5yearscouter

For Parent pins, our pack and troop gives out something like this

http://www.scoutstuff.org/rib-neck-proud-parent-multi.html#.VgBUmFhRFwE

we have moms and dads who wear them to court of honors, including those in uniform (gasp)

I have a lanyard with my name on it in a leather name tag thing,

and  have parent pins for each of my scouts on it, from bobcat up to Eagle on one side, and bobcat up to Life on the other side.  I wear it with my uniform and nobody has said boo about it except to compliment it. Including the local unform police. I usually wear it to court of honors or special events.

For temporary pins, usually they are stuck in the hats.

In cub scouts they could go on a red patch vest,

and I've seen adults sometimes wear red patch vests with their uniforms too.

http://www.scoutstuff.org/adult-patch-vest.html#.VgBVLFhRFwE

The Insignia guide says that's where temporary pins and patches should go.

either of those allow you to wear them, without wearing them ON the uniform.

Thus circumventing the uniform policy issue.

Honestly it doesn't matter if SM has the blue cards.

Cause the process is the unit gets the signed blue cards, unit copy.

then enters it into troop records

and more importantly, they enter it into internet advancement to update your son's records on Scoutnet--the BSA database for advancement. 

Once it's in there, the blue card is no longer needed,

as when he goes for his Eagle, all that needs to show is that the internet advancement records exist for the scout having earned all the required merit badges.

Sure some councils want to see the blue cards, and some Eagle Board of Reviews check them, but it doesn't say in the Guide to Advancement that blue cards or the merit badge cards provided at the court of honors of any of that are actually required....

It comes down to what has been entered in his records for internet advancement.

So has the scoutmaster/adv chair entered any advancement fro this boy?

Advancement chair should not be the scoutmaster, it really should be the job of a committee member.  Maybe the scoutmaster is overwhelmed and could really use some assistance with this part of running the troop.  Offer to help, rather than condemn.

Most of our troop does a basic sit down in a rented church hall court of honor,

with something like the eagle mountain script or the light a candle for each point of the scout law,

sometimes with a scout of each rank doing the meaning of the scout ranks court of honor scripts. 

Followed by a full sit down catered dinner with dessert. 

Sort of like a wedding reception.  A really huge deal and very costly.

The most memorable was my oldest son's Eagle CofH. 

My son broke with that tradition above completely.

He is a Vigil member of the OA and most of his scouting has been strongly OA

dong lots of ceremonies and service.

So he wanted his OA ceremony team to do the Eagle ceremony with firelighting and regalia.   

Like this one

http://www.eaglescout.org/finale/coh/template06.html

with a few changes to meet the needs of the troop/community/people who wanted to give or say certain things.

It was held outside and only included cake and punch.

After my oldest broke with tradition with his outdoor court of honor and having minimal refreshments,

a lot of parents seemed to let out a deep sigh.  It had become like a contest of who could outdo the last  person.

A couple scouts had kinda skipped ECofH cause their parents couldn't afford to do it "right"

and that is very sad.

So now once tradition has been rewritten,

we've had Eagle cofh at the park with ice cream after,

at a swimming pool with swimming afterwards,

on a basketball court with a family style BBQ potluck afterwards,

and a breakfast CofH the morning before the scout left to work at summer camp for the summer. 

My younger son, if he finishes his eagle, which I certainly hope he will,

was talking about having a Campout and Campfire for his Eagle CofH. 

So we shall see....

In our troop we make sure when unit leader signs off on the blue card for the start of working on the mb and then again at the END when mb is completed.  Then we emsure that the scout keeps his portion of the card, the sm/adv chair keeps the unit copy of the card, and hope that the mb counselor kept their portion of the card.

Then there are three places that exists proof that the scout finished the mb, and no scout ever has to do the work twice.

Any one of those cards can be used to re-create the approval if the portion is lost. 

Scout should ask sm to sign a new blue card, and scout could contact the old mb counselor with his portion showing it was completed and ask mb counselor to sign off on a new one as replacement. 

