khbaker

Greetings from the Chicagoland area. We just had our Dens each create Den Flags this year. Thankfully, none of them simply bought the blue ones from the Scout Shop with the iron-on numbers. One of them had a hand-me-down satin flag from a Wolf Den of old...

With the exception of those Wolves, each one made their own (lots of felt, fake fur, etc...). While this year, each of the Den Flags was probably what the DL's envisioned (I know mine was for my Tigers), hopefully in the future, we move to unique flags created by the boys in future years.

Some of the Dens have Den Doodles that are incorporated to the flags (ex. a wood doodle that hangs off the flag pole below the Den Flag)

- Kyle

Kyle Baker

Pack 857 Tiger Den Leader

Sycamore District - Blackhawk Area Council

"I used to be an Eagle..." C-25-08

Thank you Narraticong -

I'll admit that I purposely fixated on the racial demographic aspect.

Most of our boys attend a school that self-reports as 98%+ caucasian - there are virtually no African American families in the area. We have just a few (1-2) boys of Asian-American background and 1-2 Hispanic boys in the Pack (about 50 boys total). We do have a couple boys with ADHD- and sensory-type issues in the pack.

So my question is really centered on building our (racially/ethnically) diversity proficient (yes, proficient is probably the wrong word, but "aware" is also probably the wrong word... so forgive the wording...)

Thanks again!

Hello! By way of introduction -- I'm a Tiger Den Leader who's "working my Wood Badge Ticket" - I'm also an Eagle Scout and was an Asst. Scoutmaster for a local troop before my son was born. At the sage advice of my Scoutmaster at the time, took 6 years off until he was old enough to join Tiger Cubs. So here we are...

My Wood Badge diversity ticket item is to investigate ways of building 1) a more diverse Cub Scout pack; and 2) more diversity awareness amongst our boys.

Therefore, I'm looking to network with some scouters of color, scouters who lead particularly diverse packs/troops, or those of you who have successfully brought some good diversity programming to your packs.

If you're open to having a 30-40 minute conversation on this topic, please send me an email or private message and we can arrange a time. If you're in the Northwest Chicago area, I'd be glad to meet you for a cup of coffee or lunch (I'd even buy)

I'll be glad to post a summary of the best ideas and suggestions that I'm able to gather back to the forum (i.e. I need to write these up for my ticket, so it'll be easy enough for me to copy that back here)

YiS,

Kyle Baker

Tiger Den Leader - Pack 857

Sycamore District / Blackhawk Area Council / Cary, IL

C-25-08 "I used to be an Eagle..."

Has there ever been an initiative to get Wood Badge (or any other Adult Leader training) certified through the Project Management Institute (PMI) that are required for the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification (i.e. 60 credits every 3 years) - or for any other non-Scouting organization (i.e. PDU's, Continuing Education Credits, etc.)

I received my PMP designation last year and in attending the practical WB course this summer, was surprised and encouraged to see how much of the training touched on things covered in corporate training courses. With that, it seems like there is an opportunity to pursue having that WB practical time, or a subset of the time (I don't expect the full 60-70+ hours over "learning" the 2 weekends to count for it... but?) certified as eligible for these credits.

Thanks!

Kyle Baker, PMP

"I used to be an Eagle..." C-25-08

wow - I'm so new that I don't even know how to post and accidentally double-clutched... sorry(This message has been edited by khbaker)

Short-term lurker... first-time poster...

I'm an Eagle Scout from St. Louis, MO that followed my wife to the Chicagoland area after college. A couple years later, I signed up as an ASM with a local scout troop and will admit that initially, I didn't "get it" (i.e. the transition from Scout to Scouter that's been discussed here in this thread. The troop's amazing Scoutmaster and I were chatting about it and he simply reminded me, "when you were in Scouts, I'll bet you didn't always like to line up in a straight line"- There's some amazing perspective in that simple statement.

A few years later when we had our son, he gave me some other really good advice - "Time to take a break... bring your son back in a few years"

Ecstatic to say my son and I just signed up with a local pack as a Tiger and Tiger Den Leader. The pack gave me a round of applause for volunteering and - true story - then my son said "Dad, when I grow up, I want to be a Cub Scout leader like you". Needless to say, all of our pack meetings will likely be downhill from here.

DAL_TX_SCOUT: Here's to reminding ourselves it is all about these kids.

(p.s. that lovely girl I followed up to Chicago is even letting me go to Woodbadge later this summer)