SeattlePioneer

Cub Scout Day Camp over now!

A LOT of work as co Program Director with another person.

All our program worked pretty much as expected.

We had something like 95 boys attend plus seven attend the evening Tiger Camp program,  which operated for four days 6:30-8:30 PM.

Well,  We've completed three days of a four day Cub Scout Day Camp.   I'm sharing the Program Director position with another Den Leader in our pack.

Today we had BB guns, Archery, Orienteering, stilt making.  Tomorrow it's Tent Racing, Cub Racer racing, BB guns, Archery, an egg drop off the tallest ladder truck owned by the fire department,  and skits.

I'm planning to do the Program Director thing a second time.  I'm aiming to improve on what we did this year,  which was quite good,  by choosing high quality activities and asking Packs and/or troops to take charge of organizing one activity.  My theory is that we are weakest when we recruit individuals to take charge of activities,  and strongest when we find packs and troops to take charge of such activities.

My second resolution is to get started pretty much immediately in defining the program for next year and finding packs and troops to incorporate their contribution in their plans.

One way to divide people into like groups:

1.  A small minority who listen to their parents, teachers, religious leaders, Scout Leaders and such and follow their example and advice.

2.  A large majority who learn from their mistakes.

3.  Another group WHO NEVER LEARN!

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As an ASM, I would not want to tarnish any opinion of the board. So, talk to them after discussing this with your committee chairman (CC).

I disagree with @scoutldr and @prof. If you have misgivings, call your CC and request that your signature be withdrawn.

Then, request that they follow the guide to advancement -- basically that involves the board sending a note to the scout (copy the parents) as to why you are withholding rank advancement, and what he should do to remedy the situation.

After that, call the SM and explain your decision.>> 

Interesting idea.

It sounds like he DID do the activity he described  --- only the motivation for doing so could be described as being different.

No harm in calling him back before the BOR to explain in more detail what happened.

With a fuller explanation,  I'd go ahead and approve the advancement.

<<Well,  I used the beascout.org message feature to request information on non LDS units in the 84040 zip code.  It lookls like that will go to the council rather than the Cub Pack.  I'll be interested to see what kind of reply I might get from the District Executive.>>

No reply.

In my opinion,  the biggest challenge of Scout Camp is the simple act of getting along with other people for a solid week.  That often is a challenge.

I would say it was a challenge for the boy who was chronically misbehaving,  and it was a challenge for the parent who lost control on the last day.

In my opinion,  the SM was delinquent by not dealing with the Scout earlier in the week.

The parent ran out of patience on the last day of camp.  I don't find that too surprising,  although it's not acceptable behavior.

The CC or Scoutmaster can have a conversation with the parent about how to deal with such issues.  Personally,  I wouldn't prevent them from going on Scout outings unkless the behavior were repeated.

I haven't had that kind of melt down  ----not yet,  anyway. 

Keep in mind that this was at the end of a stressful week of summer camp.

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Why don't a few adults just sit down with her and have a pleasant chat with her to find out what happen. Everyone has a bad day. If this is just one bad day, sheesh we should all be fired. We have asked parents (and leaders) to stay from scouts, but they were guilty of several incidents. 

Barry>>

I agree with this.  Also,  where were the Scoutmaster as AS during the week?

While the parent was out of line,  ignoring the problem of a badly behaving Scout all week was the crux of the problem.

"One bad Scout will cause five good Scouts to quit Scouting"  That's a good rule of thumb.  Might cause a few adults to quit,  too.

The idea of kicking out the adult while the badly behaved cause of the problem CONTINUES to be ignored doesn't sound right to me.

Start with a conversation with the offending adult,  and then continue with a conversation with the Scoutmaster about this situation.  What does he have to say for himself?

As a Scoutmaster,  I considered 1st Class to be the most important rank in Scouting.

The promise of Scouting is to make boys modestly competent at hiking, camping and outdoors activities  ---skills that are the core of the journey to 1st Class.

BSA tends to offer special support to boys on the journey to first class as well,  just as I did.

After that,  boys decided what else they wanted to do in Scouting.  If they asked me for help, I was glad to do so.  If they were happy to stay 1st class,  that was fine too.

In my opinion,  boys have the opportunity to learn what Scouting means by 1st class.   Star, Life and Eagle are fine,  but you are really just continuing to polish the apple.

