Twocubdad

I take the "Scoutmaster's approval" requirement seriously and require OA candidates to meet with me before I'll all their name on the ballot. Basically I'm looking for a commitment to give the OA a fair chance. I ask the boys to follow through with the Ordeal and at least one preferably two significant OA functions in the year following their election. What is interesting to me is that this year only four of 12 eligible Scouts asked to be on the election ballot. I think part of it is that the group of guys who opted out are just lazy. They really don't want to do any more that the very minimum required to "get" Eagle before they skip out. But I also think that the OA doesn't do a good job of promoting itself. In 10 years in the council, I can't think of a single time when the OA was out performing a service where other Scouts could see what they were doing. Back in the day (okay, everyone under age 18 roll you eyes and tune out) our OA chapter ran stuff at district camporees. We ran the milk wagon, selling 1/2-pint cartons of milk to the Scouts (once upon a time, people routinely drank cow's milk with meals) and ran the campfires. The point was that Arrowmen were seen out and about doing things the other Scouts saw as both helpful and as something to aspire to. Locally, the OA generally only does stuff that benefits itself. Everything is built around the two annual lodge fellowships and the regional fellowship. Non-members know nothing about them. They raise a lot of money, which is presumably all spent on the local camps, but to my knowledge has recently been spent on an elaborate ceremonial ring which is secret and known only to the OA. The one point of contact most boys have with the OA is the call out ceremony. Not exactly out best foot forward. In my opinion, the Indian stuff is overdone. Not until you go through the Ordeal and understand the signifiance of the characters does it have any meaning. Most of my Scouts think the guys in costume are just lame. And holy smoke can it go on forever.

Okay, I tried several times over a couple hours to post the spin-off thread but keep getting an error message. So I stick with it here. The camp school session is mostly a discussion where the participants share their local resources. It comes with the usual warnings which apply to fundraisers (that is, before contacting a business for a contribution, be sure to clear it with your DE, less your request for scrap foul up a big-buck cash contribution). Most of the suggestions seem to relate to materials -- a cardboard manufacturer for large sheets of cardboard, a company that makes dog collars and horse tack for leather scraps, lumberyards and building material wholesalers for scraps (as a contractor I always warn folks to NOT scrounge building sites for scrap material -- many places it's illegal and dangerous), paint stores for mis-mixed paint, Lowe's and Home Depot both have grant programs where you apply for corporate money to cover the cost of the stuff you then buy from them; bakeries and food manufacturers for snacks; military surplus stores always have cool stuff, even if you have to pay for it; printers and newspapers for paper scraps and roll ends; carpet manufactures and retailers for carpet scraps and really huge paper tubes; camp school. I also remind folks to think in terms of other organizations that can provide ready-made programs and volunteers: everone has probably used the local police, fire or medics for stuff (climbing on a firetruck is always fun, I don't care who you are); local historical societies and reinactment groups, like Stosh's Venture crew, can add a lot to a program; one camp had a "boot camp for boys" theme and had a drill instructor from a local army reserve unit come out and lead exercises for the boys every morning -- Smokey the Bear hat and all. I alway conclude the session by warning folks not to burn out either their volunteers or contributors by going to the well too often. Why spend hours and hours scrounging an item you can buy for a few bucks. Be sure to spread the wealth among the local businesses and send them some actual business when you can. Like I said, the NCS session is more of a discussion sharing ideas among the participants. What are you favorite sources?