In our troop we would accept the scout's portion of the blue card as proof of completion if we lose our part.  It happened most recently when adv chair put it in her pocket and then washed her pants and had little pieces of blue card in the dryer.  Scout send a copy of his portion of blue card and that was that.

You could just break the direct link in the OP, but leave the product name, so if someone is so inclined they could search his product out.  That seems like a way to leave the discussion but to take a bite out of the potential for advertising.

we go camping too many places that don't allow you to tie/attach anything to a tree to use hammocks.

When that happens you close your computer and come back 1-3 days later and it's magically fixed.

It happens whenever bsa goes playing with the database.

and it always resolves itself.

IMHO new scout patrols are the new guys who stay together as a patrol until they get their feet wet, make some friends, see how the troop works, get some more targeted help from a troop guide that is assigned to the patrol by the spl (After volunteering to work with the new guys of course).  And once they feel comfortable, they should be allowed to join any patrol they want to. 

Ours stay together as a NSP from crossover sometime around March-May, until after summer camp/school starts back.

By then they've camped a couple times as a NSP and they aren't lost newbies anymore (hopefully) and have a couple things signed off in their books on their way to advance.

Around August they are told they can stay together or join another patrols  The troop does elections for spl and allow patrols to fix themselves (too small due to drops or whatever).  About half join another patrol or three, and about half decide to stay together cause they have more in common with each other than they do with the older boys in other patrols.

Now we lose about 1/10th of our webelos crossovers. (2 or maybe 3 out of 20 new scouts) with our NSP in place for the last 4 years.

Before NSP, we used to lose 3/4 (15/20) of our new cross over Webelos scouts, often within the first month[sometimes the first meeting when they'd join a patrol]. They often were intimidated to be stuck in a patrol with huge guys that are almost twice their age or size. Picturing my 15+ year old almost 6 foot scout towering over the 10.5 year old 4 foot tall scouts.  Even though he has a "big brother" attitude to the younger guys and most of them know by now they can go to him if they need anything ever-- at first he intimidates the heck out of them with his size.  When he works with the new guys he sits down or gets on his knees

I know I will get hammered as old fashion preaching out-dated traditional styles of scouting, but this is the main argument against same age patrols. Since there are fewer older scouts to teach the inexperienced scouts, they are left with adults doing the teaching so the scouts to grow and mature. It makes boy run all the more challenging. 

 

Barry

yeah understood and agree sort of.

We have a troop guide and an instructor that should be watching over those new scout patrol, but sometimes they still get lost or left behind and end up with either the blind teaching the blind or the adults step in thinking it's the only way the new guys will learn anything.

Right now we are dealing with a scoutmaster who is stepping over his own son who is spl to teach scouts directly when it just isn't necessary, well except when his son the spl would prefer to ride his skateboard than to even pretend to be spl.

These next 6 months of this SPL and SM father son team may finish running my son and I out of the troop. 

So did you log into my.scouting.org and look at the membership roster for each unit?

Are they a venture crew a separate unit or does the troop maybe only have a venture patrol?

Cause I've run into units who don't know what they have cause nobody has looked at the paperwork.

I mean if you don't have an actual separate committee for the venture crew is it really registered as a crew? 

Getting them into the RIGHT job is way more important than getting them up to speed into a job you need done.

Unfortunately it may mean you end up with a lot of people that would make a great committee person, or a unit scouter reserve (on reserve to be helpful in some situations maybe but not active committee) and you end up with only one or two who have skillz, or the ability and interest to get themselves up to speed fast enough.  You want them to want to get themselves trained if they are sm or asm, you don't want to have to hold their hand.

I think training the parents on the scout skills up thru Webelos is important, so the parents learn the skills along with their son.

So if you need them to be the second adult on an outing, or to drive and it's too far to just send them back home, they are ok and have fun on the campout and know how to stay out of the way.

