Lisabob

Hey Gonzo, I understand where you are coming from on this. But let me suggest to you that "mommy" may not have known why this is frustrating to you (if no one has bothered to explain this to her) and that "daddies" are often just as unclear on what they should and should not do for "junior?" Find out what the SM and ASMs have done to educate the troop parents before you get too frustrated with the parents' lack of understanding. Then figure out whose job it is to explain these things and have that cup of coffee with them sometime.

ASM915, may I make a suggestion? Please consider that when you refer to the pack as "our feeder pack" in the way you did in your prior post, it most likely causes some hard feelings or at least some muttering under the breath among pack leaders and parents. While many packs do have a close relationship with a particular troop or couple of troops and there's nothing wrong with that, the sense of entitlement that "our feeder pack" suggests, is problematic because they aren't yours. Ideally we should be encouraging all webelos to find a troop that they like and that suits their needs and then join it rather than viewing things through this sort of a territorial lens. And your troop might not always be the best fit. Expecting that feeder relationship usually means that the webelos boys don't know they CAN look at other troops and so they don't. And perhaps that's a small part of the reason we lose such a high % of boys in the first few months after cross-over (nation wide - I have no idea about your particular troop); because there was a poor match between boy and troop to start with.

We did something like this as part of awarding the arrow of light. The boys enjoyed it as well. Only thing was it took longer than expected! But I see no problem with these sorts of ceremonies. The problem, I think, is when we start pretending to emulate a culturally specific ceremony either without understanding it or in an improper context. To put this another way: the Catholic Church knows a thing or two about impressive ceremonies. We obviously wouldn't copy their rituals in a pack setting just for the "wow" factor because it would be inappropriate most of the time. That doesn't mean we avoid using candles just because the Church also uses candles though.

me too, me too! Great question and the answer and resulting conversation could go in so many ways.

OGE I sure don't know when all this started? But it is pervasive, I'll agree. Just the other day I was "informed" by another scouter (finger pointed in my face) that "you cub leaders" shouldn't be "allowed" to "ruin" woodbadge by attending! Er, ahem, anger management class anyone? Misplaced sense of ownership? Lack of focus on the heart of the program? Although in this particular case I suspect my delightful sparring partner really meant "you women." Different issue/thread though. I'll be honest, there's a lot that many cub leaders could gain from networking with scouters in other parts of the program and as a former cub leader I include myself in that group. In fact this is one of the most valuable items I took from attending WB as a cub leader. I got to know some really excellent troop leaders (and a couple of crew advisers too) who freely and generously shared their views of scouting and of their program with those of us who didn't have personal experience as boy scouts to draw upon. Likewise I was able to share with them some of the ups and downs of working with cubs that they may have forgotten or not recognized due to their own lack of experience in that area. I have a good friend who decided, as a bear leader, to do OLS for these reasons - she wanted to start building a scouter network that included more than just other cub leaders, so that she'd have a better understanding of the program her den would be joining a few years down the road. Well and she wanted to do OLS for its own sake too, don't get me wrong. By the way her boy joined our troop recently and I think she'll be signing on as an ASM - and a good one too - before much longer. So I think we need more opportunities to talk scouting across unit and program lines. Hmm. Like this forum provides! (Thanks!) And you know what? I'd kind of like to see us re-imagine our district roundtables to make this more probable. How many of us have said that we find this forum more useful than any roundtable for exactly these types of reasons?

I think it depends a lot on the troop. Some troops around here have a pretty decent program in place for new scouts. A few do not, or did not and have since changed (like the troop my son joined). For scouts joining a troop with an established and successful new scout program, the types of fears and newness that they need to be prepared for differs greatly, than from troops with no particular new scout program, where boys have not only the nature of troops/patrols vs. packs/dens and the independence issues, but also basic skill issues to deal with more or less on their own. Then too it depends on each boy's personality. Some boys adjust to new experiences quicker or more smoothly than others. For those who struggle with new situations or are less mature, more exposure as webelos might be crucial. So I just don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer here, except at the obvious extremes. And I like Beavah's point about ownership of experience. I was talking the other day about just this with a webelos leader who is also a good friend. They've done some pretty neat stuff with their boys including several camp outs, but it is qualitatively different from what those boys will do as boy scouts, where the moms and dads won't be smoothing the way for them. Hard to understand that until you see it up close though.

