal should be a little challenging since I have a hard time about keeping up and regularly posting to my blog.

2. Summer Camp Series: This year my main focus is going to be pretty much exclusively on summer camp. Now, wait many of you right now are probably going there isnt enough information and areas, subjects, or points to cover about summer. But in all actuality there is too much to do justice to this topic if I were to cover it for  only a year.

Summer Camp Subjects that will most likely be covered

1. g Evaluating: Prec-camp evaluation and post camp evaluation processes. Why both of these are very important, ideas on how to do them, some personal experience from evaluating units that Ive worked with directly in regards to summer camp as a adult leader. 
2. Choosing Camp: Figuring out how to best determine the best summer camp facility for your Troop, Home Council vs Out of Council Summer Camp advantages and disadvantages, and when basic decisions about where your going need to be made and how to make those decisions
3. High Adventure: What is High Adventure, what is the appropriate target audience for your Scouts, using high adventure bases, and creating your own High Adventure Summer Camp experience.
4. New Scout Programs: What to look for, how to manage sign offs at camp, and is this a mandatory or optional thing for first year scouts.
5. Keeping older boys without a High Adventure Program: How do you keep your older boys coming to camp, how to offer alternatives to high adventure programs, what older Scouts really want from camp, and what you can do when you are trying to get older experienced to go into summer camp leadership positions.
6. And many more topics to cover. I dont want to write down a more complete list because A) it would take forever, and B) it wouldn't be able to keep all the information in one post.

Well this post was going to include Boy Scout goals for the year but since this post is a little long already it will just have to wait for another day to come.

Happy New Year and may all your Scouting adventures and dreams come to light and become true.

Yours in Scouting Service

Mark West

Assistant Scoutmaster

Troop 1316, Troop 1616(aka 669), Troop 125

Tustumena District/ Denali District/ Eklutna District, Great Alaska Council 

NSJ '05 Youth Participant '10 Subcamp 7 Youth Staff '13 Subcamp Staff

WSJ '07 Youth Participant '11 International Service Team(IST)

Eagle Scout OA Brotherhood Member Big Horn Denver Area Council NYLT QM Philmont AA '08

If you are paid to do Scouting, you are called a Professional. If you are not paid to do Scouting, you are called a Volunteer. If you pay to do Scouting, then you are called a Scoute

New Years Resolution: A Different Perspective

New years resolution:

First question is does having and creating a New Years Resolution work??
It doesnt, so why are we all obsessed with creating them. The reason is because society expects us to do but then u must ask:

Are u willing serving urself and others in the best way possible if u do create one???
Well technically speaking the idea behind a New Year Resolution is excellent and if used in the proper way could be a useful tool but why call it somethings its not, we really shouldnt do it and insteadcreate goals on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. The more often u set goals whether its just getting that assignment turned in or as big as getting married and making a family the basic principle behind creating a good goal is to use the "SMART" method of goal setting. The method is as follows:

S: Specific

M:Measurable

A:Attainable

R: Realistic

T:Timely

Im not going to define these yet I just want to let people ponder and think about what this means to themselves.

Yours in Scouting Service

Mark West

Assistant Scoutmaster

Troop 1316, Troop 1616(aka 669), Troop 125

Tustumena District/ Denali District/ Eklutna District, Great Alaska Council 

NSJ '05 Youth Participant '10 Subcamp 7 Youth Staff '13 Subcamp Staff

WSJ '07 Youth Participant '11 International Service Team(IST)

Eagle Scout OA Brotherhood Member Big Horn Denver Area Council NYLT QM Philmont AA '08

If you are paid to do Scouting, you are called a Professional. If you are not paid to do Scouting, you are called a Volunteer. If you pay to do Scouting, then you are called a Scoute