TSS_Chris

I did this last year and nearly burned myself out. My recommendation is don't try to do too much. If you have a really small Pack, where the three groups together are less than 10 boys, then you can use the combined program. Of course, National has taken the PDF down for the combined program from the Den Leader Resource page. If you've got more than that, you should have dens of 6-8 boys. Anything more than that is an injustice for the boys. If you don't have other leaders you can count on, you're going to need to get the parents to step up. Break down the list of requirements. Have a meeting with all the parents, and make up a calendar of your meetings. Have each parent commit to run one meeting with the goal of getting one Wolf or Bear requirement done, or a decent fraction of a Webelos activity badge. If you don't have the time to pull that together, then use the BSA den leader program pages and just hand those out. If the parents balk, remind them that Cub Scouts is a parent/child program. Remind them you are a volunteer, and don't be afraid to tell them just how busy you are. Give the " if needed.

The post card is the problem! If we didn't have those darn post cards, boys would spend the time to sit down and write their mothers a real letter like boys did when I was a Scout.

@jblake: You're assuming too much. The "Leadership team" is the boys in my view. The adults are the advisers. I only see one disagreement, and that's what happens when a Scout gets hurt. If the boys call EMS, or even think about calling EMS, they damn well better call me next. Period. Doing that doesn't make them "prissy parlor scouts," that proves they are responsible leaders who are bringing every resource at their disposal to bear. If they've got the situation under control, great. If not, the injured boy's health is a lot more important than boy leadership. To twist your words a little: Would a production manager be happy to learn you didn't call him to let him know about a looming shut down because you were devoting all your resources to mitigate the issue that caused it? Would your colleagues accuse you of being prissy because you called him? Seriously?

Related to this thread: Things "back in the day" always seem better than they are in the present. http://xkcd.com/1227/

@jblake47: I feel really sorry for you. Apparently, you've never had a good mentor in your life. Have I had bosses who showed me something, and then threw me to the wolves? Sure, and most of the time the company paid dearly for my hard-won experience. The good ones I've had took the time to explain why each step was important, and let me prove I knew things on a smaller project before going full scale. As for some of your other comments, you don't seem to understand that Scouting is about functioning as a group. If a team of Scouts has the responsibility to load the trailer, and they fail, then they should be accountable to the boy they failed. If the leadership team failed because they gave that assignment without properly supervising or training the individual, then they should be held accountable too. If the Scout incorrectly assumed someone else would take care of their stuff for them, then yes, that's his own problem, and he needs to deal with it. Yes, Scouting is a boy-led program. However, Scouts are minors, so as the adults on the trip, we are morally and legally responsible for their well-being. That doesn't mean we have to take over for them, nor do we have to keep them from having fun, but an occasional prod to make sure they are making the right choices is warranted and welcome. And if someone gets hurt, as the adult in charge, I'm going to be held accountable, so yes, I'd better know about it as soon as it happens. I inadvertently deleted part of my original comment that after a scout gets hurt, the others shouldn't be allowed to run off and play. They need to attend to their friend's injuries -- if appropriate -- or stay with him until the professionals arrive.

@jblake: I agree with you 100% that pencil whipping is worthless. If you want Scouts to really learn to think on their feet you've got to put them in situations where they can fail -- miserably -- and not get hurt. If you're allowing a patrol of FC Scouts to hike alone in the mountains without them first proving they can think on their feet, then you're an irresponsible teacher. You want them to prove they can use that map and compass? Enter them in am orienteering competition through your local IOF chapter. Let them make as many mistakes as they want. It's controlled, so they won't get too lost, but they might score lower than some little old ladies and a den of Tigers. Your other examples are failures of teaching and leadership. If your troop is trusting any one person to pack the trailer alone, then everyone -- including you -- should forgo their sleeping bags in camaraderie with the boy whose was forgotten. If its just a few boys and they're not using the checklist, then the Scout responsible for the final check should give their gear to the boy whose was left behind. And if Jimmy gets hurt, the correct response is to run and get the SM. The SM is the one who is in ultimately in charge of the boys safety. However, the Scouts shouldn't just be allowed to go run and play. @BD: I like JTE because it IS a guide for the clueless. The BSA has precious few of these. But does it surprise you that someone who is short cutting the rank requirements is also short cutting their JTE scorecard too?

