SeattlePioneer

I think the thread so far illustrates that BSA has become FAR too legalistic and bureaucratic in advancement in general and Eagle in particular. Which kind of troop do you suppose has the most trouble? 1. The Eagle mill that routinely lets boys be carried into the Eagle's nest by parents and other adults or 2. A Scout troop that expects Scouts to learn a skill well enough to use it but has a Scout and parent who expects to earn Eagle by doing as little as possible every step of the way? How often are Scouts from Eagle mill troops denied Eagle despite having minimal skills? I would imagine that the typical Eagle Mill troops has the real experts on the technical language of the Guide To Advancement. They might well have a lawyer guiding the process, carefully researching the absolute minimum that can be done at every step and advising the Scouts and Scoutmaster how the absolute minimums can be achieved as rapidly and easily as possible. Once the minimums have been determined, the process of watering down requirements can REALLY begin! [Let's see now, that fifty mile bicycle ride can include the auto trip to the start of the ride--- right?]. I'm guessing that these troops will rarely have advancement issues that go to the council or national. Seattle Pioneer

Hello John Ponz, > That's exactly my point. National is free to award Eagle to whomever they wish. That needn't have anything to do with who a TROOP recognizes as an Eagle Scout. National may wish to award Eagle to someone who doesn't meet the troop's standards. I see no reason why the Troop needs to recognize that Scout. (This message has been edited by seattlepioneer)

I have observed how many Cub Packs start the new school year---- often it is a rather boring meeting devoted to collecting dues for the next year and getting things organized. A boring meeting is an invitation for Cub Scouts and families to drop out, in my view. I have carefully designed our September program to get families involved in the pack and the pack program, including the popcorn sale. Here is the program for September: Monday August 20th Pack Committee Meeting to plan the September program and approve the annual pack plan of meetings and activities. Wednesday, September 12th First pack meeting of the school year AND Pack recruiting night. Scouts and parents make and launch stomp bottle rockets and boys get stickers for their Rocket Pilot License each time their rocket goes the farthest. New families are invited to sign up. Monday, September 17th. First den meeting of the school year. Ceremonies for each newly recruited Cub Scout and parents welcoming them into the pack and awarding the Cub Scout the Pack neckerchief --- at which point they are "in uniform." Activities include preparation for our Saturday outing and making custom hot dog roasting sticks. Saturday, September 22nd Outing to the Government locks and fish ladder to watch the boats and salmon. https://www.google.com/images?q=ballard+locks&sugexp=chrome,mod%3D2&hl=en&sa=X&oi=image_result_group At the entrance to the locks we have a popcorn site sale and all the Scouts have a chance to sell at least some popcorn. Parents get to observe this site sale and decide if they want to sell popcorn to pay membership fees for 2013 or whether they would prefer to pay those fees in cash and skip the sale. A hot dog roast concludes the outing, with everyone using their newly made hot dog roasting sticks around a fire in a Barbecue. Monday, September 24th Parent meeting set up as a reception to introduce new parents. Most new parents accept the invitation and attend. Meeting length --- no more than an hour, which involves planning the October activities. The emphasis is getting new and existing Cub Scout families started in Cub Scouts with exciting and meaningful activities, and introducing new families to the pack program without overwhelming them with detail.

The words of "Second Class" near repeating:

Other threades have discussed the bias BSA has towards awarding Eagles to Scouts who go through various appeals to the council or national. Personally, I'm not much interested in burdening leaders with all the rules BSA imposes regarding advancement and Eagle in particular. Troops should have substantial freedom to determine their own standards for what it means to be an Eagle Scout. BSA can certainly do what it wishes with appeals and is free to hand out as many Eagles as it wished. Each individual troop is still free to decide when a Scout has earned Eagle for itself. When a Troop figures a Scout has earned Eagle, usually awarding the Eagle is a fairly elaborate (perhaps too elaborate) process. An Eagle Court of Honor is often held, the Scouts name may be graven on the troop's record of Eagles and so on. By contrast, perhaps a Scout awarded Eagle by the council or national should look to the council or national for honoring that award. The troop needn't recognize the award of Eagle unless it has met the troops own standards.