I also pretty frequently encounter adults who APOLOGIZE for not having been an Eagle.  I tell them my opinion that 1st Class is the most important rank,  and most are RELIEVED by that. 

Eagle is fine,  but over rated.  Because it is overrated, FAR too many boys are carried into the Eagle's Nest by their parents or other adults.

My favorite was the Troop Committee Chair who had the SM refuse to approve his advancement to Life Scout.  The parent apparently forged the SM signature and got his son the Life Scout award anyway.   

The SM wasn't too sharp and didn't challenge that action.

When I got involved with the Troop,  I asked the CC why no Committee Meetings were ever scheduled   ---he said no one would attend.  Actually,  it gave him license to do whatever he pleased.

When I was involved in the troop as AS,  this parent decided to resign as Committee Chair in a snit.  That was an opportunity and I found another parent to be Committee Chair who did an excellent job. We had regular Committee meeting which were well attended.

When the boy came up for Eagle,  he was again not approved for advancement by the same SM.  (Personally,  I thought this boy was a modestly competent 2nd class Scout in terms of his skills and abilities).  

The parent took his son out of the troop and they joined a troop of boys with Asperger's Syndrome.  That was probably a good decision.  

It was kind of amusing,  since the parent was a hot shot journalist.  He thought he was hot stuff and condescended to the SM who was an auto mechanic who had a lot of heart but wasn't much of a leader.   He did his best,  which wasn't really good enough.  I helped him get a better program going and helped get the Troop leadership going as well.  

The parent in question never BSd me.

Since BSA is playing around with the requirements all the time,  why should anyone be surprised that units leaders, Scouts and parents don't take them seriously either?

Well,  I used the beascout.org message feature to request information on non LDS units in the 84040 zip code.  It lookls like that will go to the council rather than the Cub Pack.  I'll be interested to see what kind of reply I might get from the District Executive.

And you might want to consider calling or e-mailing the District Executive with a similar request.  I would GUESS that there are non LDS units around somewhere not too far from you.

You can Google the Council website for thye Trapper Trails Council and find the district you live in,  which would list the contact information for the District Executive.  Call that person and ask hime for help in locating a unit that would serve your needs and inrterests.

_{So----  what's your zip code?}

Shop around for another pack or troop with which you are happy.

Beascout.org should be your friend.

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Each fall, it's a delight to watch district and council staffers harp on the rechartering process, and how important it is to get it done on time.   They'll brief the unit level scouters, at length, going over every little byzantine detail of the bloated, unnecessarily difficult, time consuming process.

Then the same district and council staffers are disappointed and concerned about X number of units that failed to met the deadline.   Surprised, even.  >>

Heh, heh!   I figured out  the simple way to recharter last year.

Rather than flogging families to renew their memberships,  I rechartered with those who had already qualified for a new membership based on accrued popcorn sales as of the middle of October.   There were four,  I think.

So I rechartered with those boys only and adult leaders who had their YPT current.

I took the  paperwork in to my DE the week after I got it,  and the DE couldn't believe it!  Our unit was the first IN THE COUNCIL to complete rechartering!

As additional boys and adults got their memberships paid up,  I simply sent a note to the DE to reactivate those memberships along with a check.

Easy Peasy!

Keep It Simple,  Stupid!

I think there's an argument for requiring AS and SM to earn First Class...

In my opinion,  First Class is the most important rank in Boy Scouts. Star, Life and Eagle are just rehashing things boys should have learned by First Class anyway.

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A half of a year hence, Packsaddle's comment still resonates.   I have loathed BSA popcorn sales since its inception in the '80s.>>

It's worked well for our fairly small pack. One fund raiser a year meets our needs,  and helps support the council, too. 

It's a job though for the Popcorn Chair.    They need to be well organized, honest and have a good business strategy.   I like to suggest that being the Popcorn Chair is very good experience for someone interested in operating their own business some day.

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I find that Scouting makes enormous and unreasonable administrative demands on volunteers.  It's strangling Scouting,  in my experience.

To give an example,  I recently sent in several Cub Scout Day Camp applications to the council.  Each of these involved several pieces of paperwork,  and several weren't done correctly and had to be returned to families for do overs.>>

Never mind!