Look, in this day and age, you can't be the mythical "Man's Man" anymore who shoots from the hip, and wrestles bears for fun. Let's just think about the post trip briefing: SM Wayne: "Well pardners, we're back. We completed another trip with acceptable losses." Concerned Mother: "Jimmy? Jimmy? Where's my Jimmy?" SM Wayne: "Sorry ma'am." Removes Stetson and holds over heart, "Jimmy was one of the acceptable losses." I'm an Engineer and programmer by day, and a confessed proceduralist. I shoot for JTE gold annually. If ISO-9001 or six-sigma certification was available for Scout units, I'd have that too. There is a reason successful businesses, the military, pilots, and doctors all use standard procedures: Acceptable losses these days are 0. By making the mundane automatic, you can focus on the exceptional situations. (I do take offense to comparing my type to The Donald. He's a bigger cowboy than John Wayne ever was. Let's call us the Edison type.) I see my checklists, spreadsheets and briefing documents justified by those two simple words: "Be Prepared." I don't see that as prissy at all. As for the prissy part, there does seem to be a problem with prissiness in Scout units these days. I'm a CM right now, and I have that problem with my CO's Troop. Our pack camps more often than they do, and has more autonomous boy leadership than they do. I know that I can spend my time on a trip distracting the helicopter parents while they boys be boys. I have the confidence to bring up the rear on hikes, because the boys in the lead know to bring the whole group to a stop when there is a question about which fork in the trail to take -- and my like-minded DLs (two engineers and an accountant) aren't far behind them to jog their memories if needed. As a youth, I had a John Wayne-type SM. He was memorable, but a control freak. When he retired, it took a few years to rebuild a truly autonomous PLC and committee again. It would have been really easy for the unit to turn prissy in the vacuum after his personality left. I'm glad it didn't. BasementDweller is right. It's the adults who make the program prissy. You want an un-prissy program: Give the PLC a JTE scorecard and a blank calendar and tell them to earn the Troop a gold ranking. Tell them the leaders are there to help them, but this is their Troop and their job. You and the rest of the leadership have to be willing to let them make mistakes that get them into trouble, while secretly having that 24-hour store of firewood in your back pocket for when they need to steal the bear's kill (or maybe a backpack full of Power Bars and a water filter instead). In the end, they may not remember you as much as they would if you were John Wayne, but they'll learn more, be less prissy and better prepared.

For the cutoff date, I have to go back to my DE on this one. He's led me to believe that there is a June 1 cutoff date for Cub Advancement. Of course, I can't find any supporting documentation about this.

Yes, we are a grade-based pack, but this was a strange year for us. At the request of our DE, we merged with another pack in the late fall, and I did a recruiting session with my DE at that school in January. We gained 20 members from that school, plus several others from our local school (including this scout) in the first week of January. Our program year usually ends in April because we can't compete with baseball. We had a substantial number who couldn't get the requirements complete during the regular year, so June 17 it is. I've told them that if they show me the work is done, I'll award him the badge in the fall. That still isn't enough for them.

Sorry. My bad. His parents are out of the picture. The boy is being raised by his grandparents. I edited my original post, but I am referring to them.