Oh this was one of my favorites belt loops! We had a great time doing this on several occasions. One time I did it at a pack meeting and we had the kids blow up balloons using a mix of baking powder and vinegar. They did it over and over and over and over and (well you get the picture!) Many of them wanted to see how/if things would work differently if they mixed different proportions or added something to the vinegar first (water mainly). If you add too much soda it will overflow and make a mess though so make sure you have clean up supplies handy. You can find instructions if you google "balloon blow up" or something similar. Here's how I laid out the Scientific Method for them. __The Scientific Method___ 1. Purpose: What do you want to know? 2. Hypothesis: What do you think will happen? 3. Materials and Procedures: What do you need and how will you test your hypothesis? 4. Data Collection: Observe and record information about what happens 5. Conclusions: Was your hypothesis correct?

I hate to add to this list of problems but I know the TAW we received in our area was riddled with error, listing boys who had dropped out or crossed over a year or more ago. The effect is to inflate the # of boys who appear to be available. Still I think it is easy to be complacent. If there aren't that many webelos then troops should be worried because after all, most of our boys do come from cub scouts. What are all those troops in your area doing to help cub packs provide a strong program, so that there will be more boys who are more likely to join the troop down the road a little ways? Sure troop leaders (and boys) will say, this is not our problem. And to a certain extent that's true, until all the boys you have now age out and the troop has to fold because there are/were no new recruits coming in down the line.

Eagle97, I'd be interested in hearing more about your March event. Is this a one day affair or is it a campout? What sorts of activities do you have the scouts doing at the stations? Can you give a couple of examples? Do troops that don't have a designated webelos group with them reap much from this (ie, do most of the cross overs occur where the webelos have camped with a certain troop or does the exposure to other troops in general help those other troops too)? We did a troop open house night where three-five troops worked together and invited area cubs (not just webelos) to attend but it was just a short one-hour deal and cub attendance was poor. Might've been due to insufficient publicity too though.

This is an interesting thread. I'm in the midst of putting together a draft plan for webelos-scout transition for our district. Like others have said, our district isn't known for providing a whole lot of support beyond the "hopeful" stage. (Let us "hope" that all the boys cross into a troop and then "hope" that they stay for at least a couple of years!) Part of what I'm running up against is that we can designate roles for different actors to play, but that doesn't mean things will occur in reality. John's comment about DCs is a good example. It is practically impossible to get boys (parents?) to commit to being a DC around here. We tried for the whole time my son was in cubs - contacted THREE troops, numerous times. No luck. Another example is UCs. I can see several things they might do in support of a good district transition program (like help packs and troops connect). But as they are mainly non-existent or on-paper only, it isn't highly likely. Then too we start straying from membership to program. I can advocate that the district start running a webelos woods or "webelos-ree" (ugh, awkwardness!) but as a district membership person (for now anyway) that's all I can do - advocate. I can write a great plan but I'm not in charge of the players so I don't even know if the plan will be communicated to them, let alone put into action. One other thing I've noticed is that the discussion tends to focus more on the cub end of things than on the boy scout end. I know that has been our focus as a district in the past (hound the webelos DLs). I tend to think this is a bit misguided, as the majority of the webelos DLs I know have little or no experience with boy scout troops. We can hound them all day but it would be better if we pushed troops to go out and make those connections because most troop leaders at least have some experience with cub scouts too. Oh, and a last thought or question. Do any of your districts actually do some kind of formal webelos-scout transition training? In the past ours has consisted of talking about it a little at round table, usually in January (with most cross overs occurring in February) but that's it.

