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dennism

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Posts posted by dennism

  1. Thank you for all of the great ideas. This has been extremlly helpful. Here is a summary of what I have planned.

     

    1) Talk to the DE

    2) With the assistance of the DE find a chartered organization. I have six in mind. I have no doubt that three would say yes.

    3) Talk to the chartered organization and get them on board.

    4) Communicate to the local packs about their cub scout crossing over can stay in town.

    5) Talk to closest troops to my town just in case they may have some scouts or adults that would prefer to be in their own town. And to let them know I will not be recruiting from their troops.

    6) Offer a cub scout weekend and do the Outdoorsman for Webelos II from both packs.

    7) Attempt to get current troop to allow this new troop to be a patrol in their troop until the first of the year. If we can get some scouts now they could advance prior to the begining of the year.

    8) Prior to the first of the year work with potential adults and scouts to set direction for the troop.

    9) Gather equipment that troop can use for one patrol.

    10) Run fundraising in local town for Christmas tree recyling to get funds. Include some recruitment in flyers.

    11) Work with the city to get word out about troop and fundraising.

    12) Rent booth at local celebration in August and team up with both packs for recruiting cub scouts and boy scouts.

     

    I have communicated to today's Webelos II scouts. All have chosen troops. I have asked that they keep out town in mind if their troop is not what they want it to be.

     

    I am sure that I have additional steps that I will be taking to move forward.

     

    Thanks again for all of the great suggestions.

     

    Dennis

     

  2. I live in a community of about 24,000 people. In our community we have two successful packs that have been around for at least 25 years each.

     

    All of the boys in both packs have to go to another town when they cross over to boy scouts. We have a number of troops in neighborhooding towns that are 4 to 10 miles away. Our community used to have a boy scout troop that folded about 10 years ago from what I can gather. The town has changed a lot in those 10 years and is really growing.

     

    I have been in many positions in cub scouts. For the district I am a new unit commissioner that I currently assist one great pack. I have been through a lot of scout training. I have been with a troop in a neighboring community for about 18 months.

     

    I am interested in starting a Boy Scout troop in our community. I think we should have the scouts that live in our town be able to continue to support the community as a representative of their local boy scout troop.

     

    The real question that I have is what is the best time of year to start a new boy scout troop?

     

    Any advice that you can provide would be appreciated.

     

    Thanks!

    Dennis

     

     

     

  3. Thanks for all of your reply's. This information is very helpful.

     

    There are a few comments that I would like to make.

     

    1) I totally understand that I could have handled this better my self. My preference would have been to find a way to talk to the SPL and encourage him to look at how the troop was hiking and see if there wasn't a way to pull the troop closer while they hike. This ASM does not allow other ASM to talk to the SPL without going through him. He will even pull that on the SM. Maybe some of my frustration of not allowing the younger scouts to get a break came out. BTW, it was more than my son that was not getting breaks. I will learn from this myself.

     

    2) The SM was not on the hike because he needed some time away from the ASM that pushed and yelled at me.

     

    3) I know without a doubt that after this issue I handled this situation exactly as I would have wanted my son or any scout to handle it. I was the one who did everything that I could to diffuse the situation after the incident. The ASM that pushed me even commented to me about how patience I was with him during the week. I had other ASM's comment that they would not be so calm in this situation.

     

    4) In an effort to keep my post short I may not have been as clear as I wish I would have been on my origional post. You see I am new to ASM and have not used this forum very much either.

     

    5) I followed up with the SM yesterday. He is at a total loss about how to handle this ASM other than to just let him be scoutmaster again.

     

    6) I always tell my son that if you tell me the truth there still may be repercussions for your actions, but it will be less than if you had told me a lie. I feel that same about this situation. Even though he apologized for his actions and I accepted his apologue, there should still be consenquences for his actions. You see this is not the first time this ASM has blown a fuse. And in a wierd way I understand him more than anyone else in the troop. None of that changes the fact that there is always consequences for his actions and mine or the SM.

