Lisabob

Just a side-thought for you, if you have that many boys who want to be in the venture patrol, maybe your troop needs to re-examine the older boy program? Perhaps you need more high-adventure and more challenging opportunities for the older boys (there seem to be a lot of them if you could fill more than a patrol with 14+/star+ scouts). Perhaps, instead of worrying about how to get them all into one or more venture patrols, you should alter the program of the troop to keep them happy in their regular patrols.

Maybe ask the boy to teach this skill to some other scouts, or to demonstrate it for a group of parents. (Because I've met a lot of parents who do not believe that it is possible to inflate clothing and float, until they see it done.) If he has done it, he'll be able to again. If not, he'll probably get a deer-in-the-headlights look and you may get some different information from him. If the blue card is signed then it is signed. You as SM can't take that back, especially since you were not there. I think pack's approach there is about the best you can do under the circumstances. As for the camp - if they missed whether this boy was in the water and doing this requirement, would they have missed him drowning? That worries me. Aquatics classes should never be too big for the supervisors to keep an accurate head count.

Well here's one "don't" to put on your list of practices to avoid. Please don't allow the meeting to consist of a series of reports, gripes, and conversations about old war stories. I am not a fan of many of the district meetings I've been to because nothing actually gets done. Bob, Joe, Sue, and Dave (names changed to protect the guilty!) go around the table, give their reports, and by then we're out of time. Especially those folks with lots of experience, sometimes seem to think that when we go around the table and it is their turn, that it would be a good time to launch into a lengthy discussion of every perceived ill they can think of with "scouting these days." Or else they decide to share every last detail of whatever they're currently doing, including comparisons to the last 30 years worth of programming and the hows and whys of program evolution. Ugh, kill me now. When that happens, these folks tend to be very hard to rein back in, without seriously offending them. So set the structure up in a way that avoids endless reports being delivered at the meeting. Also, please share with your various sub-committee chairs in advance exactly how long they'll have to discuss whatever you want them to discuss, and how much hard data to share with the group, vs. just with the DC. I've learned the hard way that when you start presenting numbers or other data to a group, some folks will misconstrue the purpose, or the data, or both. Even more so if you provide them with hard copies of that data, which may then grow legs and comes back up in the strangest places. Sometimes you can save the details for the DC and just give the "big picture" to the committee.

Hops, I understand why it might be perceived in the way you frame it but I think you need to consider some additional aspects that made Katrina different. Unlike in the case of the recent midwest floods (which, by the way, have received a great deal of media coverage - I'm not sure I can buy the basic premise in that letter), Katrina occurred very, very quickly and very, very violently. I'm not downplaying tornadoes or thunderstorms that hit the midwest, but most were not as physically violent for as prolonged a period as a category 4/5 hurricane, followed by a category 3 hurricane (don't forget Rita, which made things so much worse). Unlike the current flooding, Katrina hit a major population center. And while there was certainly a lot of stupidity in that many people didn't get out of NO when they could/should have because they figured they'd be able to ride it out, there was also the added difficulty of how, exactly, to get all those people (many who didn't own cars and couldn't afford bus fare) out of the city? Do you remember the choked highways we saw in the news, gas stations running out of gas as people fled before the storm? Lack of enough buses? As bad as the recent flooding has been, higher ground in many cases was just a few miles away. With Katrina we were talking about a swath of a hundred or more miles. Unlike with Katrina/Rita, in many of the areas recently affected by flooding, local and state governments had some semblance of an emergency plan that worked, and they put it into action smoothly and quickly. Lack of adequate disaster planning in NO was a well-known fact before the storms hit there, yet very little was done by gov't officials on any level to remedy that before the storms, with the result that the human suffering was much greater than it ever should have been. While we're at it, let's remember that the federal government's response to Katrina/Rita really was shockingly terribly executed and that the president's very public praise of the guy who was supposedly in charge ("You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie") in the middle of what was clearly a botched job, was pretty bizarre and hard to swallow. Let's also remember that many areas that were devastated by Katrina and Rita were NOT urban minority areas, but also very poor, very rural, and very white areas of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana beyond NO. (Don't forget our very white and not so poor friend Trent Lott, former Republican Senator from Mississippi, whose family home was destroyed too) And finally, let's remember that, while state and local officials in Katrina/Rita were totally overwhelmed and absolutely begging for help, in at least some of the recent cases in the midwest, the local officials have begged to AVOID media attention. The governor of Iowa, for example, asked John McCain and Barack Obama NOT to visit in an attempt to bring media attention with them, because the media circus would be a drain on local resources. (McCain went to IA anyway, while Obama visited flood-ravaged areas in IL instead) So I think that the implications of the letter you posted - that the media is biased against Bush, that media icons only care when black people are being devastated (boy, that's a strange assumption to type, given our history), that the country doesn't care about poor white midwestern farmers who were devastated this time around- all need to be carefully reconsidered with an eye toward evidence. Not all the media coverage of Katrina was well done, that's for sure. Some things were certainly blown out of proportion and others were just absurd. But there were also very good reasons for the national attention that was focused on the government's inexcusable response and the scale of human suffering that resulted from Katrina (and Rita). Let's not downplay those facts either.

