Eagledad

>>I let him work on requirements but didn't sign off until he finished the 5th grade. It all worked out well.

>>We plan on introducing a tried and proven "one year curriculum" for a boy to earn his Arrow of Light that was provided to us at the Council training workshop. We would expect (and hope) that most, if not all of those boys that actually earn their AoL would come back to the Webelos program for the next year and help provide leadership to that Den.

//The solution is not to push Webelos dens toward Boy Scouts and Boy Scouting activities, but to train Webelos Den Leaders to run fun Webelos den programs using Webelos scout materials.// Exactly! Leaders who use the Activity Pins as a theme to plan fun activities will do a lot better than leaders set on earning the pins or training boy scouts. Let pins be a byproduct of a fun program and you find most of the scouts will rack up pins without even knowing they are doing it.. Let the scouts fun meter tell you if you are doing it right. If they are having fun in the den, they will join a troop. If the den is boring, then so is the troop. And try to do as much of the activities outside as you can. We live with in five minutes of a lake, several parks and school tracks. You can do a lot of activities that are really easy to plan in those places. I cant remember the number of times I called scouts parents 30 minutes before the meeting to move the meeting to the park or lake because the weather was so nice. As I said before, an eagle scout who was one of my Webelos told me Webelos was the most fun he had in scouting. Barry

Our troop did things like this for packs so the cub families could see boy scouts in action. We did this before the meeting so everyone could watch and ask questions. And we had samples ready as well while we cooked as well. This would be a great opportunity to get a troop working with your pack. And it wouldn't take any of your fun meeting time. Barry

You just basically described our Webelos Woods, do you have Webelos Woods? Barry

Your district is now inviting both the Webelos AND Bears to your Camporee? Our district went the opposite direction and stopped inviting Webelos. They can come and watch, but not participate. Troops stopped coming because camporess turned from competition to scout skills demonstrates for recruitment. We already have a Webelos Woods, so it made no sense to the PLCs. Now more troops are starting to come back. Im all for trying new ideas, but adding bears into the problem seems risky. You know I write a lot about the losses at the Webelos age, but I'm talking about the failing 50 percent. If you want to know "what to do with the Webelos", then ask the successful 50 percent. Barry

I've tried to raise my kids to measure small things with the big picture. As you say 83, scouting in the big picture is doing pretty good. But this is a forum where folks, for whatever reason, point out a flaw at a very small part ot the big picture and folks wanting to have dialog with folks of alike interest (passion) respond giving the discussion wheels. Sometimes we just need someone like you to bring us back to realiy. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

I approach scouting as real world experiences scaled down to a boys size. The lessons learned during scouting activites earned are intended to be practice for each scouts real life as adults. One year the troop spent the weekend at Tinker Air Force Base and to make a long story short, the troop imbarrassed itself and was asked not to come back. My job is to get the scouts to understand their bad choices and how to respond to repercussions of those bad choices. Are some of you folks suggesting that a letter of apology should not be sent unless the scouts are really sorry? Does this mean we should only teach habits of appropriate behavior when the boys are in the mood? I can't say whether all the scouts who communicated with the General the following weeks were truely sorry, but a letter of apology was a part of the process and the troop is welcomed back. Barry

>>Stop bashing the DL first thing. Just my thoughts

>>Perhaps there is an incompatibility between the notion of signing up for a life-changing program of 15 years duration and the desire to just have a good, fun Scouting experience _this_ year.