I'm not a fan of people holding the same position in a volunteer organization for 5-10-15 years. First I think it robs the organization of depth in terms of leadership experience. What if that one person suddenly has to leave for health or other reasons? No one will be prepared (mentally or in terms of experience) to step in. You may have people in the group who could be developed into excellent leaders (for your pack but also for future troops, crews, or district service) who will not have that opportunity if the same handful of people fill those key positions in perpetuity. Second, I think it does lead to a fiefdom mentality even when the intentions are good. It becomes known as "Mr/Mrs Smith's pack." This is a bad thing because then other people do not feel so much a sense of involvement as they should when it is "our" pack. And so they just say, well let Mr/Mrs Smith deal with it. Third, every leader has their own style. In all probability you are doing a great job! But there are inevitably going to be some kids that you just don't click with or some things that you don't do, that someone else does, or does differently than you would. I'm not in favor of a revolving door either but giving other people an opportunity to lead might mean that some aspect of the program and/or the relationship between adult and scout changes in a way that works better for some of your members. Although I think this is more true in the context of troops than packs, I still think it is worth considering for a CM. As OneHour and others have said - there are always things to be done in a pack and seldom enough people to do them! So there will be plenty of ways for you to be active. But I think you do the pack the best service in terms of stability and longevity by helping develop others as leaders, rather than by you simply staying on in one position the whole time.

Well now this is interesting. In our council of about 20,000 scouts the SE made in the neighborhood of 100,000 give or take a couple thousand, from 2002-2004. The 2005 and 2006 data is not posted. So that's $5 per scout to Eamonn's $20.

Well OK then! Sorry if I mistook your example of absurdity for seriousness...online communication makes things hard to "read" for tone sometimes. I used to clean stalls for a guy with race horses too - cart horses mostly. They were without doubt the most surly creatures I'd ever met and the guy himself was pretty much the same. Years later I was lucky enough to own an off-the-track thoroughbred with the sweetest personality though (except at dinner time!). Anyway yes, it sounds like we agree - keep scouts out of these sorts of arrangements.

Ok Trev, so if we go that direction (which, actually, I would support too) then shouldn't we push for a removal of the religious advancement requirements in the wolf, bear, and webelos program? Why are these types of requirements ok in one part of the program but not in others? Honestly, my personal view is that the BSA gets itself into more trouble than it is worth trying to be a quasi-religious organization. I'd be happier to see them (us) focus more on other things and just leave religion out of it. But since that's not the case now, then I guess I'd like consistency in terms of the role religion plays across the program.

Fox, no farrier in their right mind would ask a kid (or most anyone else either) to hold a horse's hoof while they're shoeing. Farriers typically do this themselves. They MIGHT ask an experienced person to hold the horse's head/lead. But again, they aren't likely to want a kid doing that either - too dangerous for the farrier if the horse acts up (or decides to bite the farrier in the behind!) Frankly I'm not even thinking about the 101 ways in which 10-11 year olds with no experience could cause harm or be harmed working directly with animals - they wouldn't be doing so without close supervision on any farm I've ever been on - I'm thinking about the other 101+ ways an inexperienced kid (or adult either) working *around* animals and farm machinery could easily get hurt or cause problems for others.

I wonder what other SEs in comparable councils are being paid? Is this a matter of needing to keep up with the market in order to attract or retain a good SE? I'm not saying you aren't justified in asking some tough questions and expecting serious answers. I'm just curious. Oh and I have to agree w/ Trev that your FOS presenter probably can't answer these questions. But your SE now, I'd love to hear his or her answer!

John, I don't think that the non-theistic aspect is really a problem. I can see where having some sort of requirement to explore and think about religion(s) would be just as useful for people in this position as it would be for people who profess a specific belief. No one is asking to convert a boy (well ok, I'm not at any rate) - rather, it could be a matter of providing structure for the boy to understand the broad array of religions and the sociological or (dare I say it?) anthropological role of religion in society. Of course I suppose the larger problem would be in terms of ground-level applications, in areas where "everybody" belongs to the same basic religious group and people tend to proselytize. They'd need to understand and apply such a requirement in a way that didn't feed into that tendency. As for where such a requirement would "fit" I agree that it would be more logical further along the trail (Star/Life) than in the initial ranks. This assumes, of course, that any such requirement would be designed in a way that would welcome serious questions rather than just stuff belief systems down a kid's throat (easier to do with younger kids, tougher with older teens). Oh, and "riled up?" Nah - just expressing myself. It takes a bit more than this forum to get me "riled up."