And here's where the debate club starts. What Merlyn wrote could be contested. I won't do that because it would be better suited to another thread I think. (Merlyn, note that the original poster explicitly indicates he isn't looking for a debate and merely sought to find the BSA's explanation for its policy. I ask you to spin off, therefore, if you want to start a debate thread.) What I would add, Michael, is that there are also adults within boy scouting who would prefer to see the BSA admit atheists, just as there are adults who believe that the BSA should do no such thing. Then too, understand that many adult members do not know the BSA's exact position on this topic because it isn't spelled out 100% on the adult application either. It is a confusing and complex subject. And with that I'll say no more.

The first thing I'd do differently is to recruit people who have experience with running trainings in their day jobs, whenever possible. The second thing I'd do differently is to insist that they be brought onto the training team well in advance, rather than 2 days before, or worse yet, the day of the training. I am not talking about emergency situations here; I'm talking about lack of planning and lack of coordination. (These have been recurring themes in my area in the past, and they drive me absolutely bonkers.) Staffing issues aside, I'd focus more on the "how to" practical aspects of the job, especially in cub leader training. People want to know tips, ideas, etc. and not just the big picture philosophy (though that's important). Sure Round Table exists for this reason too and I'm not saying basic leader training should replace or replicate RT, but a little more of that hands on focus would make new leaders feel confident that they could actually run a meeting, once they'd been to training. For committee members (particularly for troops) I would put more emphasis on how to run a committee meeting (robert's rules) and on how to manage conflict among adults. A lot of committees get into trouble because they have no idea how to get things done in the absence of unanimity. Consensus is great but it isn't always going to come about.

I think Scout Nut gave you pretty good advice, actually. The thing about the web is that it can be easy to misinterpret someone's tone because all the unwritten clues to communication are missing. You may want to consider whether that happened here? Anyway, back to the topic at hand - I was a Webelos den leader and a variety of other cub positions. WDL was my favorite by far. Make sure you give the boys plenty of room to learn and grow, not just in terms of the content of the badges/pins, but also in terms of letting them test out their independence, decision making, and leadership skills. There are no specific cub badges for these, but these are the life skills that will serve them for many years to come (and will help them transition into boy scouts). I am now a merit badge counselor for a handful of MBs. Most of the time I enjoy that too, but the work/time tends to go in spurts. I have found that some are more common than others and I do not believe the ones you list are highly sought after. But it really can be a lot of work to counsel a boy well, especially on the more hands-on/technical badges. Unless a boy is coming to you begging for you to be his MBC because there are no other qualified people who are willing, I would say hold off for now. Learn the webelos program, learn as much as you can about boy scouts (which will make you a better webelos leader), and have fun with your guys while they're still at an age where they WANT to hang with you. There will be plenty of time to be a MBC down the road.

acco, why don't you ask the scout to find out who does the interpreting at public events for the local school system or for local government. There are a wide range of public activities which now require a sign interpreter by law, so these sorts of institutions typically have a list of people who are highly competent in ASL. Incidentally, asking your scout to help you identify an appropriate person for this might open some doors for the scout to learn more, and who knows, even some job contacts/opportunities (good signers are apparently hard to find).

Had to laugh at that last bit scoutldr. My son is studying a language spoken by about half a billion people worldwide, no small matter. None the less, one of his former teachers asked me the other day why I had "allowed" him to pick such an obscure language (it isn't any of the ones you listed). Hmm... But I disagree with the premise that studying any language is a waste of time. Any time you learn another language you learn all sorts of other ways to think about things and relationships, too. And I learned most of what I know about the rules of English grammar from studying other languages because, goodness knows, we don't actually teach English grammar in our schools.