I guess I dont understand where this discussion went, who are the zealots or hardliners. I can speak of innovations because I have been blessed to be the creator, planner and instigator of a several innovations in our area. I learned A LOT from those innovations. While most of the innovations were a success in their own right at the time, they dont exist anymore except for a few Webelos things and the District training schedule I helped design. Here are a few basic generalities (principles) I learned that really are needed for real innovation to take place. 1. The innovation needs to require the same number or less volunteers to gain traction and hold. Most Webelos Crossover Innovations (including mine) die under the weight of needed volunteers to make it work. For an innovation to succeed, it must work within the system and not pull more volunteer hours away from the already overworked workers. 2. Simplicity is a must. If the innovation is to maintain longevity, it must be simple enough for the generation past the creator of the innovation to take the ball and run. Its easy for the Type A person to create and run a successful innovation because they know where to pull the strings in their complicated system. But once that person leaves, who takes over. The innovation must run under its own inertia and be easy for most anyone to maintain. 3. The innovation must fit within the BSA program so it doesnt corrupt other parts of the program. One example is corruption is District MB Fairs. Some of our troops got so used to MB Fairs and Summer Camps that their scouts dont work on MBs at any other time of year. Scoutmasters dont know or understand the BSA guidelines for a scout to even sign up for a MB. I have found through the years that if the innovation cant work under those three principles, it will likely fail, or require a lot of maintenance. A few examples of Nationals innovations that I think are failing is Tigers. Since I have been a Scout Leader, Tigers has gone under three major program changes by National and many little changes over the years. Yet, it still suffers under huge losses of numbers. The primary principle that hurts Tigers is Principle 1, it requires way to many volunteers to run successfully. Its top heavy and makes the whole Pack program unstable. Another program is the Venture Patrols. That innovation suffers from Principle 3. It pulls the older scouts away from the main troop program under the disguise of keeping the older scouts motivated in the program. But in reality it forces the younger scouts to perform older scout duties while older scouts sit around theoretically planning one or two high adventure trips a year. Of course the Venture Patrol was a patch to fix another innovation that has not really panned out as well as hoped, New Scout Patrols. In my own experiences, I have run very successful innovation programs only to watch them disappear when I moved on. What I have learned is the BSA in general has a pretty good understanding of the Big picture and tries to build low maintenance small pieces that fit in the big picture. If the vision of the small piece is too complicated for the average volunteer to understand, then it will fail from a lack of performance in the big picture. For example, I was given the go ahead to experiment with a more boy run style of Council JLTC. It was a huge success that was growing fast in numbers. The problem was the average volunteer was finding it difficult to manage a program where the intention was a one week course that boys learned from their experience, not the instruction. Once I saw that, I killed the program and replaced it with NYLT. My innovation was a great course as long as I was there to pull the right strings for success, but once I left it was a huge burden on the council. It was pulling down the unit JLTs because council didn't know how to fit them in the big picture without me. leaving a program that would certainly created mess for someone else to clean up wasnt my style and it wasn't the first innovation I killed for the same reason. NYLT fits under the BSA big picture of training. I dont care for it much, but it does work. So, when I hear of new innovations from National on down to the unit level, I look at the innovation from the filter of those three principles. I will say that in general, its hard to improve an already good program like the BSA. Barry

>>Personally, I'd be glad to see some innovation in that area. Some units do their best, but many others don't have a clue. And constructing an effective Webelos program is difficult for many weaker packs to do.

Most of the restrictions are an image thing. A few of them are more about safety I guess, but I have participated as a BSA unit leader in just about all the restrictions on Beavahs list through the years, mostly before they made the restricted list and a few from ignorance. But I have to say the most dangerous activity I ever led was the Cub Mobile races. If those cars arent raced just right, they can develop a lot of speed quickly. I had a few scouts get pretty scuffed up before we got the basics down. None of those scouts or their families complained. But its kind of funny, we originally built the cub mobiles for a summer pack project one year. The scouts had so much fun with them that it became a pack activity at least three or four times a year. But after we used the Cub Mobiles at the District Summer Cub Day Camp, the DE asked us to help them turn it into a district event. So we taught the other packs how to build the cars and ran the first year district competition. The district ran the event every April after that for 10 years. Cub Mobiles is a great event, but dont say it to loud, its not on the list yet. Barry

>>At the same time, I can't think of any such restricted activities that, if allowed, would make any real contribution to the Scouting program.

>>This is not meant to say that one program or the other is better, just as a counterpoint to the idea of segregating 1st-grade Tiger Cubs. I don't see the need or benefit.

>>THough Beavah's thoughts about making the commissioner service functional also sound good to me.

>>Girl Scouts handle this with no problem--Daisies are kindergarteners, and Service Unit activities combine all the ages. From what I've seen and been told, the older girls don't really get bothered by events that involve the "little kids" until about 6th grade,

The discussion went a strange direction to me. While most admit that the problem is burned out adults, the solution was fixing the Webelos program? Something is a miss, unhappy adults equals fix Webelos? Got to make the adults excited to get excited cubs. I enjoyed reading your post twocubdad, but I dont really agree with it much. But let me first say that I researched this area of the program for a few years. I interviewed hundreds of scouts and many dozens of Den Leaders. So I have pretty good feel for it. >>2) I'll disagree sightly with Barry regarding the Webelos program -- while I think the program elements laid out for Webelos are generally appropriate, there needs to be more structure and direction between the Webelos I and Webelos II years.>Just as they're evaluating what they do and don't want to do, BSA lights up a huge EXIT sign we call crossover. They've reached the pinnacle of Cub Scouting, earned the highest award possible. You can continue on if you want, but you'll start at the bottom of the heap, have to new leaders, a greater time commitment and, if you listen to the sales pitch, you better really like camping. And we wonder why half of them quit.

