MollieDuke

We did Cub Survivor once during summer. We had a trail set up and each den went out at intervals. They had to follow a trail map (and they went with an adult and Scout guide). At each station, they had to read the card, follow the directions, and there was an adult judge there to ensure they did the activity. Then, if they finished, they got a card with stickers on it....The most stickers competed in the final event. We had several groups get all the stickers. The final event was a "Quick Recall" like HiQ or an Academic Contest with all questions coming from Cub literature and their hand

We had an Honor Guard in the Cub Pack my son was in years ago. They had a former service man who had been in charge of these things in the service work with specifically chosen boys who even travelled and gave ceremonies to people like visiting dignitaries and such. They were always in demand. They were sharp, accurate, and serious. They wore the traditional white gloves and complete/correct uniform of the Cub Scouts in blue. The oldest boy my son's year was a whopping 9 years old. It CAN be done, correctly and with the reverence it deserves. Don't do it by halves. Do it, teach it

When I lived elsewhere, the Webelo's all crossed over at the Blue/Gold banquet in February by coordinating with our local Troops. It was done with much pomp and circumstance with all the local troops attending as we did not feed directly into a specific troop. Everyone could choose the troop that fit them best and we had a huge turn out. The younger boys were in attendance, and it was a big deal to them to see the boys come out all decked out from the BSA as well. While I know the requirement does not say hold 'em till February, I felt that this was the best run system I'd ever seen the re

I have THREE rules. Yep, only three. The experts say no more than five, but I've reduced mine to THREE. They are: Show the following: Respect, Responsibility, Safety That seems to cover it. I have the kids make a list of things that fall under each of the three and then when they misbehave, I ask which one they broke. That follows with what was the better choice, how to make ammends, etc. Works very well and takes little time. My initial meetings always revolved around getting procedures established. Examples are: 1. How do you wish them to enter the meeting? (show,

I like the idea of adding badge requirements to Star and Life (just to ensure some time management), but I'd add Cooking required for the FIRST CLASS badge. I feel that cooking is an essential thing just as a pullup or sit up or those hurry case first aids. You do part of it anyhow, so let's just finish it and be able to actually COOK dinner instead of eating pop tarts as I've seen from boys before.

At summer camp, our counselor makes the participants mobilize to look for "little Annie" who is a rescue dummy we use for lots of stuff. They place "Annie" in a secret location and must search/sweep to find this dummy. Our home TROOP, however, got a dose of reality when we were at a local park one day having an outing. There was a terribly distraught mother who noticed we were scouts and came to request help finding her lost 4 year old son. He'd wandered off and we had to mobilize on the spot to help sweep the park to find him. As it turned out, he'd just gone to an air conditioned buildi

When I had my dens, I had approximately 15 boys with 1 assistant leader and a den chief. We had our denner take role on a clipboard each meeting while our assistant denner took the dues, counted the money and checked off each boy that paid. Our boys were required to bring books each and every meeting with all new requirements met marked with a small torn piece of paper as a page marker. While they did their pre-opening, opening, and pledge, I went through each book and wrote what they did on thier sheet in my notebook I made with a page for each boy from the advancement record book from BSA.

I think Barry has a good point in the way boys are brought into a troop. Funny, I'd never thought of it before. I can certainly see how entering a troop in various times of the year 2-3 at a time instead of the mass exodus from Cubs in the early quarter of the year would lesson the "advancement dragon" as I see it. There would be less competition as boys would be fewer in number and the "need" to grow as a large group would be gone. It's amazing how much that cleared things up for me in my own experience. Also, that would give more individual needed time with each boy to teach a skill cor

I have a friend from college who teaches in WV and was sharing with him this thread. He said that in a recent piece of literature they were discussing at his school, approximately 16% of WV students graduate from college straight from High School with their 4 year degree. Even assuming this percentage could be slightly flawed, the statistics seem quite low to me. I know that in some urban areas, the graduation rate is approximately 80% from high school, and in our area it is said to be approx. 92%. Makes me wonder why the laziness of students. Hearing these comments, though, has mad

Good dialogue so far. I have to agree with Herms, though, in that we are teaching our country's youth to be average. I hosted exchange students in the past from different countries and they are shocked to see how "easy US schools are" and "how little discipline there is here" and similar comments. Additionally, I have been asked to serve as CC for the remainder of the year (until I move in March, actually), and having done this in the past for two other units, I am not satisfied with the QC of this unit. I am discussing it, but frankly, they feel that since I'm merely placeholding until the

I forgot to include my own basic geographic area which is very southern Ohio/northern KY area. I am moving soon, though, which is why I thought to include basic geographic area. I will be writing things for youth from all areas, and was curious as to what others' experiences were and where. Thanks to those who pointed that out to me. :-)

I spun this from another thread because I like the term Quality Control. I think this is the missing link in Scouting Advancement. I have many co-workers in Scouting that do exactly as in the initial thread "Well, I'll just mark it off" for whatever reason. We need a quality standard to shoot for whether that is tying a knot correctly 8/10 times or whatever. We SHOULDN'T have to have QC because a scout is "trustworthy", but it seems like that is going down the drain fast. How can we promote Quality Control within Scouting without having to mandate it? How can we get parents to