I'm not a fan of disappearing posts. In fact I find it highly aggravating. And this is not the only recent occurrence of this phenomenon. It has happened within the last month in threads in other more obscure parts of the board as well. (last time I noticed, I think it was also in the council relations section and my recollections were that it was a pretty harmless couple of posts that were mysteriously deleted. I think none of them were mine, but it was annoying and made it hard to follow the thread because stuff that had been there, suddenly was not. Grr.). I also wonder if pack and Beavah and yes, me too, might take greater offense at this in large part because we work in fields where freedom of expression and freedom from censorship are highly prized cultural practices in their own right, regardless of the content. Speaking for myself, in my professional capacity I've grown accustomed to people having the absolute right to spout off on whatever they please, with no repercussions (and yes sometimes this becomes a problem but that's another topic). Consequently, deletions strike me, at least, as highly aggressive acts that should be extremely rare occurrences. I do not agree with FScouter's judgment in this case; I wish he had let the posts be, and give the readers more credit for judging what is valid or useful on their own. Still - pack - I don't know what exactly you hope to accomplish here, and I'm not sure you'll get what you want anyway. I can see where moderating is a rather thankless task. Hounding FScouter further in such a public way may very well have the effect of making other future moderators less willing to take on the burden of moderating. And that may result in larger forum problems than what we have right here, right now. So my recommendation is that you continue to pursue this with FScouter and Terry as you feel the matter demands, but calling a particular member out again and again probably isn't going to result in anything positive.

A DAC can "require" that the scout do cartwheels on his way to the meeting too but they can't make it happen. That one-month policy, while certainly convenient for the adults involved, would never fly if challenged (at least, not in my council). Sometimes an honest conversation with all involved parties is really useful. If "mom" can handle it, ask her to accompany and listen - but have the conversation itself with the scout and ask mom, very clearly, not to participate as anything other than an observer. She may hear some things that change her behavior ("going through the roof" I think you said?), if you get to a point where Junior admits that what he was doing was fudging things to get around the deadline. From what you write, it sounds to me like he violated at least the spirit of the MB requirements and most likely the actual letter of the requirements too - but is this your strongest point? From the other things you wrote, I wonder if: 1) He had actually done his Eagle service/leadership project? 2) He had gone through proper procedures to get the project approved before embarking upon it? 3) He had had his SM conference for rank? 4) The SM signed off on the "scout spirit" requirement? Others with more experience can (and will, I'm sure) comment further but my understanding from your description is that most likely, none of these things actually happened. In which case, some weak MBs are only one small part of the problem. It is also my understanding that a scout my appeal a negative decision by a BOR. But this scout didn't even get to that stage, and maybe didn't do his Eagle project, so he has nothing to appeal, right?

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be an uncommon problem. Help him learn where to look up the MB requirements for himself in the future so he knows for sure whether he has done them. Make sure he has access to the MB books and he knows he's supposed to - gasp - read them all the way through (so many folks just skip this, I don't understand why). Gently help him understand that integrity and character include not seeking "awards" that were not earned, or if awards are bestowed but unearned, that he has at least a duty to follow up and finish the requirements independently. Allow *him* to have that quiet conversation with the SM or an ASM if you think he's mature enough to do it. My son ended up doing this with a badge he was given (but knew he hadn't earned) at camp, and it was a powerful growth experience for him, far more than the actual MB. It also started a strong relationship with the ASM he approached to get help doing the badge right, and that gentleman has become quite a mentor to my son as a result.

John may be right but I can certainly understand your discomfort. Perhaps you might decide to re-contact your SE and tell him that you think he has a duty to inform the Troop that this boy's membership in Venturing has been revoked. The SE may decide he doesn't want to, and/or he may decide to inform the troop of the revocation without giving any detail about why (which personally, seems fair to me - you don't really want the SE to be too specific or the girl involved may be doubly victimized here by having her name dragged through the whole business in a more public fashion) Beyond that, I suppose you can refuse to take part in this boy's Eagle process. But otherwise I am not sure where else you could go with the information you have, particularly as the girl's family apparently doesn't wish to pursue this.

Recently I had this same conversation with a couple of adults around here and came away cringing. The opinion of the other adults was that a kid who could ask for and answer the question "where's the bathroom?" probably met the standard. Which reminded me of this experience: I will never, ever forget the time that I applied for a big prestigious fellowship to study in Germany. One of the requirements was academic and professional proficiency in German. I felt competent, having had 4 years of high school German and (at that point) 2 years of college German, always with excellent grades. I walked into the room and discovered that the interview - all of it - would be conducted in German. This was a surprise and it very quickly became apparent that classroom German and "real world" German were not the same beast and that I had a long way to go toward true proficiency. Needless to say I didn't get the fellowship and I felt like an idiot. Of course the stakes are lower for the BSA interpreter strip, but still I would not want to see someone else set up like that - it was mortifying. So, I think it would be a good idea to go over the written requirements with the scout and ask him if he feels he qualifies. He will probably have a far better sense of his abilities and inabilities in that language, than you would if you do not speak it. If he is not sure, suggest to him that he take the written requirements to someone who does speak the language well, and talk to them about it and then report back to you. Scout's honor. (But if you're looking for a general rule of thumb, in most cases I think I would be unwilling to believe that anyone who had less than 2 years of high school language qualifies - and even then, I think it is improbable that they could handle themselves for 5 unscripted minutes, unless they've spent some time truly immersed in the language on a day-to-day basis.)

