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

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 wo

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,

@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

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 uni

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 a

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

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

@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 t

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 meeting

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 t

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 per

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.