jc2008

Thanks guys! Our course seems to always be youth lacking for staff (we only have one course a year and they are not quite full 35-ish) and we literally ask basically anyone who is eligible and we can work with for staff (work with, ie they don't have to be the best, but they have the willingness to work for it). We seem to end up being a bit adult top heavy, as the adults end up handling the Quartermaster/Scribe type duties since our youth are busy being TGs and ASPL/SPL. Lucky we have a good bunch of adults (a few husband/wife teams) who know how to fade into the background.

Im putting together our staff notebook (with daily schedules/cliff notes) so in re-reading the syllabus, I always discover things I want to be able to explain in my cliff notes so the youth as quick access to refreshers during the course or while walking from one place to another lol.

Thanks so much. Can I ask a question about how many Participants/Youth staff/Adult staff your course usually carries?

Reading through everything, everytime you read a syllabus, different stuff pops out at you! 

On day 3 - In the Schedule for Dinner it says : Conducted with explanation. Ties into Leading Yourself.

It has this same note for Day 2 Scouts' Own on the schedule.

Now, I understand that in Scouts' Own there is an instructional that can cover this, but on Day 3 dinner, after the youth staff have already been to day 1 and day 2 dinners with the youth, what exactly are they looking for here? Just to making concious comments on how the patrol is taking care of itself etc? 

Nothing is mentioned in the syllabus about conducting that dinner with explanation or how to handle that.

What am I missing here?

(PS, how many youth staff do you send to each patrol at mealtime? In the past our course has not followed that part of the syllabus and just fed youth staff with the adults at the dining hall for most meals and sending some staff to check in on patrols at their campsites. SPL wants to go BY THE SYLLABUS this year, and I totally get why having staff join patrols at meal times can be super important. I am also assuming its youth staff that go out and have meals with patrols, do some courses also send the adult staff?)

What does a council training chair need to take/have in order to wear the "trained" patch, besides YPT of course.. I see the district training committee workshop training syllabus, but not a council one. 

As @@Chisos said, as a Webelos, he can attend Boy Scout Events ... however, technically this needs to be either with two cub-scout/webelos leaders OR you the parent attending those events as well.

 

Another option would be to work with the Webelos (AOL) Den leader to "work ahead" and complete the AOL adventures quickly.  He could then have the AOL, join the Troop, and if he wanted, comeback and be recognized for his AOL when his friends are.

 

As others have said, he cannot work on the AOL and Boy Scout advancement (including Merit Badges) at the same time.

 

Depending upon the willingness of the Den Leader ... one other possibility is that if he earns his AOL early, joins the Troop, then he could (potentially) come back as a Den Chief and still work with the boys in the Den.  The advantage here is it will very likely help the Webelos to Boy Scout transition of his peers, the disadvantage is he would probably rather participate in the activities of the AOL den rather than help run them.  For this reason, I personally try to keep at least 2 years of age difference between the Cub Scout Den and their Den Chief.

You have to be first class To be a den chief.

Split the tiger den up immediately. You don't encourage people to step up (heck I wouldn't with 23 kids!) neither is it a productive meeting for the kids.

Run the first den meeting for each tiger den to show the parents how simple it can be.

Break out a calendar at end of meeting and have each parent sign up to host and plan a meeting.

With 8 families and 2 meetings a month (keep it simple, they can up the number when they are more confident) that is

4 months done.

You can point out if no one hosts and plans the meeting then there simply won't be one, they usually gets parents motivated. And if they walk away, it's sad for the kid but the parent wouldn't have been a valuable asset anywys.

This is exactly why we have two deep leadership at all times!

Any report by any child should be taken seriously and investigated by police (not BSA).

You should always believe the child and report, and let law enforcement figure it out.

And if the leaders are following two deep leadership rules then the second leader can verify

That the adult is innocent. If you are alone with the scouts and one accuses you of something

Then you aren't following the rules and its your head...

So basically after the perks you are giving around $70 to council for a year of scouting and no fos requests. With installments that doesn't seem terrible for a year long program.

Popcorn is more for the units rather than council. After all out of their "third" comes the freight cost and incentives they offer, not to mention employee hours administrating the sale. And if a council sells a ton of popcorn then it's the units that are majorly benefitting anyways.

That same fee for leaders would be ridiculous. Already have problems getting people to pay or having to use the units money to pay for volunteers, so much so that lots of adults are unregistered.

Thanks I was wondering about no first aid and such in the syllabus.

Will take a look and make it work, we are expecting a larger than usual class this year

Reading syllabus for the 1.5 day iols and had a question..

There don't appear to be round robins so the entire course is all

Doing the same activity at once ? We need to make sure patrol guides are

Experts in all instead of finding experts for Each activity?

How did your course run ?

 Yes, you will get wife aggro.

But it can help you see the course in a whole new way and learn more the second time around when you aren't rushed and feeling like your head is going to explode.