I signed up my son for cub scouts because we had moved to a new town and he was having trouble making the transition. I figured it would be a way for him to make friends (and it was). I had no intention of becoming a leader. That happened because the pack he was in at the time had a crisis and it was either step up, or let the pack fold and find another one. I chose the former and I have never regretted that choice. Today my son has become one of the "older" boys in his troop. I'm still involved, though far less directly for my son's benefit, because it is fun. Because I have gotten to know interesting people who care about kids. Because I can see, right in front of me, what scouting has to offer to kids and to the community. Although these days I'm not typically very involved in direct service to youth (I'm a troop committee member and a district volunteer), and although my son may or may not stay in scouting until he "ages out", I think that I probably will stick with it because it is good to be part of something positive. I find that my behind-the-scenes talents can be put to good use, allowing others to get "out there" in the field with the boys, without having to worry about all the paperwork and administrative stuff that enables them. And yes, I've made friends too. As for the politics? I've seldom found that they matter on a local level. We talk far, far more about controversial policies on this board, than has ever been the case on the ground where scouting actually happens.

scoutmomx3, I think I can help you find some dens in the SE Michigan area. Is it ok to share your email address with the DLs? How many dens do you want? And what ages (or does it matter?)

I only have one teenager in the house and so I'm a novice when it comes to understanding the twists and turns of the teenage brain (and hormone system!). My poor son is the guinea pig and he doesn't even have younger siblings to benefit from my learning experiences! But, here's what I've noticed: Kids ages 11+ become very, very good at tuning out adults, and at smelling out a rat. When some adult tells them all about how its "for you boys" but then proceeds by his/her actions to take away their power to actually make choices, spends 20-40 minutes every meeting blathering on at them, and is more full of malarky than an Oscar Meyer Weiner, well they figure it out pretty quick. And once they reach that conclusion, nothing that guy (or gal) says is going to get their attention. It is as true of teachers as of scout leaders, and the smart kids who are self-motivators figure it out and learn to ignore/zone/fake attention the fastest. These, unfortunately, are EXACTLY the kids who are most likely to become our "youth leadership" in scouting, if they stay. So sure, we can blame parents for being too lax - and some are. We can blame kids for having perpetual ADD because no one has ever taught or made them focus on anything - and for some that's true. But we really do need to look more carefully at ourselves. At least initially, kids and parents vote with their feet and their wallets. Why we should expect them to come into the scouting program placing a higher emphasis on it than on the myriad other programs available to youth today, is not clear to most of them. Before we can expect youth or adult loyalty or buy-in to the aims and methods of the program, we need to be sure we're actually using and delivering them. Otherwise it is all just blather and hype, with nothing at the core.

Bayou Beaver I know you were just joking but your last comment gave me pause. When we did WB we were told quite clearly that you only get to go through as a participant once (well - unless they update the curriculum again and expect "old" WB'ers to do the "new" course...but that's different). So the word was, if you didn't finish your ticket and earn your beads, too bad, you lost your chance. Is this not the case?

The camp we're off to in a few weeks is the first one I've come across so far that simply doesn't offer many "classroom" type Eagle-required badges. No personal management, no citizenships, no communications, no family life. I'm very happy about that. Boys who earn those badges at camp have very uneven experiences (I'm sorry but the notion of a 16 year old counselor/MBC teaching these badges makes me cringe) and besides they waste a week of otherwise-glorious summer, bored, often indoors, sitting in "class" all day. The camp does offer other, more outdoor-oriented Eagle-requireds like Environmental Science, Emergency Prep, Lifesaving, etc. I helped our guys do the MB sign ups. Not one boy complained about the lack of classroom badges. Several of their parents did.