Hello annmint, > You need to describe the motivations of these leaders in more detail, and describe the nature of the troop they are promoting. What are the differences between your troop and the troop these leaders are promoting?

It sounds like they are unhappy with the troop leaders or troop program. What assistance have you been supplying to the Cub Pack, such as Den Leaders, assisting with Webelos activities, having a troop adult leader at Pack Committee meetings and such? If the answer is zero or not much, perhaps they've decided they don't owe you much --- or anything. > I'd start by finding out what grievances the pack leaders have with the troop.

Personally I don't schedule "free time" for Cub Scouts. Free time is when boys create mischief in order to entertain themselves. If you notice Cub Scout day camps usually schedule little free time except what's necessary to get one activity going and time to get to the next one. That's my method, anyway.

Hello annmint, I presume the same Chartered Organization has both the pack and the troop and the Pack Committee Chair and Cubmaster are encouraging graduating Cub Scouts to join a different troop? I further suppose you are a leader in the troop that is not getting the referrals, is that right? Or are you a parent or leader in the Pack?

> Frankly, you have to be a Scout lawyer to understand all the complicated rules surrounding Eagle advancement ---- and the Scoutmaster wasn't a lawyer. The complexity of all the rules is ABSURD! I notice that you skipped right over the part about the Committee Chair/Father ignoring the Scoutmaster and signing an advancement for to promote his son to Life. The Father also acted as the Merit Badge Counselor for most of the Eagle required Merit Badges without the approval of the Scoutmaster, too. At summer camp just before this boy applied for Eagle, he REFUSED to get out of the sack to help pack up the camp to go home. I finally wound up literally pulling his sleeping bag out from under him. Earlier at summer camp he left to take a shower and didn't come back. When I went to the Scout shower, he was trapped inside, unable to get his pants on. Another time he got lost in the evening at a state park. At the behest of his father, we organized a search party to find him. He had wandered off to talk to people at another camp site. As I mentioned, his Scout skills were about up to the Second Class level in my estimate. On camping trips he regularly complained about camping in tents, suggesting hotel stays instead. Don't tell me about Eagle.... Seattle Pioneer

In 2006 a Scoutmaster for whom I was AS didn't approve a Scout's Eagle during a Scoutmaster conference. I fully supported that decision, unfortunately the Scout was a whiner and had adequate Scout skills for a Second Class Scout. How did he get that far? Well, the SM had refused to sign off on the SM conference as Life Scout, too. The Dad was the Committee Chair and turned in an Advancement report approving the award anyway.

TEACHING leadership skills is one of the important rolls of the Scoutmaster. That's not something Scouts are expected to figure out for themselves. How to do that task is a good question, though.

It's not a hard decision. It's an easy decision. * Uncompleted requirements * No Scout spirit No Eagle. Not unless he changes those things in the time he has before he turns 18. Not even close.

Hello Eagle, No BSA fee is paid for the Institutional Head, but I believe a $15 annual fee is required for CORs unless they are jointly registered as the Committee Chair.

Hello Barry, > Actually, I do a good deal of recruiting adult leaders as well as youth. The "Was I too BOLD?" thread illustrates how I helped a unit recruit a new Cubmaster and Committee Chair after the departing Cubmaster was ready to give up. I recruited a new Cub Scout Roundtable Commissioner to take over from me recently. Unfortunately, few people seem ready to devote themselves to the work of district membership chair. Only about four of sixteen or so districts in my council have membership chairs. Still, my skills at getting additional adult leaders is mediocre --- I have to mostly plead guilty as charged. A person with more talent in that direction would do better than I, but I am the only one available. > I experienced that as well. I identified failing units and sent anguished e-mails to the District Commissioner and District Executive --- I never got a reply to any of them, and they mostly failed, except for the one I've been working to rebuild the past four years. As I understand it, the District Chair is supposed to be a skilled and outstanding community leader --- not necessarily a skilled Scouter. Our district mostly recycles skilled Scouters as district leaders, but they tend to lack the contacts and skills that are really needed to bring new leaders into the district.