My son's troop uses NSPs and I haven't been around the program long enough to remember a time when that wasn't the case so I won't comment on the comparative advantages and disadvantages of a truly vertical patrol system. But let me add this about those new scouts. First, if a troop is "typical" then they will likely lose between 30-50% of the new scouts somewhere during the first year anyway, so being rigid about putting a bunch of new scouts together mainly so that they'll be with their buddies has some pitfalls. If their buddies leave and they haven't become integrated into the troop in other ways, will they be more likely to leave too? And second, just because a den has been together since 1st grade or whenever doesn't guarantee that all those guys have been, or will continue to be, best buddies as they go into middle school. In some cases I've seen dynamics where I think it would have been better for all concerned if a den had been split up a little bit upon joining the troop. But we tend to assume otherwise because we don't know these guys or the pack or the webelos DLs as well as we ought to. And I don't know how your troops operate? But I have yet to see a SM sit down with a webelos DL and ask *their* opinion about the den's dynamics or each boy's needs. Webelos DLs represent a seriously under-utilized resource for troops in this regard.

Hoo boy, you're talking about new cross-overs here; this raises some serious flags. I'm all for scouts earning their way and learning to work a little. However, as someone who has worked in horse barns for many years and also who has run horseback riding summer camp programs, I would be very uncomfortable being in a position of "farming out" a bunch of 10-11 year old boys. It's one thing to offer your individual scouts some leads if they're looking for employment ("Why don't you ask Mrs Jones if she needs her yard mowed")- it is another to solicit local farms or businesses for work with a "crew" of scouts. From your initial email I take it that your troop is considering something more along the lines of this latter idea, but maybe I'm wrong. First off, most kids this age have limited strength and there are a lot of things on a farm that they simply wouldn't be able to do, or do well. Stacking hay bales is physically demanding work after about the 5th one! It can also be dangerous if you're talking about going very high up. Anybody who has ever done it knows it takes balance and strength as well as common sense - which a lot of 10-11 year olds are notoriously lacking. Mucking stalls is hard work too and they're not going to get many done at a time (thus limiting their utility as employees, if we're talking about anywhere with more than a couple of animals). There are always more menial tasks - buckets to be scrubbed, fences to be repaired, etc.. But even there you'd better pay attention (not something 10-11 year olds are known for either) because you leave some nails on the ground in the pasture by accident and an animal steps on it, receives a nasty puncture, which can become a life-threatening/career-ending infection. Or you don't check to make sure all the points are flattened so that the nail won't cut an animal that rubs against the boards, etc., etc. By the way I don't know what the rules are in your area? But having worked on a larger horse farm in my neck of the woods, I know that most simply will not employ, or even accept as volunteers, anyone under the age of 14. Second, kids ages 10-11 not known for their maturity or good judgment and frankly, if they're not familiar with farms or farm animals, they could be more nuisance than help. They might end up in, or inadvertently create, dangerous situations. So they'd need supervision. I'm not saying kids can't do this work because I've worked in barns in varying capacities since I was a small child. But it does take a lot of supervision by competent adults or at least, older teens who know what they're doing. If your scout leaders aren't willing and/or don't know much about farms themselves then you don't want to be in a position of being in charge of this sort of employment procurement for your scouts. I would imagine the same is true of construction sites. Be sure you've thought this through before you start making this an organized troop effort.