As I say my prayers tonight I will thank God in Heaven we don't do individual Scout accounts.(This message has been edited by Twocubdad)

Speaking for the Ludites in the group, I don't care to get mail on my telephone. I'm not particularly thrilled about getting phone calls on my phone. For mail I have a mailbox (you remember, the black metal thing at the end of the driveway?). I don't much like voicemail, but if you insist, please leave an actual message with facts and information, not just a request to call you later. I you want to talk later, YOU call me back. When I was Cubmaster, I turned my phone off at noon on Friday before a campout. I found it absolutely impossible to get ready for the campout with 100 Cub Scouts and answer stupid questions all afternoon. (And as I tell my boys, despite what your teacher may have told you, there ARE stupid questions: those for which you should be able to learn the answer on you own. ) IMHO, technology has ruined everyone's ability to perform basic communication functions, like taking messages, using punctuation and capitalization and using stupid abbreviations like IMHO. Remember the little pink message pads? At minimum you were expected to get a name and return phone number. I was taught that a good time management technique was to set aside a block of time and return all phone messages then. I do like email. I leaves a trail. I can provide as much or as little detailed as I like. And I can respond on my own time. But I've always considered myself a wordsmith. I take time with emails, re-read, edit and (gasp!) proofread them before I hit send. It is not my responsibility to cover every possible mode of communications in order to make sure everyone gets a message in their preferred medium. Morse code signals anyone? We have an online calendar with automatic email functions. We have a master calendar on the wall of the Scout hut. But the 100% solution is showing up for meetings and listening in on the last 15 minutes when we do announcements. Scouting is a priveledge. If a parent is not willing to put in even the most minimal effort to secure their son's participation, then they need to get out.

Keep it low key. Doesn't sound like a hill you want to die for. One of two possible approaches: First, just let it fade away. It's really rather early for a Bear den to start worrying about Webelos patrol names anyway. Put it off for a week or two and chances are the boys will forget about it anyway. If one of the boys asks, tell him the den will work on that again closer to the end of the year. If an adult asks, roll your eyes at them and keep walking. Second approach would be to show up at the next meeting and have a re-do with everyone present. "We just want to be fair to everyone who wasn't at last week's meeting, right?" Let every boy who suggested a name make the case for his nomination, then vote by secret ballot. And then close the subject. Don't you hate it when the adults can't play well with the others?

What, specifically, are you trying to track?

Roger that, E92. He's still fairly new on the job and I know is focused on the staff and money side of things. I pray for the day that he starts to shake up the program side. Shortridge -- I will spin this off to another thread for you.

We encourage our first year campers to take First Aid and Swimming at camp. In a perfect world, I wish they could take the first year program, but it's really weak around here. Beyond that, we try to get the first year guys into a handful of other badges, usually basic ecology stuff like Nature, Reptile Study or Weather and maybe a handicraft badge or two. My real concern with the elective badges is crowd control. We try to steer the new guys into a handful of elective badges so that they generally stay together as a group during the week and don't have them hauling all over the camp between classes. Beyond summer camp, I encourage boys focus on 1st and 2nd class requirements and lay off starting on MBs until the latter part of their first year. If someone is really hot-to-trot for MBs I'll steer them toward something like Pets, Collecting, Music or Reading. They are generally rather light-weight and gets them into the MB process without becoming a huge distraction. It never fails that some over-achieving parent shows up with an Enviromentals Science book their second month in the troop. Um, no.

I think the biggest deficiency in the training program is the supplemental training. I've got a room full of ASMs who don't really understand the program. The problem is that there is no program specific training beyone SM/ASM specific and outdoor leadership skills. I am a big fan of WB21C, but it's not program-specific. There's a lot of good stuff there, but except for the leadership skills (which applies mainly to the Boy Scout program), but, as we know, it doesn't really address many of the problems we hear about there. Announcement night -- excuse me, I mean Roundtable -- is a joke. In ten years I bet I've probably missed 5 district Roundtables and I can honestly say that I've attended fewer than that when the staff even attempted to provide real supplemental training. It's just the wrong format to try to accomplish any sort of training. District Scouters (and really folks throughout BSA) are so petrified of that a meeting will turn into a gripe session that substantive conversations about real issues never occur. From that stand point, the squabbling we get here is a much healthier and productive exchange the the plastic presentations we get at Roundtables. My "King for a Day" solution would be for BSA to develops a number of in-depth, online training modules around many of the topics we catch here. Advancement issues, working with COs, dealing with problem volunteers, council relations, the job of a DE, new unit issues.... The topic index these boards would be a good resource to start with. And the topics need to be covered at different depths. If the Advancement module only covers the four steps to Boy Scout advancement, forget it. I know a lot of this info is out there in various forms. But BSA does a fairly poor job or organizing it's material. Have you tried looking for something specific on Scouting.org? Good luck. I spent 10 minutes this morning trying to find the new medical forms (I finally found them going through Google). Maybe the first module needs to be on how to find the info you need. Here's an idea, BSA needs a Wiki -- you know, a web site like the Wikipedia where ordinary Scouters contribute info on the topics they feel are important. People with particular knowledge in an area could post the info they feel is helpful. Chances are if you think something is helpful, other people will, too. Sure, you get a bunch of wacky stuff, but it's self correcting based on the democracy of ideas. If someone posts something that's way off the curve, there will be a bunch of folks jump on it. I would even say it needs to be staffed so that things which are clear policy violations could be edited.