But training adults on the difference between boy scouts and cub scouts is imperative. We used to have some interesting things taught outside to the youth that the adults wanted to learn, like dutch oven cooking, or how to backpack, or what to buy.  We let the scouts do their teaching outside, and the adults teach each other similar stuff inside.  So the adults can have fun, get each other up to speed, but not interfere with the youth program. 

Pulling in an adult to teach something like what to buy and how to pack for backpacking, sure that has it's uses, even in a totally boy run troop--there is always something new out there that even the older boys just don't know about yet.  But Ideally the adult would teach the instructors or older scouts and let those boys teach it to the other boys. 

If the adult teaches it to all the scouts, then the adult will tend to be called in to do that task over and over again.  The boys start to take it for granted that the adult will tell them what to bring or what to buy or will double check how they packed their backpacking backpack or bring along the thing they forgot to pack so they begin to back out of the responsibility.

Teach it to the youth one time, then they are responsible for teaching it, remembering and ensuring the quality of information is passed on to the next set of scout instructors.  Sure watch a bit in the back of the room occasionally and if they say something totally incorrect you might have to say something if they are teaching something dangerous, or just do a quick re-teaching of stuff later on to help them improve their delivery.  Scouts learn a lot from teaching --sometimes you really don't know what you know until you have to teach it to someone else.

Gosh this makes me sad for some reason even though we've never much interacted over the years.  But I understand.  I'm about ready to give up, but my giving up will be in real life at the troop level due to those things you share.  they don't see what they are doing and I haven't made a dent.  We could use a strong leader with his head on straight like you are, and this forum could use your perspective as well.  Take care.

Identify if that person submitted an application filled out completely with attached ypt certificate and the disclosure agreement signed., and if so, where is that application? because as committee chair you are supposed to see each adult application and approve them for leadership.  If they already filled one out and it's been turned into council office, then ask for a copy of it.  Once you have the application in hand, go talk to the COR about the situation. If the COR is ok with the choice and approves the application and you don't have a BETTER choice, then sign the application yourself and go forward to make it work or to find a replacement that is a better fit ASAP..

As you wait to get that application in hand, do a membership inventory, check the my.scouting.org roster to see who is registered in each unit as youth and adults. 

And Visit a crew meeting and see who actually shows up and would be a likely person for crew advisor, as in, if nobody is showing up, the point of who is crew advisor isn't as important as is this a viable crew or not?

And if you show up and this person is there supporting the youth and doing all the right things, you'll know it isn't as bad as you think it is. 

For a while the thing that worked was to have 1 completely planned meeting for me to run, 1 completely planned meeting for someone else to run, and an outline of at least a month of other meetings, with a main idea for several months after that.  So a beginning structure.

The 1 completely planned meeting for me to run I would drag along a son/boy scout/older webelo, and my husband if possible.

I would show them the parts of a well put together meeting, gathering, take attendance/dues if you collect them, very simple flag ceremony, announcements of what's coming up, a main activity and then game time of some kind where the older webelo or boy scout  and husband would take all the kids to the hallway or not too far away but far enough we could talk.

while I had done some explaining along the way, I would then take the time to explain how cub scouting is a parent/son activity, I would show them the book they work out of, the leader info about how to make the book fit into the upcoming months, where to find fun activity and game ideas. Talk it up as soo much fun, so easy to do, and how we are all in this together.  but then I'd have to tell them that I can't run your den for you, I need to go help run my own child's den so one of you needs to be den leader.  And make it so every single other parent has a task to do so it all comes together and not just one person is in charge.   And let them know that the first 6 months or so one person takes the role of den leader, but their job is actually to help identify who is the natural born leader the person the kids gravitate toward and listen to. 

And then help them figure out how they want to share the responsibilities. In some dens they broke things up so someone did gathering activity or main activity, someone came up with games, someone tracked attendance and advancements, someone went shopping for supplies and someone brought snacks and they traded those jobs around like a grown up chore chart.  others broke it up by month, or by theme.