While Beavah and I tend to disagree a lot on the worth of specific BSA guidelines and rules, and how to interpret them, I still see some value in this thread as he has outlined it. So here goes. Last night we welcomed 9 new scouts to their first troop meeting. My son has been with the troop for 2 years now and he has served as a PL for the last 6 months. So I'll talk about what I know best from observation - younger scout patrols. Some of what the troop does is "by the book" and some is not. As a committee member I don't have a whole lot of voice over changing certain things so please don't bother criticizing me personally where we deviate from standard BSA approach- I already know and that's the way things are right now. 1) We use New Scout Patrols. Our 9 guys who came in last night from 2 different packs were put together by the SM into a NSP. 2) The SM assigns an older scout as patrol leader for at least 6 months for the NSP. The young man who is serving in this role for the NSP now will graduate high school in June (he is attending summer camp though) so per force the patrol will have to elect its own leadership in the fall. Usually this older scout stays on as a troop guide in the fall. After the first year is up, it seems he becomes just another patrol member in most cases. 3) The boys in the NSP select an APL and other patrol positions (scribe, QM). However I think this is a weakness in our program as the other patrol positions tend not to do very much. 4) Sometimes we've used troop guides, appointed by the SM, in addition to assigning a PL for the new scouts. I've seen varied results, largely dependent on the troop guide's maturity and the SM's ability/willingness to coach them. More often than not, I haven't understood what the value of an additional TG is because they don't seem to do much. Again I think this is a weakness in our program - the position is poorly defined and largely up to the scout, who may not know what to do. 5) All of our patrols have an ASM assigned as a patrol advisor, but the PA is more active with the NSPs than with the others. This is something that the troop started doing about 8-10 months after my son joined. Again, personality is everything. 6) After the first year there tends to be some shake-up as patrols grow or shrink due to additional recruitment or drop outs. At that point they become somewhat less age-based. So aside from last year's NSPs (which are on their last legs) and the one we started up last night, we have three other patrols. One is 10th-12th graders and the other 2 are a mix of 7th-10th graders. We don't have any 8th graders and only a couple 9th graders so these 2 patrols are dominated by younger scouts. My perception is that the juggling of patrol membership is done primarily by the SM with a pro forma discussion at the PLC. It will be interesting to see what happens with the NSPs from last year, which are both down to about half their original size. Some of the members of one of these patrols are difficult to get along with and I know the older patrols are reluctant (might be putting it too lightly!) to welcome these guys into THEIR reasonably smooth-functioning groups. The most obvious answer is to combine all of last year's new scouts into one patrol. Analysis: Assigning a PL to the NSP has plusses and minuses. Get the right older scout in there and he can work magic. My son believed that his PL could walk on water and having this older scout as his friend was a major reason my son stayed with the troop when things were not going well for him. And teaching leadership is tricky. As others said in the thread on NSPs, if you have roughly age-based patrols it can be the blind leading the blind if you just throw a bunch of 10-11 year olds together and expect someone to rise to the task. So assigning one or more older scouts can make a huge difference in the success rate/retention rate of the new patrol and in reducing the learning curve. But. Get the wrong older scout and it is a mess - he's more interested in playing than in leading and those young guys can be a real challenge! If the role model behaves poorly then things are going down hill from there. Also there's a fine line between providing or modeling leadership and just doing things for the young scouts. Go too far over that line and you teach dependence rather than self-reliance. I saw that with my son's PL - great kid, my son still thinks very highly of him, but he had a hard time knowing how to lead without just doing it all himself. The first time they had PL elections, my son's patrol opted to keep the older scout who had begun as their assigned PL - no surprise there, he's better at it than they were. But it puts in place a structure where younger scouts do not have to actually lead for a very long time, for better or worse. (Since then, this older scout moved on to another troop leadership position, necessitating that at the 18 month point, the patrol choose a PL from their own group - and they elected my son, to his surprise.) From the perspective of the older scouts, I suppose there are times when being put into a patrol of 10-11 year olds can be seriously annoying. Especially if they are a tough group to work with. In one case in the last couple of years we had a NSP where nearly half the members had serious behavioral issues (this was coincidence!) . The scout who was assigned to be their PL really had a tough time and I felt for him. I am sure he'd have preferred, on some days, to retreat to the patrol where all his buddies were. More generally - one of the things I hear consistently in BORs and from my son and his friends in conversation, is that being PL is not that much fun. It is a lot of work. My son can't wait to be done with the job next month and he only got elected in the first place because the older scouts in his somewhat-mixed-age patrol (12-15 with most being 12-13) "knew better" than to run! Doesn't seem like the outcome we really want to encourage. A more vertical patrol structure would, perhaps, avoid this problem. On the other hand, my son has learned a great deal, most of it positive, from being PL for 6 months, an experience he probably wouldn't have had in a more vertical patrol. Well ok, that's more rambling on than anybody probably wants to read! So I'll cut it, err, short (ha - sorry). But I'd be interested in hearing how other folks do things "in reality" too.