It would be good to do, but its the 2 weekends of the course + being there a day before participants + a few staff developments, one of which is most likely an overnight.

We are taking about where a troop meets and its "stuff".

What we need to be talking about is

WHAT IS BEST FoR THE YOUTH!

If the sm is unhappy or uncomfortable with the church, move.

The church doesn't seem Overly involved as the cor don't have any

Idea much about their scout troop as op stated.

Ops son WANTS to be in the troop so obviously something is being done right

If kids want to be in troop.

No one is trying to run off with the troops stuff that belongs to the co to have for

Personal use. The stuff is still being used by the scouts and again what is best for the youth

Comes up again.

I would stop trying to stir the pot about item ownership if the things in question are still being used

For their intended purpose: To Give the youth a good scouting program

As for the other complaints, when adults cannot get along in units, there is one easy solution which is for

The adults who are unhappy to form a new unit. More often than not you get a new found respect for all

The grievances you had with the old regime.

Do you have a range master ? Slingshots with paintballs at targets.

We do rockets for ours.

Blast car demo ?

First aid?

Magic tricks demo where the scouts use explain demonstrate guide and enable to teach simple magic tricks

Human fooseball

Woggle making using patacord and knots like the turkshead

Since your boys just sit there like lumps of coal find something that is interesting to them and have them show others..

Regardless of how the man is behaving, I would also not like to work with a Scout who doesn't want to participate. 

As a leader, I am there to help teach the kids and teach them leadership skills. Not to force them to do something or try to treat behavioral issues. I am not trained as a child psychologist. Behavior is up to the parents.

I do run our popcorn sales and if I have a child who doesn't want to do anything, I send them home and they don't come back until they want to be there. Its not a babysitting service after all!

we run a combined program for a large pack. You can use the combined program delivery system:

http://www.scouting.org/filestore/multicultural/pdf/523-006_web.pdf

and just modify it for the dens you do have (take out the parts for the dens you do not have boys for). They give examples of activities to run or you can make up your own activities to illustrate the same ideas.

I think you are losing sight of what your ultimate goal is: What is best for the scouts and the scouts having a good time.

Adventuring farther from the car and not carrying a lot of gear sounds like something you think would be fun and adventurous. For an 8 year old, staying outside with mom, dad and all his cub scout friends IS adventurous, even if the car is 10 feet away.

And the ONLY way you are going to consistently get that kid out there in the wilderness over and over again is to make sure MOM AND DAD ARE COMFORTABLE AND HAPPY! Because if mom/dad don't have a good time and find it miserable trying to make do without their 40lb cots or their electric coffee pot or some other modern convenience, you wont be seeing that scout quite as often if ever.

You can grow their love of the outdoors during your daytime activities, hike away from the parking lot into the wilderness and show them the cool stuff then.

Its entire families you are trying to march through the woods in cub scouts, not just the boys, so you have to make sure its comfortable and convenient to where people want to attend your campouts over and over and have time to enjoy the fun stuff without any loss of creature comforts,

(Our pack goes camping twice in the fall and 3 times in spring, not including a special overnighter at the battleship or zoo or aquarium or other indoor place). We drive right up to where we camp, drop our gear, and then park our cars out of sight of where we camp at so its not too parking lot-ish, but still extremely conveinant for the parents. Maybe try something of that sort? drop gear and drive car out of site? We use our council's camp and this works well for us. We are in the "woods" but with our cars..

We did "angry bird tennis". Go to your lowes or Home Depot or sherwin Williams and ask for a bunch of the large paint stir sticks. Go to dollar store and buy the 9" solid color birthday plates in angry bird colors and some regular balloons and finally google "angry bird balloon face template" and print out the angry bird faces. Duct tape and regular tape too. Duct tape the paint stick to back of party plate making a tennis racket then cut out and glue I the angry bird face parts to the party plate. Blow up balloons and let them whack them around the room or back and forth.

If you don't have the "outgoing" showmanship personality for cubmaster, at least have the "host" mentality. When people are at your events, picture yourself as the host, like you would at your house. You go up, welcome people and speak to everyone to make them all feel welcome. Introduce yourself to people you do not know and introduce other people who do not know each other. Just like you would do at a party at your house.

If you make people feel included and part of something they tend to want to help more than if they feel alone/isolated.

If you can have a parent meeting, the whiteboard method is a good way to get volunteers. Write down all the activities you want to do for the year (Blue and Gold, Pinewood Derbt, Christmas Party, Food Drive, Hike, Campout etc) on the whiteboard. Then point at first thing on the list and ask who wants to be in charge of getting that event going. If no one raises their hand, wipe it off the board. After you wipe a few things off the board and parents realize there is no program without their help, they may start to volunteer.

Well, it seems to me you are asking for your meetings to be from 6-7 so they are giving you 6-7 Meeting times should be from start-finish. We do our meetings from 6-730, our opening flag is usually around 615-620 after we finish getting set up and we are usually done by 715 and out of the building by 730.