I'm CM for a Pack and did our last court of honor for the current scout year Monday night. Since then, I've been receiving emails from the grandparent of one of our Bear scouts who didn't get his rank badge. Here is the latest: Now the background: Our Bear Den leader has been been tracking advancement with a slightly modified Bear Trax spreadsheet in his Google Docs account. We know that this boy's grandparents have updated his requirements. The spreadsheet clearly shows he has completed 58% of the requirements for the badge. The Den Leader and I have made several offers to help any boy in the den who wanted to advance. They haven't taken us up on this. Before the Blue and Gold when we told these grandparents that his requirements weren't done their reply was "If [scout] doesn't obtain this badge on Monday, it will not be feasible to attend subject event." The scout does not attend many meetings. When he does, the grandparents are dump and run people. They never interact, volunteer, and in several cases have tried to guilt various leaders into giving them more. (They tried this with me and the Pinewood Derby car.) The Grandmother, who attended Monday's event, stood off to the side and didn't interact with anyone. I approached her during the event, and gave her a pack T-Shirt that they hadn't picked up yet. She didn't discuss this in person then (after the awards ceremony). So I'm putting this out there to my esteemed other Scouter.com members. What do you think is an appropriate reply? I'm leaning towards something along the lines of "Your scout should be disappointed in you, and so should your sons. Go find a new pack."

We meet every Monday night from September through Early April on days when school is in session. (We can't compete with Baseball). When I took over the pack, it had a system where all the dens meet every week at our CO. On "den meeting" nights, we open as a group and then the Scouts split off into their dens. On "Pack Meeting" nights, we'll do a group event which may be at our CO, or may be a field trip somewhere else. This year our Pack Meetings were: Sept (2): Back to School recruiting & Popcorn Kickoff, Oct (2): Hayride & Halloween Party, Nov: None, Dec: Bowling Party, Jan: Police visit, Feb: None, Mar (2): Blue & Gold & Pinewood Derby Workshop, April: Pinewood Derby, May: Outdoor fun night & Webelos crossover.

@SeattlePioneer: I don't mean to be too negative about the pumpkins, I still think this is a great idea that helps the kids learn what it means to grow something and reach a long-term goal. However knowing my sons (Tiger & Bear), there would be tears if they couldn't carve a pumpkin because theirs didn't grow. For our event, we promote it heavily: Posters in our CO and at local businesses, a special page on the website, email blasts, news releases, articles in our local Patch. For the boys we call it "bring a friend" night, and I award recruiter strips for anyone who brings a friend that signs up. For the meeting itself, it's Cub Scouting Lite. The uniform is Halloween costumes. We still open with the Pledge, Promise and Law. After that we break the group up into Dens, with the guests included as part of the Den, and have vparents run various Halloween-themed game/activity stations. For this year the stations were: make Oreo spiders, ring toss with glow-in-the-dark necklaces on pumpkins, see how much the den remembers of a tray of Halloween & Scouting themed items, and a candy-corn relay where the den needs to transfer candy corn from one bowl to another 20' away using a teaspoon. Really, you could use any kind of group game that can be tweaked so it is Halloween themed. If you've got a parent that has a fog machine, that adds a great mood to the night, especially if you have a place where some of the stations can be done outdoors. A snack station rounds out the stations for each of the 5 dens. We rotate stations every 5-8 mins to keep the kids from getting bored. At the end of the meeting, we have a dance/costume contest (where I pick inactive parents to be the judges) and a group photo opportunity. The boys enjoy this. Two of the three schools we draw from don't allow the kids to wear their costumes to school, so it gives them a chance to show off their costumes to their friends. With all of the current parents involved in activities, it gives me and the other committee members time to talk to the prospective parents and answer their questions. Usually, if their kids had fun, they come back. Our event this past year was a washout -- literally. We had to cancel it because of Hurricane Sandy, so I can't give you good membership numbers. Ask me again in November. Two years ago, we got about 30% of the guests who showed up that night signed up as members. Most who signed up were friends of a current Cub Scout who missed our "back to school night" meeting because of a fall sport commitment.

If you want to do this, you're probably going to budget for pumpkins for everyone when the time comes. I've tried growing pumpkins in my garden for the last 5 or more years, and haven't yet been able to harvest one. They've succumbed to drought, blight and squirrels. A better idea would be to have a separate pumpkin growing competition and then a carving competition. We use our October meeting as a membership drive. For us, Halloween is when soccer, football and the other fall sports end. We seem to get more recruits and returning Scouts at these meetings than we do at our regular meetings. We try something similar: Everyone wears their costume. At the beginning of the night, we've got Halloween game/activity stations for the boys to rotate through, one per den. We finish the evening off with a costume contest.