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To give an example,  I recently sent in several Cub Scout Day Camp applications to the council.  Each of these involved several pieces of paperwork,  and several weren't done correctly and had to be returned to families for do overs.

Today I was informed by the District Executive that these applications have not been processed at the council office and are missing.  They were mailed in  --- were they received?  Were they mixed in with applications from another district?  Something else? 

If they can't be found,  I suppose I will be further burdened by going back to ask people to fill out applications AGAIN.>>

My DE e-mailed me today to let me know that these applications were delivered to the council today  ---- apparently just slow mail delivery.  I'd made out the check for this on June 23rd and they went out in the mail June 24th.

It would have been quite burdensome to have had to do all that again.

Check out the beascout.org website.  All the units in your area are listed and you can hunt around for a program you might be comfortable with.

Personally I'd give priority to finding a unit with a quality program rather than one that conforms to your political and social biases unless these happen to be important to your son.

It's probably very important to your son that he have a program he will enjoy. Boys tend to filter out stuff that isn't important to them anyway.

I'd talk to your boy about the things that are most important to him.

Is the current Cub Scout Pack he belongs to an LDS unit?  What do they do that offends your son or you,  if anything?

I'm Chartered Organization Rep for a Cub Pack that meets at a Catholic Church.  When introducing "Duty to God,"  I define that duty as respecting the religious traditions of your own family and also respecting the religious traditions of other families.

We has a Muslim family where the mother told the Pack Committee that perhaps her family shouldn't participate in the Pack Christmas Party.  We invited her to make a presentation at the Christmas Party on the family's Muslim faith,  which she did in good style.  We accommodated her families desire not to have pork sausage on the breakfast menu of our pack overnight camp.  In short,  we worked to accommodate her religious concerns in ways that met the family's needs.

You may be able to find ways to accommodate your concerns in a Scout unit if you discuss them carefully with unit leaders.

One activity the first day of Day Camp will be making Den Flags and a Den Yell.  To aid Den leaders,  I Googled "Den Cheers" and "Den Flags"  and copied some of the results.  They give some ideas that boys and adults can use to get started.    But the basic idea is for the boys to come up with ideas,  not the adults.

Dens are also identified by Den number,  and den cheers can be based on the den number as well if desired.  

Dens will be supplied with an arbitrary symbol for their den together with their den number that is printed on with a color printer which they can cut out and glue on their den flag if they wish to do so.

That's the way I'm doing it,  anyway. 

Good luck with your new crew!  

What kind of activities do you expect to do,  and where are do you expect your youth members to come from?

I find that Scouting makes enormous and unreasonable administrative demands on volunteers.  It's strangling Scouting,  in my experience.

To give an example,  I recently sent in several Cub Scout Day Camp applications to the council.  Each of these involved several pieces of paperwork,  and several weren't done correctly and had to be returned to families for do overs.

Today I was informed by the District Executive that these applications have not been processed at the council office and are missing.  They were mailed in  --- were they received?  Were they mixed in with applications from another district?  Something else? 

If they can't be found,  I suppose I will be further burdened by going back to ask people to fill out applications AGAIN.

My DE has a collection of BSA applications that can't be processed for various reasons.

The administrative burden is BAD,  and getting worse pretty rapidly,  in my experience.

Our council has two Cub Scout summer camping programs:

1 The Cub Scout day camp program has a separate day camp organized by volunteers ata cost of $80 for a four day program.

2.  The council had a four day three night resident camp that is organized and staffed by paid employees. Cost is someth like $175 if I'm remembering correctly.

My experience with the Cub Scout day camp program is that it's an ennormous drain on volunteers resources.  It takes huge amounts of time by volunteers to organize and staff with volunteers.

Personally,  my bias is to eliminate the day camp program and just offer the resident camp.  There are already districts in our council that no longer offer Cub Scout Day Camp.

Bess Truman:  "It took me YEARS to get Harry to say "manure."

<<We also have a kid that simply will not listen to anyone but their parents, and this is a major problem because the scout is always causing trouble.>

Leave him home on outings until he gets the picture.

Send him home from troop meetings if he misbehaves.

In general,  one Scout who misbehaves will cause four other Scouts to drop out of the program.

Shape up or ship out.

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At party-supply stores, but I don't think dollar stores cut their prices even after holidays.>>

I'm always amused by people who want to know how much something is at the dollar store...