There's policy and there's how stuff works. This is just how stuff works. One of the sessions I teach at NCS is "Resouces" or how to scrounge for stuff. If we are taught to get creative in scrounging for stuff, I see no reason to not get creative in how we hang on to the stuff we already have. Every day camp director worth his bug juice and gold fish has a garage full of stuff that "belongs" to the day camp. For years we played the game of dolling stuff out to packs who "owned" day camp stuff. We finally found someone with an empty corner of a warehouse who keeps all the stuff for us. It would probably fill a 20x20 storage unit that would cost us well over $100 per month if we had to pay for it. Official council policy was that after camp all equipment and materials were to be taken to the council camp for canibalization -- uh, I mean storage. Strange, though, nothing was ever there the next year. Archery stuff would disappear, whole 10x20 canopies would walk off. Interestingly, the council camp's inventory of similar stuff was always on the money. The council refused to provide secure storage for our stuff, so we just did a work around. Our DE did his Three Little Monkey routine while day camp stuff was put away for the year. Analyze, adapt, overcome. Last year I was in a properties committee meeting with the our new Scout Executive when the subject of storage for day camps came up. The new SE says, "what, don't all your camp directors just squirrel stuff away like they do in every other council?" EGADS! Get that man a red jacket! He's one of us!

I wouldn't drop any. What's the point? Are we constitutionally limited to 120 badges? So what if only a handful of kids earn them. Does it really cost us much to have that one odd book or patch on the shelf? The merit badge program has some problems but I don't see the number of under-used badges as one of them. I like the variety.

Our camp went with a web-based system last year and it worked just fine. The "gatekeeper" function is maintained in that the troop has to pre-register the Scouts for the MB classes. If I don't approve the boy's course selection, the troop's camp registrar doesn't enter them. We get a print-out at the end of the week, but the results remain available on line for months. That's pretty nice, too, in terms of helping guys follow up on incomplete requirements. Partial results were also available online during the week of camp. Supposedly I could get on my laptop or use the computer in the leader's lounge to see who was ditching class or doggin' it. That was iffy and most of the counselors didn't keep their class records updated daily. But that was no real loss -- that stuff's better managed by wandering around camp rather than by computer. The only drawback is that our troop record keeping system is based on the blue cards. We have records of blue cards going back decades. The boys are also trained to track their blue cards as the 100% solution for proving which merit badges they earned. It's a pain, but we took the computer results and transferred everything onto blue cards. Otherwise we were relying on electronic records and we weren't comfortable with taking that plunge just yet.

I just entered the results of tonight's BOR into TroopMaster and noticed that the new requirements for the boys' next rank is six months or 184 days, so Troopmaster is figuring the calendar menthod -- March 10 to September 10 -- as has been suggested by others. Not that TroopMaster is official policy or anything, but you would figure they would run it by the advancement guys. Our BoRs are scheduled on a mutually convenient basis. The only time boys are stretched out more than a week or twos is we get a flood or requests (which sometimes happens with early ranks). It's tough to do more than four boards in a night and that's with two boards running at the same time. Our boards are usually held during troop meetings, although our advancement chairman is good about working with boys. For example, our SPL is having a board of review Thursday night (not our usual meeting night) because the SPL felt he needed to attend to his responsibilities as SPL during the troop meeting. (YEAH!!! Don't you just love it when they do stuff like that?!!)