Of course when my son moved to boy scouts they'd see me come in and not really believe me that I wasn't going to just run their meeting for them, cause why else was I hanging around.  The parents were quite content to just drop off, and when I told them they couldn't drop and leave they would just sit in the back of the room and not want to participate at all or participating meant taking the kids project and doing it for themselves. That attitude seems to be more and more prevalent and harder and harder to deal with each year.  

If I sign on with a valid commitment/contract with a business and they change the rules in the middle, Isn't that a breach of contract?

 

When I was in college I started with graduation requirements spelled out in the academic handbook.  When I graduated, the programs had changed, the courses had changed, even the different departments changed.  If I wanted to I had the option to change to the new requirements at any time or stay with what was stated in the original contract.  I graduated with a degree in Business Administration under the School of Arts, Letters and Sciences instead of the new School of Business.  When all the smoke settled it made absolutely no difference whatsoever to any of my employers.

 

If my kids want to stick with the old requirements because that is what the BSA promised them, it's fine with me.  If they lose their book and need to buy a new one, they use whatever requirements are listed in the book they have.  

This is basically what our troop has done for any of the minor changes that have come along in the last few years.  You work on the requirements in your book.  Then you get to working on Eagle Rank and have to true up your requirements for that rank to be sure you aren't missing a part when you are doing all the checks and balances for the rank, since someone outside of the troop looks things over.  It screws up boys who transfer to other troops in the middle of a rank, and find the other troop follows the BSA regulations on the matter.  Usually they can finish the current rank under old requirements and new rank needs to be new requirements but it gets difficult to track who is on which set of requirements.

If council gives us the thumb's up we are good to go with their blessing....which we have. I consider it blessed and done.

 

 

No BOR for Scout, just a quick review of requirements, an SMC and award. The new requirements are a bit more involved and require a BOR.

 

As our council put it, they don't consider Scout "on the road to FC" under the 2015 requirements. Once 2016 comes, Scout is the first step on that path. 

The new Scout badge requirements don't require a BOR. 

Also historically in our troop crossovers who join in December don't really do ANYTHING until January.  So keep that in mind that you may have scouts who crossover, join the troop, come to one meeting, may or may not get scout badge done, then get busy with final weeks of schools, family Christmas stuff, and next thing you know it's January. 

Then you have half the crossover den of webelos who did the super speedy scout badge requirements, and the other half the den that has to go thru the bigger deal, and you have best friends at odds and pissed off parents wondering why their son has to do twice the work even though they all joined at the same time.  Sort of gonna depend on what your troop does in December, ours usually has a lock in with parade and service project, fun activity, but meetings after the first week of December become very very spotty due to all the other things that happen in family life in December.

if they do scout with the old requirements and then do the rest of trail to first class under the new requirements, then there will be things they moved from tenderfoot into the scout badge that they will never have to do.  They probably will do them informally, but it doesn't make sense to skip them completely in some aim to make scout badge easier.

I would just start any end of 2015 or early 2016 new scouts clean with new requirements, start to work on scout badge if they cross over in December, but finish them in January when you get the new book.  Some troops were basically handing webelos their scout badge as soon as they crossed over the bridge into scouting, and this will put a stop to that.  They'll have to give them something aside from a scout badge to welcome them to the troop--like give the troop neckerchief or troop numbers or a hat or something. lol. 

Our only recommendation from our troop to webelos dens will be to try to complete the cyber chit card as a den before crossing over, as that is the one thing new for scout badge that the troop doesn't regularly do at all.  if they have already earned the Cyber chit for their grade at the end of Webelos it should "count" toward that requirement for scout badge too.