How do the boys feel about this? I can't imagine this working "against their will." Having worked on a farm myself, I also can't imagine this working well as an individual effort where a couple of boys got "hired" to work certain hours - it would have to be a supervised group effort because, quite frankly, other people working on the farm aren't going to have the time or desire to make sure your boys are safe and efficient while mucking stalls or cleaning the hay barn or whatever. And when you add in the livestock to the equation, there does need to be competent supervision. I guess the same would be true working on a construction site.

Kudu, I appreciate your view on what scouting is, and what you think it should be. Often I find your posts to be quite interesting and your web links worth reading. On the other hand, your posts tend to be mono-thematic. This thread has nothing to do with Wood Badge and I do tire of your attempt to blame all ills, real and perceived, of the current BSA program on the WB for the 21st Century course syllabus. If you don't want to go through that version of the course and/or don't find any value in it, that's fine, I don't recall trying to force you to do it. The value of the beads, such that they have any at all, is in the estimation of the person wearing them, and I know what mine are worth. As for pushing religion to the fore: it is the BSA who seems to want to do this. My proposal is a logical extension of all this talk about how religion is so central to the program. Personally I would prefer to see the BSA focus its energy on other issues and concerns. But if we're going to engage in witch hunts and inflammatory rhetoric about religion's role in the BSA - which seems to happen a lot - then I think the BSA should get up its collective gumption and put its money where its mouth is (or at least, where its current policies encourage certain members to go) and add explicit requirements in support of that core component. Either they mean it or they don't - can't have it both ways, in my view. Nor do I believe there's any truth to your claim that this is "cub scouting" the boy scout program, which is apparently meant in a derogatory manner. Please. The cub scout program is worthy in its own right (if you don't think so, that's your prerogative but has little to do with the current thread either) and no one except you is talking about turning boy scouts into cub scouts. I made a comparison in terms of religious requirements to point out to those who may have missed it, that in SOME of its programs, BSA is quite explicit about using religion as an advancement requirement and that it COULD be done in a fairly generic way (as the various cub requirements reflect). So the argument against doing so in the boy scout program should not be "it can't be done" because it IS already being done elsewhere in the BSA family. And finally - I agree very much with the notion of the religion of the woods. I will say from my personal experience, that's exactly how and where I decided for myself that there must be a higher power and this was not in keeping with my formal religious upbringing, which I had more or less rejected for various reasons. I imagine that, if I had been a boy and had been in boy scouts (which, growing up in a scouting family, I almost certainly would have been) then there would have been a point as a teen where I wouldn't have met the membership requirement with regard to religious belief. I don't think we, as an organization, do ourselves or the boys we serve or the public in general much service by telling people in that position that they cannot be members anymore while the sort through their beliefs (or lack thereof). But that's my view, and it is not current BSA policy.

Hi gwd, I didn't answer previously because it's been 2 years since I was a webelos leader - thought maybe other people with more recent experience would want to jump in. But here are a few activities I thought of: a) compass games dressed up as a mystery hike can be a lot of fun and not too hard to put together (from one clue to the next with something fun at the end). We've done more and less elaborate versions of this, sometimes as a glorified "capture the flag" game and sometimes with skill activities to be completed at each station. b) Hands-on first aid opportunities (think "readyman" activity pin) c) Team building games are fun. I saw one at a camporee one time that I thought webelos would enjoy and that might fit into the webelos "communicator" pin #5 in a fun way. One member of a team was blindfolded and given a bag. He was then placed in a circle and surrounded by tennis balls of various colors. His team mates were instructed to guide him to pick up as many balls of a certain color as possible within a limited time. The trick was, they couldn't use words to communicate and they couldn't touch him - only he could be in the circle. Watching was fun - the teams who worked together managed pretty well, those where everyone wanted to be "leader" had a tough time agreeing on a form of communication, and many didn't seem to have listened to the instructions and ended up picking up ALL the balls rather than those of a specific color. A few spent the whole time arguing about who would be blind folded to start with. Maybe someone else has done this game and has a better description? d) If you have any scouts who like astronomy and weather permits - do a real basic astronomy segment. Kids love being able to locate constellations, knowing they're seeing Mars or Venus, etc.. And doing something "cool" in the dark might help some get past their fear of leaving their tent at night! If you set up teams for the day's events, make sure that any webelos who are mixed into a boy scout team get to DO things - not just watch while your boy scouts have fun, and definitely not bossed around as the boy scouts' lackey. That happened to some of our guys on their first boy scout camp out (not far removed from being webelos) and they were miserable. There's a fine line here for your boys between leading/making sure the webelos are safe, and taking all the fun out of it for these younger guys. Adults - keep em busy! They'll be less likely to hover over little Johnny that way. If you have stations or activities set up, ask them to work with your adult leaders to help staff the stations or activities (if your other adults are taking that role anyway). Teach them how to use your cooking equipment. Make sure they have a log or chair to pull up to the fire and an extra coffee cup for them too. I know as a former WDL one of the times I felt most useless was when we went camping with a troop. There was absolutely nothing for me to do - and I was trying real hard to give the boys some space but you know, webelos leaders are so used to being in the thick of things. And the natural tendency then is to go see what the boys are doing... (one which I bit back, by the way, but it was a struggle)