I've worked in Scouting over 20 years. In that time, both in Scouting and in school, I see changes I don't like. Most of these involve attitude of both parents and boys. Now, I'm wondering if it's prevalent or just locality. Please address these based on your locality as I'm curious about what's going on in cities, rural areas, central US, Western Seaboard, etc. My experience I wish to discuss is purely those boys who believe it's ok to quit school at 16 and test for the GED (which they believe stands for "good enough diploma"--no kidding). They feel that No Child Left Behind means

I work with behavior disability students. These are the kids with no veil of acceptablility and thus do whatever/whenever. I will give you some really good advice that was given to me by a mentor: 1. Kids only hear 5 words at a time. If you don't want them to talk, simply say "Don't talk" in a very firm voice. 2. Make sure you teach and spell out expectations including rules. Make sure you only have 5 rules or less. My classroom has THREE only. My poster says "At all times we will have: Respect, Responsibility, and Safety." Then, I explain what each includes but are not l

In the troop I work with AND in the Crew I work with, we require the BOOK be present. Not so much that we NEED that book, but so we can review the dates for discrepancies or errors and make sure that these dates match MY records (I'm advancement chair for both). We don't want these boys coming up for Eagle and finding out at that time there were errors. Everyone present checks the book, satisfies themselves it is acceptable and filled out correctly since it is THE "blue card" of rank advancement. We will not do a BOR w/o this book, but the boys are told in advance to be sure to bring the b

I agree with communications. I no longer feel it should be Eagle required either. I also agree with Mark, you can't beat a good resume for catching an employers eye. In our little rural area here, the SMs pretty much let the boys take whatever whenever and I think that is bad. OR they take them to camp/merit badge college only and you see a bunch of boys that look like they duplicated each other's stuff. Wonder if we listed some of our more innovative ideas for the badges we do if we could learn from each other ways to punch them up a bit? I also do genealogy, and you talk about a

Oopsie.....yep, I meant Native American, because believe me, we have a lot of the other types. My son loves his percussion. He's even got African Tribal Drums. I looked on Crazy Crow. I'd forgotten about that site. Their stuff looks pretty neat. He's looking to drum with OA and stuff and so I'll probably have to spill the beans to see what type he needs. Thanks guys for the replies and for noticing I'd forgotten to put Native American in the type of drums...........:-) MollieD.

John, I think you're right on as far as why the Crew failed at first. It was not focused on the youth's interests, but tried to get youth interested in IT. Now, they're trying to revitalize it more the reverse, which is great.

I am looking for a place to order either drums or kits for drums. My son is a percussionist and I want to get him one (or a kit to make one) for Christmas. (yes I'm thinking ahead here). Thoughts? Thanks, MollieD.

What is your favorite/least favorite MB to counsel (or to take if you're a scout)? My favorite is Theatre. I think I like it b/c when the boys come for that one, they are really interested or they wouldn't be there. My least favorite is Citizen/World. Mostly b/c the boys that generally come to me are way too young to really understand it. There should be like a pre-test to see if you're ready for some of these things. My son's favorite was photography or climbing and his least favorite was Personal Management. I think the P.Management was his least, though, because he went

WOW!! That was very liberating taking the survey. My Eagle son and I both did it. We felt so liberated although it may never go anywhere. My biggest problem is like John said......grade/age appropriateness. I have boys who are in 10th grade working like 6th graders, yet, I've had 6th graders trying to do Citizen/World and can't get their limited life experience around it to get it done well. I think some MBs should come with a grade/age requirement....I know I'll get shot for saying that, but I'm so tired of having a boy come to me complaining about not understanding the work.

Coming from a small troop area, lots of the troops within, say, an hour from each other here camp together. In fact, they do a rather round robin thing where they each "host" an event. Example: T#xx is going to camp at "The Campground" and they, as host of the event, provide one new scout activity (up through 1st class requirements), one older boy activity, and one type of merit badge or advanced activity. As I remember, learning to fly fish was huge one year. The host troop is then exempt from planning and providing for the next campout and the attending troops reciprocate by doing the n

I am writing this for a friend of mine. There had been a Venturing Crew in his area that went inactive due to no membership. He is considering re-activating it. Now, they told him he'd have to get five youth and obviously the adults, but when we CHARTERED ours, they had to have five non-dual registered youth (meaning pay full price). IF you reactivate an inactive crew, what are the rules on this and how many NEWBIES that are not already Boy/Girl Scouts do you need? Thanks, MollieD.

I tell my parents that BSA is about the journey. Boys typically don't dress alike, listen to the same music, take the same high school classes or end up in the same jobs. Why would we want to create a cookie cutter environment in scouting for them??? It is about each boy being a respected, contributing, independent community member eventually and finding out who HE is in relation to his environment, not having his environment created for him. This is our troop's philosophy and if that is what they want, great. If not, bye bye. It's that simple. If the parents want a cookie cutter

Our troop has made a "unique" award called the Minimalist Award. We are working toward a non-trailer style camping unit with the trailer only going on large trips and scout camp where we are self sufficient. We encourage ground cloth/sleeping bag camping (although one boy came to the last one last fall with just a bedroll type thing), and we tend to use easy meals like you'd use to hike the Appalachian Trail or something. We also are encouraging our patrols to research and find things to make their lives simpler. We put the patrols together for dishwashing with one patrol heating