As soon as they join a troop they are a Boy Scout, like as soon as they join a pack they are a Cub Scout.  We call them scouts and that has nothing to do with whether they've earned the Scout badge or not.  Calling them recruits makes it sounds military.  They are just new scouts, plain and simple.  don't make it harder than it really is by thinking up some other word to use to describe the newly joined scouts.

christineka The worst thing that will happen is that they will know that you are a pushy parent, and well sometimes pushy parents are needed to get a troop to do better by all the boys.  the good thing is that you did some research and talked to some 'experts' before pushing things, to be sure you understood how things should be first.  They can't say that you are asking them to do something that isn't scouting--camping is an integral part, and when it's virtually non-existent in a troop, that's a problem. I bet you'd take them camping if you could, but with the LDS restrictions on women they need adult males to get involved to make it happen and obviously they are lacking in the troop.  If you can't get two adults to camp, then the boys will miss out and that sucks for the boys.  A temporary joining of two units to ensure a better program is not a bad idea at all, as long as one unit doesn't get PO'ed about doing all the hard work for the other unit completely.  Hope it works out!

BSA needs to make a pamphlet like this sort of

http://www.scoutstuff.org/bsa/literature-media/handbooks/handbook-bs-mini.html#.Vd9DD1hRE5s

but with a place for the requirements to be signed off.

and make them in old requirements to go in the new books,

and in new requirements to go in the old books.

Hopefully for a bit less $.

Be great if it were the same size as existing book and would slide into place within the back of the book somehow with a clip or something

Oh I know,

giant sticky notes with two bars of sticky stuff at the top and the bottom, with the requirements printed on them

so it looks like the page in the book with place for signatures.

So you peel off the sticky note you need for the new rank req, stick it in the old book on top of the old rank requirements.

or you go to the new book and peel off the one your need for the old requirements that you are still finishing up in 2016 and put it on top of the page.

hmmm.... now I'm thinking of finding sticky notes to print my own.

My troop and SM seem to have their head in the sand hoping it all goes away. lol Or they don't know even though I've mentioned it a couple times.  I think one committee person actually perked up and paid attention when I said all the rank requirements are changing come 2016.

The Scouts just made their calendar for next year+ and scoutmaster made no mention of any additional requirements, so they'll have to review to add in some of the service more into campouts and events.

I'm going to suggest that as part of the boards of review for all scouts in 2016 that when they are done with the rank they are working on - the board of review including advancement chair review the rules with the scout for what requirements the scout needs to use for their next rank (so if still working on 1st class they are fine til Dec 2016 I believe, but if they finish 1st class in 2016 they start the new requirements) and provide the scout a hand out to attach into existing book with the new requirements for their next rank(s).

And then in Dec 2016 we have to meet with any scout who hasn't transitioned already to the new requirements for their next rank. So they understand.

Probably give some kind of written hand out and have the downloadable pdf of the rules and changed ranks put on the troop website so all the parents can read it for themselves and be forewarned.

And a bit of reminder to the scouts before the end of this year that things are changing.  For some of them it may push them to finish their 1st class a teeny bit faster.  We tend to have two sets of new scouts working on 1st class, those going at breakneck speed, and those who haven't bothered much and have been stuck in the rank of scout or tenderfoot for a year+. So we shall see.

I do like the idea that every year you have to do x hours or y amount of additional training, and provide a list to choose from. 

Make it simple so of course bsa probably wouldn't be able to figure it out would they?

Right now we struggle to get everyone to take ypt, safe swim, safety afloat, climb on safety etc done online every 2 years.

But we also want leaders to have things like CPR, First Aid, wilderness first aid, paddlecraft safety, and more.

^those are the things our roundtable used to do whenever they didn't have a planned program of 'this is what you are supposed to cover this month" shoved at the rt commissioners.

The old/trained/experienced leaders were regularly going and they'd have open time to talk and would make a list and cover everything thru the year that everyone needed about those kinds of special topics.

then they moved the roundtable location far away from most of the established units.  The idea at the district level is they thought they'd get the newer less established units to go to roundtable if the location was closer to them.  They still don't come, and the other guys all got tired of driving twice as far to talk to each other about stuff most of them already know.