Did you just consider telling the keyholder that you are having your meetings from 6-730 (that gives you time to pickup)

Also, with service for your charter org, it gets you noticed right away usually. But I find that you need to seek out the projects rather than sit back and wait for your principle or priest to tell you what todo. See a flower bed in disrepair? fix it. Notice that the windows need to be washed? Wash them. See that your Org is doing a Can Food Drive, go do your own and give what you get to them.

Come at it more like "We are going to do this for you" rather than making the charter org have to figure out things that are appropriate and realistic for your group todo. You, as the leader, are much better at figuring out what your group of kids can accomplish.

Emailing out the committee minutes saves trees!

As for passing them out to the general public (ie the parents), I would suggest to do so with guidance, depending on how detailed your minutes are from the secretary.

After all, a parent reading minutes that say something simple like Approved $200 for food at campout and not seeing the big discussion that went into making the decision can quickly question why you are spending so much money on X. But if a parent wants to know the meeting minutes, having a committee member explain them and the reasoning/logic/discussion that went into making the decision is much better.

Thats the same approach if someone wants to know about the treasury. Everything should be open and available to the parents, but with explanation so assumptions dont get made and problems dont occur! If parents are that interested to know the committee member meeting minutes, then they should be going to those meetings!

Minutes are VERY important to have however, and have passed out to your committee members. You need a record that this or that was approved, especially when it comes to money. That way everyone is on the same page and people don't remember things differently.

We use facebook and scoutlander.

We have a pack page on facebook where we post all our pictures and announce/advertise our upcoming events. This is nice because relatives of the scouts who live far away are often looking and commenting on what their grandchildren/neices/nephews are up to! Along with the parents able to communicate through facebook with each other.

Scoutlander we use for the Email Broadcast where you can email the leaders, a specific den or entire pack. It is easier than everyone being expected to keep an updated list of who is still active in the pack or new members. I just add/subtract people from the list and the leaders who want to send out an email just go through scoutlander to send it. Also parents know to watch for emails that come through scoutlander to their email accounts. Also on scoutlander they have a calendar which I put all of our activities/meetings into and it automatically sends out a reminder email 2 days before an event. That way I don't have to!

It disturbs me that we are talking about a kid who bullies other kids and are wondering how to treat him. I think we need to focus on the kids that are the target of his bullying and figure out how we are treating THEM!!

We tell our kids nowadays that its ok to "tell" when you are being bullied. Its better than other options of loss of self esteem, or even suicide.

So it seems the boys are telling when this is happening to them and what exactly is the result of their actions? To the bullied kids it appears to be nothing, the bully scout is still their troop guide and still in the troop.

This is not a trivial thing and should not be treated as such. There needs to be VISIBLE consequences for this kid instead of trying to bubble wrap everything at the expense of the self esteem of his victims.

After you make sure that the victims of his actions are ok, then you look at him and remember he is still a kid as well. I cannot belive that a troop would give a POR to a kid who acts like that though. He should have to earn it. And the boys who he has victimized should see him earn his POR before he gets it back too.

(You are telling us about bullying acts that you have witnessed. Think of what he may do when there are no witnesses and not all boys tell when they are under attack from a bully).

The boys have had the same DL Tiger-Bear. Kids make bonds to their leaders and I like the fact that Cub Scouts (unlike school or other activities) they get to keep the same adult role models year after year.

There is DEFINITELY something else going on here.

I would be afraid to put someone in charge of my program when they were unhappy with their other program. Usually its a bit of a two way street when people are unhappy. And now this guy seems to be going buckwild.

BUT at the end of the day, keep in mind, the program is ABOUT THE KIDS. And what is best for your kids and all the rest of the kids.

I don't believe your GF staying with the Bears is a super great idea unless her heart is behind it.

My suggestion would to be, do as others have said, and just be a parent if she is no longer needed as a leader. To be a great leader you need to know how to be a follower first... I would much rather find someone worthy of following and helping that way than have to lead it myself. You can do so much more when you aren't bogged down with everything at the top.

This is the tent we have used the past 3 years:

http://www.amazon.com/Coleman-17-Foo...=ATVPDKIKX0DER

And we have 8 other families in our pack with the SAME tent (yes our camp sites look matchy matchy

Its $109 - $20 promo coupon right now and you might not have to pay tax either depending on where you live.

Cant really beat that tent for $90 shipped, its huge on the inside, plenty of room for a family.

My husband uses this tent when he is just off by himself too! (ie woodbadge this year)

They already have Girl Scouts. I believe its important that boys and girls have their own separate programs. It also makes it easier on the volunteers to have only boys or only girls. Remember, the people taking these kids camping ARE volunteers, not paid employees. Dealing with girl/boy experimentation and chasing them around all camp isn't what we signed up for. We had enough issues with our webelos following around a tiger's two older sisters all weekend at the last camp out. Imagine if we had a camp full of boys/girls hitting their pre-teens! lol