Competent note taking is unquestionably a valuable life skill to acquire. Relatively few people do it competently, in my experience, and I include myself among those who don't. I was at a Pack Committee Meeting Sunday as a Unit Commissioner. The meeting's primary aim was to set up the annual program for the pack. The new Committee Chair was the only person who was really taking notes on meetings and activities in a competent way. The outgoing Cubmaster was tossing off meeting dates and activities as he was coming up with them. Perhaps he was recording them in an organized fashion, but it seemed to be more of a hodgepodge to me. When I present a pack annual plan, it's printed up in advance and I make notes of any changes on a copy. I also tend to rely on rather crabbed notes on 4x6' cards as notes I take at meetings. My computer saves me as my primary means of organizing material. I transcribe notes into my computer into permanent files I can review until needed actions are taken. My methods are adequate, but not ideal. Ideal would be contemporaneous notes made at meetings in a neat and organized way that are preserved for future reference as a matter of routine. It would be a huge benefit if Scouts were to find and adopt such habits. Perhaps a Troop leadership training program could help establish the value of such things and help Scouts acquire the habit for following them. That's probably what the Scoutmaster has in mind with his notebook requirement, but it's obviously not working. I would second the idea of having rewards and incentives for Scouts who bring notebooks, and perhaps have a test to see who can remember critical information discussed at previous meetings which might illustrate the importance of note taking. While some might object to the word "test," checking to see who can find or recall key information discussed at previous meetings seems to be a reasonable thing at PLC meetings.

If I had a Scout who hadn't been participating on a reasonably regular basis, I wouldn't sign off on the requirement. If the Scout wants to appeal and someone else approves it, so be it. I might award him his Eagle badge at a regular Court of Honor, between the Tenderfoot and 2nd Class awards. I'm not very impressed with Eagle Scout candidates whose motivation seems limited to finding the limits on how little they can do.

Hello Lisabob, > Wow! You REALLY got sand bagged with all the demands made on you! I haven't been sandbagged with demands. I decide for myself what my activities and goals will be as district membership chair. I've offered to meet with the DE annually to jointly set membership goals we could both work on, but that hasn't always been of interest to the DE.

IF you succeed in getting Scouts to BRING notebooks to your meetings, remember you need something to do with all the notebooks forgotten and left behind at the END of the meetings!

Hello Andee, Effective Succession planning is certainly the mark of a good organization. The pack I was describing had both an excellent Committee Chair and an excellent Cubmaster. However, the departing Committee Chair recruited an ineffective replacement. It's not enough to have someone fill the position, although this fact is often ignored.

Hello Eamonn, > My presumption has been that the "Scouting Alumni" are the presumed cadre of new leaders envisioned by the strategic plan. > As a district membership chair myself, I there are some packs that can find leaders to carry out their own pack recruiting plan. Most of the rest depend on myself or the District Executive to do much of that work for them. In eight years as district membership chair, I haven't found anyone willing to join me in becoming a skilled person to help units with recruiting or the wide variety of other things a membership committee should be doing, such as assisting with the Webelos-to Scout-Transition. Ideally the District Executive would be doing little or no direct service himself, even for recruiting and Friends of Scouting. He OUGHT to be concentrating of recruiting volunteers to do that work, but volunteers are too hard to come by these days. Sad, but that's what I see.

I'm not familiar with ceremonies opacks use when making the JTE award to Scouts and Scouters, but it sounds like a good opportunity to review the accomplishments of the pack and thank leaders and parents who have contributed to making the program successful.

Hello Oak Tree,

Here's a good ceremony you can use as a model when you catch one of those Tiger Cubs without a proper uniform....

Ahhh. [get off the personal stuff and back on topic] (This message has been edited by a staff member.)