I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to copy the drop down menu list over here so you could view it. 

It's not easy without editing the html and I'm not up to that tonight.

it's broken down by cub scouting, boy scouting, varsity/venturing, exploring/learning for life, and other.

there are only 18 courses listed under boy scouting, some others could apply that are in the other list maybe.

interesting that there is den chief training and NYLT listed to add for boy scouting,

 but I've not been able to add any training for youth.

so for boy scouting it lists by name and by number, but this is by number cause that's a shorter list to type here.

S101, SFS, C31, S97, S11, P33, D76, S78,SSD, SA, S24, WA01, S50 WS10, WSFS, WS81, N02 AND Y01

for cub scouting it lists 22 courses

c32, c42, c101 cf3, wcf3, c40, c31, cf1, wcf5, c33, cf4, c41, c60, c62, wa01, t00 cf6, ws81, cf2, c61, y01, wcf4

other  listing is 

commissioner trainings, national camp school trainings

CPR/AED, MBCtraining, woodbadge, SSD, SA, etc. 

If you can align what was taught in a prior class with a current curriculum then count it with the newer code.  But if it's been 20 years, well I don't know that I have a problem with getting someone to take training again.  Sometimes it helps to bring you up to date on all the new requirements and recommendations. 

Along the lines of training discussion,

We have two new ASMs who need SM Specifics.  There isn't a course nearby for a while, so I asked our unit commissioner and he suggested that we had woodbadge trained people who could teach SM specifics.  Well as far as I know woodbadge doesn't mean you can teach sm specifics.  lol

What does BSA say for trainers now, EDGE? Train the trainer course D70? What does it take to be an "official" trainer to teach such a class?  Normally you might expect the SM to teach it, but we are having some difficulties getting that to work out. 

DO NOT USE TH NEW CODES WITH THE ORIGINAL DATES!!!!!

 

I wastold todo that by aDE and while it provided a quick fix at tthe time, 3. or 4years late it. caused major problems.

 

Let me lookfor thetraaingcode lnk

Well most scouters who have old training aren't gonna still be around in 3-4 MORE years. and maybe the BSA will get it all figured out by then.

Also in the system you don't add codes, you can only choose from a drop down list of class titles with codes. And only a few old codes are listed, like S101 Boy Scout Leader Basic Training Pre 2001.  Most old course codes have been dropped from the system as far as I can tell.

Yeah Our troop expects a parent to stay with webelos if they are visiting individually, just like a brand new person off the street we wouldn't want them to be just dropped off.  If the whole den comes we expect a den leader and would prefer two, but troop adults would act as second adults for two deep leadership if anything were to come up. 

It's just nice when you have a new young cub scout there visiting the boys scouts on his own to have a parent around at least at first until everyone gets to know everyone. How closely he will need to be monitored will of course depend on the maturity of the cub.  We've had some 11 and way older scouts who we wished mom and dad both would always stay, others where we wished mom and dad would both leave, and some where they never really did grow up enough where we'd want them to be dropped off without a parent--and we have some serious visiting cubs occasionally that would have acted fine if dropped off when they were just bears...  But best when you have a permanent webelos visitor that you also have their parent around.

As to the original question, in the "old" webelos for it took 8 badges to get arrow of light. For an interested scout we could get them to arrow of light if they really wanted it somewhere between September and February or early March, the soonest was about January for a scout who went to a winter day camp activity where they completed a badge he needed extra to get everything done..  So sept to January is 5 months, with November and December being short months of meeting with holidays.  I bet you can get more accomplished this fall than you think, and then take the time to sit ddown and show him how close he is to the aol award.  If you break it down into little pieces you may be surprised that he sees it as a doable thing.  he sounds like a good scout and sometimes showing them some easy ways to track their advancement can really help them to advance to be able to wear the badge that goes along with his scout skills. getting that book signed off can be a hard skill for some of the guys to learn and they need a little bit of guidance from someone aside from a parent..