Edgar Santos - Into & Challanges

Hello everyone! My name is Edgar Santos and I am new to Royal Rangers. After many years of RR not being at our church, I felt the call to start it up again. I have no experience with Rangers, but have a passion for the kids in our church so after much prayer we decided to re-charter this past October. We have approx. 8 DR and 3 AR.
I must say it has been a slow start. All but 2 kids are new to RR. My biggest challenge is the curriculum. I feel that the AR's do not have the foundation they would have had if they went through DR. Unfortunately if they want to advance within the AR track, they cannot do blue merits. Some of my guys don't know the basics like rope craft, fire craft, lashing, compass, etc. I feel they should know this stuff.
Not sure how to go about it. Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Hi Edgar!
Welcome aboard!

The easiest way to tackle that problem is to put your DR's & AR's together & do 1 Blur merit & 1 Green merit per quarter. That way both groups get a merit they can use towards advancement & the older kids get a chance to do those foundational skill merits like: Tool craft rope craft, fire craft, lashing, compass, First Aid skills, cooking.

Do you have any other leaders to help you?

Hi Chris, thanks for the reply.

Wow! I didn't know I could do that!. It sounds manageable since I only have about 11 all together.

Would each group only earn their level merit? Per the RR handbook, I think DR's can earn blue and/or green merits for advancement. Would my AR's be awarded the blue merit, but not count towards advancement?

Hope this makes sense



To answer your question, I have 2 other leaders with me.

You are correct
DR can earn green merits, but AR can not use Blue.

BUT they could still learn a useful skill! If you run the 2 groups together the AR still earn 1 skill merit per quarter (Which is all that is needed)

You would just need to separate them at Bible study time & have one of your other commanders lead a Bible lesson for one of the groups.

Feel free to ask any question , we have some folks here who have done RR for a long time & are a wealth of info

Chris, thank you again!

I would for sure teach the basic skills of Toolcraft, Firecraft, First aid, Rope Craft and nature study. Review these often to keep them up front in the boys and leaders minds.

Keep in mind that only a small percentage of your boys will get the gma so don't be Merit Driven. I would suggest you be event driven. Teach merits that will help you on your next event.

If you want a on fire outpost. Plan one event a month and go and do. This builds your outpost.

Mark Jones

I had a similar experience when I started a few years ago. I can offer some advice if you like

strods - any advice would be gladly accepted Thanks!

Tom's Start up advice

My advice became too long for a post, so I wrote a letter

Tom, first off nice work on putting the letter together and thanks for sharing, brother! The schedule layout is great.

Couple questions (perhaps more to come):

1. To be clear, the AR's are also earning the DR merits, right? And the DR's are only earning the green merits per "Commander Approval"?

2. In regards to the Bible Merits, I see that you have 1 planned per month. How does this work when they have to do 8 lessons to earn a Bible merit?

Good job on that info Strods. Nailed it.

Mark Jones

esantos8301 wrote:Tom, first off nice work on putting the letter together and thanks for sharing, brother! The schedule layout is great.

Couple questions (perhaps more to come):

1. To be clear, the AR's are also earning the DR merits, right? And the DR's are only earning the green merits per "Commander Approval"?

The Commander Approval is simply to give you the phrasing. When you start looking at the merits, you will see that each has a dozen or more requirements. Usually there is 1 or 2 that are clearly the BIG part of the merit. Like Camping needing 10 nights of camping, Shelters needs to spend a night in a shelter. Yes absolutely hold those as mandatory needs. But for the other blanks that are more academic in nature. I grade on a %. Like Tool Craft wants Rangers to learn over a dozen different parts of a knife (seriously).
I can't believe it is in the best interest of anyone to withhold the merit just because a Ranger can't remember the holding pin, etc. That where Commander Approval is, grace. Age is irrelevant, if a Ranger does the work, they earn the merit.

esantos8301 wrote:2. In regards to the Bible Merits, I see that you have 1 planned per month. How does this work when they have to do 8 lessons to earn a Bible merit?

The schedule shows 1 book of the Bible being taught each month. But the merits are now earned for 8 lessons. So regular attenders earn a bible merit every 2 months.

This comes from the bible lessons being written in groups of 4-5 from the 2000 revision of the old bible merits, and National's software still groups bible lessons as groups of 4-5 per book.

Welcome aboard. I read your PM and see we are in neigboring sections/Areas.

One thing to note is that even an AR earning blues don't count toward GMA it does count toward DR Gold Eagle Awared (GEA). If per se you have a DR move up later to AR but wants to finish his GEA he can still earn the high medal for the previous group. DR can do this to finish RK Gold Trail Award (GTA). Someday if you have ER boys they can finish GMA. Like Mark said don't push advancement too hard at the expense of building boys, memories, skills, and pointing to Jesus.

Since you are chartered and obviously tech savvy enough to navigate a forum try www.rangerdepot.com for the outpost Navigator software to track data and advancement for boys. Mark has a site too with his own nifty programs and database I think his link is www.readyrangers.tzo.com