     

    7) I guess that I feel there is never a reason for any adult leader or scout to get physical with another in any way, shape or form. And I was looking for input on who I should talk to about this issue to help the troop move forward as this is an on-going problem.

     

    Thanks!

     

  4. I am an Assistant Scoutmaster with a local troop. This last week we were on a hike with our troop at summer camp.

     

    The faster older scouts would stop for a break until the younger slower scouts would catch up. Then the older scouts would move on not allowing the younger scouts to have a break. After about 3 times of this I asked my son, who was in last place, to stop as soon as the older scouts started moving along on the trail. I moved about 10 feet up and asked for a buddy check. The acting SPL called the buddy check and said everything was ok and for the troop to move on. I asked what about him, and point back to my son who they did not count.

     

    One of the Assistant Scoutmasters (previous scoutmaster) asked my son what he was doing back there. My son responded "My dad told me to stand here". The assistant scoutmaster came totally un-glued and had a melt down with me. He yelled some very hurtfully things that the scouts did not need to hear. While he was yelling at me he was also using his chest to push me around.

     

    I found this totally unacceptable and just kept quite as we tried to get through the hike. Later that evening, I sat down next to him thinking we could talk about what happened during the hike. The first thing he did was to apologize for his actions on the hike. I told him that there are two things that I just cannot tolerate. One is getting physical with anyone. And the second is to attack my kid like he did. He honestly did not remember doing the chest bumping. But did admit that is his MO when he gets angry. He did not respond to the verbal attacks on my son.

     

    My question is what do I do about this?

     

    This leader is known for verbal outbursts in the past with the troop not really addressing this issue. In addition I have talked to other leaders about taking over as committee chair fairly soon. I feel I could help the troop the most by ignoring this assistant scoutmasters action this time until I get to the committee chair position. However, his actions should not go without notice.

     

    Should I talk to the current Committee Chair? She will not do anything about this. Should I talk to the Chartered organization rep? Position currently open and the Chartered organization is nothing more than parents of the kids in the troop, mostly currently leaders. Should I talk to the Unit Commissioner? Position currently empty. Should I talk to the DE? Again, position currently empty but we do have an acting DE for one day per week. Do I talk to the Council? Do I talk to the police? I work with the local police department. I do not think this would benefit anyone personally or professionally.

     

    Bottom line, I want what is best for the program long term not this individual issue.

     

    Thanks!

  5. I am wondering if anyone has a good process that they have used to decide on a patrol name for the Webelos?

     

    Tonight I thought I would try and let the boys run this part of the decision making. I gave them some basic instructions on how to act and communicate to come to a decision. They started out great! Then 4 of the 6 boys decided they would just make a decision. One of the boys did not ever get to talk about the name that he wanted. The 6th boy kept on changing his mind. I am thinking that I gave them too much rope and they eventually hung themselves.

     

    So, how do I get this turned around to be a positive experience for all with a positive outcome?

  6. When I started in cub scouts with my son we were really confused about how things worked. It seamed that things just happened based on what the committee chair wanted. Typically good things happened but many decisions did not make sense to me.

     

    Then about a year ago I took over as the committee chair for our Pack. During that time we have made attempts to document the process that we have and create a standardized process for the topics that were somewhat gray. I am hoping that this will create an inclusive environment and help incoming scout families understand our pack.

     

    One of the processes that we are somewhat stuck on is providing scholarships to scouts that truly need it. In the past we have provided 100% scholarships to any Cub Scout family that asked for it. People started learning about this and we had a number of requests. The question that I had is what process was used to determine the need? And do we really need to provide a 100% scholarship? The leader manual says that each scout should pay his own way. This can be done in many different was.

     

    So the question that I have is does anyone have a written process for providing scholarships to scouts that you might be willing to share?

     

    Thanks!

     

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