There's something to that as well, Ed. I loved the webelos program - we had a really good time with our guys. But we did a much wider variety of activities than are really included in the activity pins. And if I had it to do over, we'd spend more time outside instead of inside, less time working on those pins. I don't think Webelos needs to be the equivalent to first year boy scouts but it isn't wolves and bears either. But a funny thing - the training (at least around here, and I note we aren't always good about providing super high quality cub leader training, to my great dismay) for webelos leaders does not focus on what to actually DO with the boys. It gives no practical advice on how to connect with local troops or what sort of joint activities with troops would be useful, except to suggest that connections should happen. It focuses on how the awards differ. It focuses a very little bit on the idea of webelos as a bridge to boy scouting. It focuses on how to earn a bunch of the pins in an 18 month plan, which is also in the leader guide. Consequently, for a typical Cub DL with no prior Boy Scouting experience and for whom position-specific training is all they're going to get/do, they do not come away with the sense that webelos is fundamentally different than cubs, just that it has different awards that are a little more in-depth. And many webelos dens, therefore, run just like the wolf/bear dens did. So, you want to really emphasize that webelos is different? Start by changing the way we train WDLs. (And incidentally, about half the packs in our district don't have a registered WDL at all. Of the half who do, less than half of them are listed as "trained." So if our district is at all typical, it appears that most dens are being led by someone who doesn't even have the above-mentioned training!) When i think about all of this membership stuff I come away with three thoughts: 1) We, BSA, need to do a better and more consistent job of marketing our programs to our target audiences. When we do it, it works well, but it is so uneven that it is hard to build or maintain any momentum. 2) We, BSA, need to think more carefully about how we provide training and support to our leaders, especially in the cub program. Much of the training I have seen is woefully inadequate, frequently poorly delivered, and often doesn't even reach those who need it most. 3) We, BSA, need to pay better attention to details. I know many folks aren't happy about being detail-oriented when what they want to do is go outside with the kids. I don't want to stop that from happening! But looking at our leadership in my district alone has convinced me that when we don't pay attention to details, what we end up with is units who aren't able to run the program and "deliver the promise" because they haven't even filled the proper slots on their volunteer roster! No Tiger DL, no Webelos DL, yet they have a "pack trainer?" C'mon. Why isn't someone - UC, DE, membership, training, anybody! - communicating with units about this sort of thing? Maybe all it takes is that friendly conversation (hey, I see your Tiger den doesn't have a registered leader. Can we talk about how to remedy this?) to take a struggling pack and set it back on the path again. Instead of addressing these deficiencies we all say "well they're just volunteers" and throw up our hands. Yeah, and that leads to poor programs, a tarnished "brand," and declining membership.

While not a MB, the camp our boys are attending this summer is offering blacksmithing (in connection to the metalworking MB, or as a separate activity). They are also offering Rail Roading MB.

Well I don't want to sound too gloomy about the prospects of recruiting new cubs into scouting in my area! Yesterday I got word that we more than doubled the number of brand new cubs who registered for our district day camp this year. Hurrah! We've worked hard in the last few months to raise the profile of scouting in our area and I hope that this is merely the first pay-off of many to come. Now we just need to keep these guys in scouts. Among other things, we also developed a list of about 70 families who expressed an interest in joining cub scouts, but for whatever reason, have not done so yet. We'll be pursuing these families again to try to get them into a pack between now and fall Round Up.

OK the pack trainer business is another of my pet peeves. We have 6 of them in our district. None of them are trained for the position (because our district doesn't offer training for that position). None of them DO anything as trainers, and 4 of the packs told me point blank that they were counseled to register a fairly random parent as PT when they turned in their recharter paperwork, just so that they'd have enough registered leaders to be rechartered. What good is that?! Now once upon a time I set myself up as pack trainer for my son's pack, because (in addition to doing the advancement work) it gave me a platform from which to push, cajole, beg, plead, exhort, and otherwise encourage the rest of our leaders to go to training. But I did this all very intentionally, as part of my WB ticket, and my use of the position was clearly not the norm for our district. Maybe people in other areas have better experiences with the PT position than what I have seen.

Barry, don't tell me you think that the twin cities police are not likewise spending large amounts of money in preparation for the Republican convention. Any big gathering attracts its share of shouting idiots. Balancing 1st amendment rights against public oder has never been an easy task but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that either party's followers (or detractors) are, as a group, more well-mannered than the other.

Avid, there used to be a Tiger Coach position akin to what you are proposing. It was phased out. In reality, I know very few packs who used it - and those who did, tended not to really need it because they also provided all sorts of other support to new parents/leaders. The packs where the Tiger families are all left staring at each other wondering "what do we do NOW?" and who can never seem to retain more than a third of their Tigers from one year to the next, those packs didn't use the Tiger Coach position anyway because they were chronically short-staffed to start with and had no one to spare. The truth is, from a district perspective, it is very easy to think short-term about recruiting new Tigers. It is far, far harder to work with units on retention of these new leaders and scouts. I am by no means saying it is impossible or not worth the effort because I think it is worth it- but it is undeniably tougher. And part of it is that the BSA literature pushes what I think is an unrealistic solution in "shared leadership" of Tiger dens.