WisconsinMomma

On 9/25/2018 at 2:09 PM, Eagle94-A1 said:

 

 But the DE said that pack will be accepting girls.

 

Um, it's not the DE's job to dictate to the Pack, as I'm sure you know.  Can you have your COR call the DE and put them back in their place? 

If a DE is being a PITA, then let the Scout Executive know that they've got a professional that's hurting the program. You will have to be aggressive to change things and protect your unit.  

Now, of course you should be polite and kind and encouraging to the girls and their families and let them know there is a misunderstanding and that your Pack is not working with girls yet.  Send them back to the DE to start a new unit. 

We have two girls in our Pack now!  They are sisters, a 1st grader and a 2nd grader.   

I asked if we might pull in a few more girls, but was told that every other 2nd grade girl is already in Girl Scouts, and that these two girls are not "Girl Scouty".

I like them already.  Their mom is volunteering in the Pack as an assistant Den leader and we'll make the whole thing work. 

I would just read the requirements to make sure he's qualified to become an AOL scout and cross over.  I like the idea of challenging him to complete the Webelos requirements before a promotion.  The kid can work for it.  Talk to your committee, this isn't just your decision as it affects two of your den leaders.  What do they want?  It's not just all about this scout and what the scout wants. It's also about being part of the Pack community and following BSA advancement guidelines. 

This web page may be helpful. A 4th grade student is a Webelos, but if they complete Webelos they may begin work on AOL.

https://www.scouting.org/programs/cub-scouts/what-cub-scouts-earn/the-advancement-trail/

https://www.scouting.org/discover/faq/question1/

I would guess that this family wants their child to join Boy Scouts next year at age 10 with an AOL award qualifier, and then will go for Eagle at a young age.  But that isn't our business. Just follow the advancement guidelines. 

When the daughter is 30 will the mom call the supervisor at work and ask why the daughter did not get a pay increase?  Sometimes this happens in real life!!  It's crazy.  

You just have to hold firm with the way that things work in Scouts.  You can't bend the rules for a complainer. 

SSF, their performance as CEOs of public companies has been stellar. I don't think you'll find much argument with the results. 

You can also look at CEO Katrina Lake of Stitch Fix. She founded the company, no one had to hire her!   But at Harvard Business School, her idea was flogged as unworkable, and the venture capitalists mostly rejected her company.  This ultimately made her build company stronger in the face of those challenges. She has some very talented men working with her, and she has stopped working with a board member that made her uncomfortable.  Good for her! 

Sometimes the female candidates are the most qualified.  Take a look at CEO Jayshree Ullal of Arista Networks, for example.  Also note she was not educated in the US.  Indira Nooyi, at Pepsi, similar background. 

1 hour ago, SSF said:

I would argue that this trend is definitely changing within both tech and the finance industries. On the flip side though, some professions are heavily dominated by women - media and public relations being two.

in the wake of the 'women earn 77 cents on the dollar,' (a figure that's been highly contested and disproven) a lot of companies in tech and in other industries are trying to virtue signal by highlighting and publicizing their commitment to advancing opportunities for women at the executive levels; i.e. it's not a question of hiring or promoting the most qualified candidate, but hiring or promoting the most qualified female candidate.

People are more interested in promoting women, but how many of them are tokens? I agree that the wage gap is mostly because of parenting choices, which is perfectly fine.  

Media and PR have a lot of women but look at the top, how many women at the top?  Look at MeToo and see how many men are at the top of big media and er, taking advantage of it.   Same thing with medicine, look at the top  -- it's maybe more even but not woman dominated -- there are definitely more opportunities for women in industries that have a lot of female employees.  It's easy to be the female owner of a housekeeping company but that's not what I'm talking about. 

2 hours ago, cocomax said:

 

Colleges are happy to dumb classes down to welcome in more students to rake in more money.   

 

Easy money for student loans has definitely not helped.  

1 hour ago, SSF said:

 I personally always thought that was very juvenile, and deceptiive, on her part.

1

Why? Her name is Christine and nickname Chris.  It's her name, she can use it the way she wants to. What if someone is named Robin or Morgan or Andi? Is that deceptive?  

with the average male college applicant more likely to be accepted into a college than ever before,

Really? I was under the impression that colleges are becoming more female-heavy and that admissions are becoming more and more competitive.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/08/why-men-are-the-new-college-minority/536103/

It's hard to say, are boys rejecting college or are colleges rejecting boys?  I don't know, I worried it was the latter.  There is a push towards the trades and I wonder if more boys than girls are getting pushed toward the trades...