That's been one of the big changes in our troop since I became SM four years ago. We had one LONG-time mom who was a registered counselor for multiple MBs, including 8-10 Eagle required. Her routine was to show up unannounced at troop meetings and announce, "anyone who wants XYZ MB meet me in the back room." A heard of Scouts would then abandon the troop program and their patrols to line up at the trough. It was fairly ugly before she left. The Scoutmaster is absolutely the gatekeeper of merit badges for all reasons Gunny lists. I would add that one of the primary ones is to guide the boys toward appropriate MBs. A Scout Scout doesn't need to be working on Environmental Science or Personal Management before completing Tenderfoot. My counsel would be to focus on Tenderfoot, but if you really want to tackle a MB, how about Pet Care or Reading?

If I have a newby grubmaster, look at everything he's doing -- negotiating a menu among all the varying tastes of the patrol, thinking about creating balanced meals, thinking through problems of storing perishables safely, going shopping for himself propably for the first time, keeping up with the money.... And we haven't yet left for the campout. And you want to worry about leftovers?

Webelos camping is supposed to be the boys first blush at camping "with the guys." It's not family camping like with the whole pack. I would definitely leave the siblings at home. I'm all for Webelos den camping. But I've seen gung-ho leaders (and I'm not saying rjscout is one) who push too hard, trying to take Webelos backpacking and such. If the pack is camping a couple times a year and the boys are going to Webelos resident camp, one or two den campouts is plenty. The emphasis needs to be very basic -- proper gear, setting up tents, building a proper fire and cooking simple meals. Just what's laid out in the book.

Why would you want them to? How will that add to the program for the Webelos? Tread lightly. I know the prospect of going camping with the Webelos is exciting for both the boys and adults. Webelos den campouts should be introductory. The Webelos program doesn't teach the camping skills boys need to do much more than close-in camping. The boys will learn the camping skills they need to do more serious camping their first year in the troop. Don't risk putting the boys in a situation on a campout where they are miserable because they were unprepared or spoil a big part of the alure of the Boy Scout program (This message has been edited by Twocubdad)

1 long sleeve shirt 2 poly short sleeve shirts 1 cotton short sleeve shirt that I really don't like as much as I thought I would all are set up for current wear. I have one short sleeve shirt in the closet which I left with all my old Cub pack insignia. 1 nice pair of dress trousers 1 pair of cotton pants which I really like 1 pair of old field uniform pants 1 pair of the zip-off pants more shorts than I can find. A whole dresser drawer of socks (shared my the three of us) Piles of hats, camp t-shirts I have one UK Scout shirt that I bought at jamboree and set up with insignia from my mate's Scout Group in London.

Honestly, I have to say this is fairly far down my list of things to worry about. That's just part of the cost of doing business. The primary things I see wasted are partial jars of condiments and uneaten bags of fruit. I will admit to being leary of a half jar of mayo which has been rolling around in the woods for a weekend. And I guess I'm more pleased that the boys thought to buy apples even if no one ate them.

Is that policy published somewhere? I got a kick out of going to our pack's combination AoL/Blue & Gold/Webelos Crossover last week and they use the ceremony script that I wrote in 2002 or so. It combines all three functions and still allows opportunities for boys to slip in and out if they didn't earn AoL or aren't joining the troop. It's possible to do and there is nothing that says a pack "should" do it one way or the other. Whatever works locally. I think the main point everyone should keep in mind is not to unnecessarily embarass or hold up a boy for ridicule for not earning AoL or choosing not to continue into Boy Scouts. The idea is to celebrate the accomplishments of the boys.