"Does BSA discriminate between theistic Buddhists and atheistic Buddhists?" err, don't ask, don't tell? (tongue in cheek - I doubt most unit leaders or CO's would want to go there, though.) Merlyn, I find Michael Newdow to be an interesting figure and personally I believe he received the short end of the stick in terms of being denied standing. But really, I hope you have better ammunition than this example. Michael Newdow as a religious leader is a little like Oliver North as a beacon of virtue.

A couple of thoughts on district service and "quality." I've had the experience of working in a unit that needed district service pronto or else there would be no unit. That's how I became a scout leader. Up to then I was mainly "just a parent" with a minimal committee assignment. When we really needed it, our UC and a whole host of other district people suddenly arrived on the scene. I'm glad they did, though at the time I questioned their utility; they didn't seem interested in "fixing" our problem, which is mainly what I wanted from them. What they did do was to provide support and encourage some of the more stubborn among us to step up and become leaders. Bone headed move on my part but yeah, they got me. (I blame them for all the fun I've had since then as a Scouter!) Turns out this was their goal - develop leadership from within the unit rather than impose it from without. In this regard I agree with SR751fox. Now I would like to have seen the UC be more involved with the unit to start with. Had he been, maybe, he could have helped us avoid crisis mode. As it was, no one in the unit even knew who he was until after the crisis hit. If he had attended any of our meetings prior to this, it must've been in "stealth" mode; I can't see how he could have honestly claimed to be in "close contact." How much of this was his fault? Hard to say - I later heard he had been assigned to 5 or 6 units, held a couple of other district positions, was staffing a WB course with all that goes into developing that, and I know he frequently worked out of town. So maybe the fault lies elsewhere in the district for over-burdening existing leaders. But in this regard, I agree with Eamonn; a pro-active, rather than re-active, district staff could've been helpful to the unit. As for the professional staff. As you might imagine, the prospect of a unit folding caught the attention of our DE and since then I've gotten to know him pretty well. Thank goodness he isn't like some of the DE's I've seen described on this board! He is nearly always available to answer questions (usually correctly!), ready with a smile and, incidentally, another training session or program that I ought to convince our unit to attend. I credit him with helping me see what the possibilities were for a unit to create a great program and grow in the process. Sure, this helped him look good too. But this is how it ought to work - the pro's give support to the units. The units thrive. This helps the pro's meet their goals. None of the silly games and fudging that some have described. Oh, and by the way, our professional staff (at least at the district level) is remarkably stable over time so there are few incentives to play for the short term and then skip out of town just ahead of their latest mess. Quality Unit? Sure, it's a bit laughable sometimes and people fudge it too, we all know that. I think it is all in what you choose to make of it. If that's the high water mark for your unit then maybe you need to reach a little. If you aren't earning it? Something is very likely missing from your program. The units I've come to know who say "well it's just a game and doesn't matter to us" tend to be missing some pretty BIG parts of the program! So while I'm never going to base my personal assessment of a unit solely (or even mainly) on the fact that they have QU patches on their sleeves, a lack of QU status is something I want to know more about.