20 hours ago, gblotter said:

So now that boys are the segment of society that is falling behind, how bad must it get before we get some recognition of their unique needs? How far ahead must girls be before boys become deserving of specialized attention and tailored programs?

This is complicated.  On the one hand, if I look at one schools National Honor Society members, there are a whole lot of girls and not many boys.

On the other hand, when I look at CEOs of tech companies, or employees in a finance-related business I work with, there are a whole lot of men in the prime roles and not many women.  I think it's great that some women are participating at the highest levels.  Not all women want to get there, but it's still a harder road for women to get there than men. 

Randi Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg's sister and the person who came up with the idea for Facebook Live) said in an interview that something you can do to help your daughter is to give her a boyish name -- people would agree to meetings with "Randy"  but then be continually surprised when a female showed up. 

Learning to hunt and fish for food are great life skills.  Sorry PETA, this suggestion is no good.  

Gender is not really any of the BSA's business.  Sure, a child will need to pick a boy or girl troop.  OK, that's all.  It ends there.

As for all of this medical intervention in teens, basic common sense would suggest that young people need to reach adulthood before making these kinds of medical moves.  Yes, puberty is awkward, but it is important.  Why would any doctor commit to life altering elective surgery on a healthy minor?  It's irresponsible. 

Do the troops around you do patch trading?  I don't think this is a thing in our area, or I've not seen it yet. 

Just for a little reference, I have never been backpacking in my life, and neither has my husband, an ASM.  I would bet that very few of the parents in our den have ever been backpacking.  For us, we don't have experience to share, although we might start to get some of that experience now that our kids are older.  We started out car camping 5 years ago when our oldest was about 4 years old (and fully potty trained!)

We also don't really have backpacking gear, but again, we could start learning.  I think it's a great goal but not an easy goal for troops to get into backpacking. 

I heard a cute story that our Troop had a French foreign exchange student at summer camp this year, and everybody liked him, and he was a good cook!  He was voted assistant patrol leader for the Beavers, and they added an assistant, assistant patrol leader who's local.  

One of the prizes our new Cubmasters are doing (I can't remember for what) but they said they would cook a meal at camp as a prize for something or another, and so its now known that our boys like to eat. 

Gblotter can you baby step your troop into more camping? 

35 minutes ago, qwazse said:

Answer:

!!!!!!!!!!!! NO !!!!!!!!!!!!!

He should sew his own.

I need to teach them to sew, soon.  It's not that hard.  I think they don't really care about all the camp patches and whatnot, so I have been putting them on these red blankets since they were cubs.  All 3 boys have decent collections.  I would like them to start sewing their own MBs.  

1 hour ago, HashTagScouts said:

Get a three ring binder and some plastic photo sheets, and start setting up a memory book for him to display at his Eagle COH. You can include photos from events, any newspaper clippings, any leaflets from places visited, as well as wristbands or ticket stubs, etc. 

We like, don't have any photos printed out, and will need to work on making a scrap book at some time for sure.  The only thing I've been "helping with" is keeping a file with baseball card size slots for completed blue cards, and we keep that in the fireproof safe (and take photos of the completed blue cards and upload a copy for cloud storage.) 

OK, so we have some miscellaneous patches, for example, my oldest was Scribe and now he's not.  He also is First Class now, yeah! 

Should I sew his old Scribe patch and 2nd class patch on his patch blanket?  Should I sew the old 2nd class on the back of his MB sash?

I should put these things somewhere.  

It seems any of these options are OK, I usually don't see anything on the back of the MB sashes but it's permitted.  If they get the same POR again, I'd just take it off the blanket and put it back on the uniform.

Any thoughts? 

My middle son did archery at summer camp but his MB was incomplete.  The camp returned his blue card with an incomplete note stapled to it.

At last night's troop COH, he was given an Archery MB, doh!  And he got back the blue card with the incomplete note stapled to it and it's not a signed blue card.

So, it seems that we need to hold this merit badge and either have my son practice his archery to get his targets hit to whatever standard for the MB (that was the only thing he didn't complete) or he just skips finishing this MB.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? 