My plates say EAGLEDAD. Barry

Well the discussion is half right, it is true we loose a lot of families in the cubs, but the content of the program is not the problem. At least from the boys point of view. The main number one Cub program problem is adult leader burnout. Think about it, the Cub program is roughly FIVE years long. I've written about this for a long and the discussions can be found in detail in the archives. But it basically comes down to that the average adult starts burnout after two years and is pretty much spent after three. THat means a burned out Bear leader is still looking at roughly two more years. Add on top of that 90% of Den leaders are female. So put your self in the place of a female Bear leader who is looking at a the next two years of outdoor camping, cooking, and scout skills. That is two years out in the hot and cold, bus and snakes and trying to teach skills only their brothers did when they were kids. There just isnt a lot of enthusiasm there folks. But, Ive also worked with a lot of male Bear leaders too and they are just as burned out even if they look forward to the outdoor part of the program. The results is familiar to most of us seasoned pack leaders, begging and pleading for the adults to either stay and finish with their scouts, or find a new den leader to take over. Neither choice is ideal because 9 times out of 10 the leader you get isn't excited about running a fun den program. The results are a bunch of bored boys who cant wait to get our of Scouts. So, we can bash and hammer the contents of present program all we want, but until we shorten the length of the Cub years and make the program a little easier for adults to manage, we will keep losing families by the herds. I know there are Webelos leaders who provide good programs and it is tempting to ask them what they do different, but I personally think the present Webelos program is good and if the den was run by a motivated adult (fresh), they would be very successful. So what I am saying that an good programs requires enthusiastic adults, especially the Webelos. The BSA Cub program today is more complicated and longer than it ever has been. And it seems they keep piling on more every year. Barry

>>Any comments on this bright idea would be welcome.

>>Eagledad, I'm really inspired by the level of responsibility your Webelos have taken on.

>>(Oh, the last time I brought this up I was admonished here that that one of the purposes of Cub Scouting is to "wean" the boys from parents to transition into Boy Scouts

>>I'm wondering if others out there have done this and, if so, I'm looking for helpful suggestions as to how to make this work best.

Hi Bronco I used to help guide Troops that kind of lost their way when I was on the District Committee. Most didn't loose their way because they were bad managers, most got lost because they just didnt know how. My advice for every Troop CC Ive worked with is take the Scoutmaster Fundamentals Course with the SM and learn what the program is all about. In fact, I would suggest you call the District Membership Chairman and ask them to provide the course jsut for your unit and invite all the committee adults and all the ASMs into the course. Then the discussions can be more directed to your program. The NUMBER ONE problem I find with units that loose their way is they dont have a vision or goal for each adult to focus on for the big picture. So each adult kind of does their own thing without understanding how the fit in the big picture. They eventually start working against each other and the unit becomes dysfunctional. By getting everyone to take the SMF course, everyone is brought to the same understanding of the program. What is very important is that you develop an understanding of the vision in the program so that each person has a goal or direction to work towards. Now the BSA actually makes that easy, do a google and review the Scouting Vision and Mission Statement, and the Aims and Methods. You can see there is a goal and there is a plan to reaching those goals. See, the Scoutmaster is responsible for the program. But the CC is responsible for the holding the Scoutmaster accountable to knowing and understanding what the program should be. Its not your job to run the boys side of the program, but it is your job to know where they should be going. You know the vision and goals, now develop a plan with the SM and hold the performance of the program accountable to the vision or goals. How do you know if they are performing? Go back to the Vision and Mission. Start off simple, make sure the boys are first having fun. I have seen troops get so caught up in getting their troop to the vision that they lost the fun in the adventure. The word fun should be mentioned a lot. In fact I told the boys that at anytime something isnt fun, CHANGE IT. Im not a believer that we have to do some of the boring stuff to reach the fun stuff. Keep it simple and keep it fun. Oh, remember that adults are great at complicated. The more they get involved, the more it will get complicated. Keep it simple, keep it fun. A simple method for starting out is have the SM, ASMs and all the boys in the PLC use the SPL Handbook and PL Handbook. Those are simple guides that everyone can understand for running a simple program. As things get more complicated, then boys and adults review the handbooks and see how they can make simple changes that fit in the program. OK, I meant for this to be a quick easy read, but as usual I got carried away. I will let it go now and wish the best. You are in a great place right now where you can influence young men for the rest of their lives. I love this scouting stuff. Barry