I think you are setting a very bad precedent. The clear intent of the policy is for parents to attend campout with their Cub. To snark around the wording of the policy is asking for trouble. The exception to the one-Cub-one-boy rule should be for situations like single-family moms with small children at home or boys who live with much older grandparents. In those cases the boy needs to be under the supervision of an adult who agrees to be responsible for him. That adult should not accept responsibility for more than one boy other than his or her own and they should not be the pack or den leader responsible for the program. That, up until a few years ago, was how the G2SS policy was written. There are good reasons for the exception. We had a little guy who lived with his grandmonther who was in her 70's. Except for his den leader taking individual responsibility for this fellow, he would never have gone on a campout. On the other hand, folks will try to abuse the policy and try sluffing off their kid so they can go on golf weekends or just "have a weekend off." Nope, sorry. You tell your son the guys in your foursome are more important than he is. And since our various bona fides seem to matter here, I teach the Cub Scout Day Camp section at National Camping School.

Our old Scout Executives used to be afraid of red wool jackets. Does that count?

Playing devil's advocate here, but don't we deny membership to some people because we have moral/character issues with their lifestyle choices? Would we be telling him to mind his own business had the CM had an affair with another woman? Just asking.... I'm not terribly comfortable with this thread because there is much we don't know or understand. I would think, however, that if there were enough going on to have warranted the SE's involvement before, I would reenage him.(This message has been edited by Twocubdad)

If the boys are burned out, the troop or pack or both is doing a poor job with the Webelos program and the Webelos-to-Scout transition. If you're doing it right, the boys will be going nuts to get into the troop. I do see a problem with adult burn out. Lots of issues here. As noted before, 5 years is a long dang time. I think the leadership model of parents tracking along with their boys as Tiger, Cub and Webelos leaders is part of the problem. The old model of having a dedicated leader who sticks with one program seems to work better. They get to specialize and benefit from their own experience. Plus, if after a few years, they feel it's time to take a break, they can do so without feeling like they're letting their boy down. I think training is a big issue. I'd like to see some statistics, but my experience is that not many Webelos leaders are trained to position. They think that because they've already taken two courses, they don't need to take Webelos leader specific. The fact that the three courses are so similar doesn't help either. Leaders who are already starting to feel the burn are't going to be terribly excited about taking a full weekend to take outdoor training. A perfect example is the two Webelos leaders crossing over into the troop with their boys. One has been the den leader since Tigers. He's shot. Told me flat-out don't count on him to do anything. He wants time off and will let us know when he's ready to re-engage. (Right -- I'll hold my breath.) The other guy's son joined the pack mid-Bear year and the dad took over as den leader at the beginning of WebI. He's full of wiz and vinegar and ready to go. He took ASM training LAST SPRING and OLS in the fall. He want's to take Wood Badge. He shows up for troop meetings every few weeks just to see what we're doing. Already signed up to go to summer camp for the full week. Unfortunately, the WDLs I get are about split evenly between these two poles. I have to wonder what kind of Webelos program the first guy has been running the past year. I've sometimes thought that when I retire from the troop, I'd like to do two things: run day camp again and be the full-time Webelos II den leader for the pack. I think having a permanent WebII DL would solve a lot of problems.

Gee whiz, this isn't some sacred rite, like being ordained. It's not even an official part of the program. Whether the kid is crossing over or crossing out isn't that big a deal. Our pack combines AoL and Crossover. In instances where a boy didn't complete AoL, he stayed in his seat for that part of the ceremony and was called up after the AoL ceremony and before the crossover part and crossed over with the rest of his den. When the boys cross over, they cross the bridge and are given new shoulder tabs, troop hat and necker, shake hands with all the Scouts and Scoutmasters and then fall in line with the troop (or troops as the case may be.) If the boy isn't joining a troop, he walks across the bridge, still shakes hands, but keeps going and sits with his parents. No big deal, no one is singled out. We had crossover Friday with both situations and two troops (one Webelos had moved to a neighboring town and joined a troop there.) The only issue is for the Senior Patrol Leaders to know who is who and directs the boys to the proper troop or to his seat.