Now how hard is it to get good enough in archery to make these points, etc?  This is not my area at all!  He will need to connect with a local archery counselor.

I've got a Bear den that is struggling for leadership.  A mom was the den leader but something happened with her family, new baby, move, etc.  They are not participating.  Then a dad was den leader, but he is struggling and wants to step back to assistant den leader this fall.  We have like nine scouts and no adult to step up at the moment.  Our secretary has a son in bears and complains about the guy saying he wasn't doing enough.  But to be fair, he'd try to organize an event and no one would get back to him with replies, and that's not easy.  

So, how would you invigorate this bear den?  I need to defuse the secretary who really has a strong dislike for the assistant den leader, like, I think she hates his guts right now. We want to keep him as an assistant den leader because we'll take what we can get, also, his wife is our new advancement chair, so they're committed, and I think good people, it's just a little wobbly.  Another dad is a candidate that we may be able to recruit as den leader but he travels a LOT so maybe we can get the two guys teamed up and working together.  The other parents, in the secretary's estimation, are not people who will step up. 

Any other suggestions or experience to add?  Thanks! 

Regarding fiefdoms, well....  isn't this called networking? 

I'll just say that I'm a total nobody (not really), but Wood Badge helped me meet great Scouters and it has made opening some doors easy. I have two instant allies in my WB course director and my WB ticket advisor, and they are automatically interested in me doing work for them via the WB ticket!  I have to go do stuff and contribute, and everyone will help me because I say the magic words "wood badge ticket".   If you want to try it, it could work for you, too!   Think of Wood Badge as your premium Scouting Networking channel, if you don't need the leadership training, then it's your team leadership onboarding program and networking event where you get to meet about 50 - 75 other people who love Scouting like you do. 

The thing is, in Boy Scouts you can't really go it all alone, you need a team.  You need to be part of a team and WB seems to be how you get on a team and get people on your team. 

I've felt rejected in Scouting a lot, not at Wood Badge, but from some folks locally, and it sucks, and I'm sorry for anyone who has had that kind of experience.  But the thing is you have to reach out and find your people in Scouting and make your team.  I'm sure there have to be some good people in your area that you can team up with. 

But yes, you need Council approvals on some things.  Offering help at District might be easier if your Council is difficult. 

You always have to find the nicest people and go where they are -- they're out there somewhere! 

I have a big problem with organizations that whine that they have no volunteers, but then are mean to the people who volunteer for them!  Why does this happen??!!   If it weren't so sad it would be funny. 

They want it done by October 1!

I am watching it and need to take a break, this is a good training but it is not easy to go through. 

1 hour ago, Eagledad said:

A district is only as good the leader. The leader could be the District Chairman, District Commissioner, or even the DE. But you will find the better Districts hand recruit the District positions.

 

 

Most of the time I really don't care what our District is doing.  I care about what the Unit is doing, and... the only reason I offered to help with BALOO is because it's a wood badge ticket, I had taken BALOO in years past, and I knew they were short on trainers because they asked all the new BALOO trained people a few months later if they wanted to come help teach the course.  It was very easy to walk on to teach BALOO, and it was also very easy to volunteer to run a Council wide Traffic safety merit badge -- all I had to do was connect with the right person and say hey -- this my ticket, and they are very welcoming and supportive.

Now, it's not easy in my Council to get picked as a Wood Badge staffer.  I'm not eligible yet but it's a more choosy thing and you need to be networked with the course director and generally known for being good at stuff. 

ETA: Note, I am going to more district meetings now that I'm a CM, but as a DL, the district stuff was of no concern, it's all about the den. 

2 hours ago, cocomax said:

It almost sounds like you are trying to shame me,  point out you are better than me and telling me what to do. Interesting,  I do get that a lot,  I have can come to expect it.

 

Not at all!  But if you had a bad training and it's a subject and organization you care about, and you clearly have the skills to teach it -- go for it!

I don't know what to say about the politics in your Council, but surely, someone somewhere is probably desperate for help and you could be just the person to fill in or take a tiny piece here and there so you are not such a big star.  Sometimes in my courses,  a person has come out to teach just an hour or two and then they leave!  That's actually really nice for the trainer and the program. 

ETA: Whatever you are doing for Scouting, thank you!  If you want to help make better leaders, then getting into training is a great way to do it.