I had the exact opposite experience as Basementdweller and Fehler. In the fall, I was approached by my district's professionals and volunteers about having joint meetings with another area pack that was in a leadership crisis. I'm now on the charter as CM of both units! The goal, of course, is to get these two units back operating as independent units again. My original unit was in the 25-30 member level. With the two units, we're now at 49 members. I will say having that many boys makes some of the events more fun. However, if we stay together and grow again next year, we're going to have to find a new hall to hold our Blue & Gold in. We were over capacity for one of our CO's halls, and right at capacity for the other one's.

Maybe it's time to move over to Hacker Scouts. http://hacker-scouts.org/join

Yes. There is a FAQ. It says "This is the only resolution, there won't be another one, and the Executive board won't be looking at this again in the foreseeable future." http://scoutingmagazine.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/membership-standards-frequently-asked-questions.pdf

Kahuna: You can (somewhat reliably) get to these using the "Latest Posts" button at the top left of the page. There are definitely some serious issues in this version of the vBulletin software. I can't understand how a vendor can release a paid piece of software like this that doesn't properly paginate posts.

Here's the problem with your logic SeattlePioneer, the BSA only accepts a leader's application after the CO has signed it. Under this policy change, a CO that doesn't want a homosexual (or any other subset of the population) as a leader can still prevent an individual from joining by instructing their COR not to sign the leader's application and not to submitting the application to the BSA. Meanwhile, if another CO accepts homosexuality, charters a BSA unit, and their COR signs an open homosexual's adult app with the acceptance of the other members of that unit, why shouldn't that person be permitted to join? I can see why this scares some of the big churches so much: They've seen the BSA's legal battles to keep this policy in place, and they're happy to have the BSA use its funds to defend this policy instead of their own. If the new "local option" were to be enacted, the BSA can wash their hands of a discrimination issue, because the person's application was never submitted to the BSA. Now any CO that has a potentially discriminatory policy based on their values will need to expend their own resources to defend the legality of their actions.

Good point Basementdweller. I just took a quick look through their "Wall of Supporters", and that's probably the least diverse group of people I've seen in a long time. I'm thinking it might be fun to send in my picture with an Inclusive Scouting knot on my uniform just to see what happens. http://www.inclusivescouting.net/store/. Of course, groups like this usually process irony about as well as this site processes vbCode.

The opposition to this is organizing. Facebook just showed me an ad for OnMyHonor.net[/url=http://www.onmyhonor.net/]. "OnMyHonor.net is the official coalition of concerned parents, Scout Leaders, Scouting Donors, Eagle Scouts and others affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America who are united in their support of Scouting’s timeless values and their opposition to open homosexuality in the Scouts."

The opposition to this is organizing. Facebook just showed me an ad for OnMyHonor.net[/url=http://www.onmyhonor.net/]. "OnMyHonor.net is the official coalition of concerned parents, Scout Leaders, Scouting Donors, Eagle Scouts and others affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America who are united in their support of Scouting’s timeless values and their opposition to open homosexuality in the Scouts."

@Rick & @Terry: I just Googled "vBulletin issues", and there are pages of complaints about vBulletin since their buyout several years ago. It appears that the first release by the new owners, vB 4, is also really buggy. The original owners have gone on to form XenForo because of these issues. There is also a decent discussion of different alternatives at Webmasters.SE of other alternatives.

@Faith: I haven't found any other good forums. I'm a fan of Stack Exchange for my Q&A needs. There is a "Scouting" proposal in the works that needs followers. If enough frustrated users headed over there, I'm sure that could progress to the beta phase fairly quickly. The Scouting site is here: http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/48967/scouting?referrer=eKJibTP9TwZtNFqZvCsdgA2. (Read the FAQ if you've never used SE before. Personally, I had been trying to register since December, but wasn't able to. I finally got registered last month, and now I appear to be gone.