Jump to content

AKdenldr

Members
  • Content Count

    357
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    4

Everything posted by AKdenldr

  1. It seems to me you need to get out of this drama and pass this old troop on to another District Commissioner. Reason is, key 3 is not taking your very reasonable advice. It may be that you are too familiar to them and they need someone else. It may be that they are crazy and love drama. Your volunteer time and time away from family is wasted here. 5 parent meetings is beyond crazy. I can't image how many conversations, emails, and phone calls you have been involved in.
  2. Hello, I am looking for a scoutmaster minute that had to do with the contribution of others. It went something like this: "Today at this court of honor we are recognizing the achievements of the scouts here, you have made significant achievements in ..... but remember you haven't done this alone, just like a piano there are xxx keys, all the people who have helped you along your scouting journey are playing the other keys, the base line, the high notes, the ....." the Assistant scout masters, the merit badge counselors, the drivers for the camp outs, ..... your parents and family member
  3. Oh and this troop doesn't trust their oldest scouts to hike alone together. No wonder the 17 year old Philmont, Chilkoot hiker scout thinks scouts is boring. The adults make it so.
  4. Lordy, it's not just my son's troop? The reason everyone remembers cubs as being fun is that we ended every meeting with a game. Boy led does not mean without mentoring or a vision of what the scouting program is supposed to deliver. For years I have tried different efforts to get scouting games or the program guide in the planning. Wanted one night a month for patrol meetings so we could get something done, but we were shot down. When we have one night of games everyone loves them.... then it is back to the same boring planning for the next event (or not). Dodge ball.
  5. Although a MB counselor can not add requirements As a cooking merit badge counselor I encourage the young scouts to work on their cooking requirements for rank FIRST. There is no double counting between the rank requirements and the merit badge. So I have one young scout in my group, but the rest have more than a few campouts under their belts. If that young scout uses his campouts right now to focus on cooking requirements for the cooking merit badge he will be slowing down his rank advancement. In addition, I like to limit the number of scouts in a group (8 being a good number for m
  6. I think there are quite a few things the pack could do. 1) Do you have a social media policy? I'll bet custodial parent doesn't want pictures of her tiger in his uniform posted to facebook, anyone's facebook. 2) Explain the 2 deep leadership policy to Tiger mom and how your pack and den events are supervised. 3) Doesn't the medical part a and b form have a space that tells who can take a child from scouting events? In our pack all uniformed adults knew the allergies and medical issues. Why not this also? 4) Pack events aren't really open to the public. They are open to those in the pa
  7. yup and Den Chief. This often is a position that boys go and find themselves.
  8. File a tour permit for every meeting outside our meeting place, heard this repeatedly at council trainings and DID it for YEARS. Our troop is under the mistaken impression that 2 adults are required for 2 scouts to sell popcorn in a grocery store (2 hour shift btw)... This is why my scout never sells anymore. Adults on hike need to hike with the patrol, every darn step of the way. I've seen a pack at day camp making everyone go to the bathroom at the same time because little timmy had to go and two adults had to go with him. Since they only had two adults .... yep, whole pack mi
  9. Welcome to scouting and thanks for being a willing volunteer! I took a den from tigers to boy scouts and they are now high school sophomores, most of them active in scouting. (I still get to work with them on occasion.) I agree that 3/4's of the cub scout experience is in the den. A lot of the tiger year is really about making and keeping friends in a small group. If you are not intending for your son to change schools next year, these friendships are very valuable to your son's development. If the den is working for your son, work on improving that experience. You started that b
  10. I suspect it is related to the FSLA change in this way: many Hr advisors to the non-profit sector are recommending that all titles, job duties, and payroll procedures be reviewed at this point and time. A full HR audit, so to say. A District Executive is really executive of nothing (no full time direct reports to supervise, no budgetary authority of any magnitude, for example.) Program Associate (or District Associate in this case) makes more sense.
  11. The GSA used to publish a subscription based magazine called 'The American Girl' latter named "American Girl". (No relation to the "American Girl" currently published.) Much like BL of today it focused on interesting "I want to do that" and "You can do it" stuff with a bit of common culture (lip gloss, etc) thrown in. Much like the video game articles in BL. Really who ever is publishing BL for the BSA should make a proposal.
  12. Well based on the scout's sound bite, I think he was working on Citz in Com. 'Do the following: a. Attend a meeting of your city, town, or county council or school board; OR attend a municipal, county, or state court session. b. Choose one of the issues discussed at the meeting where a difference of opinions was expressed, and explain to your counselor why you agree with one opinion more than you do another one.' or Communications: 'Attend a public meeting (city council, school board, debate) approved by your counselor where several points of view are given on a single issue. Prac
  13. Don't take any $ from the Webelo families. Tell them to recruit a couple more boys to form a nice group. 4th grade boys are really good at recruiting. Leadership (even shared rotating leadership) should come from within that set of 12 parents, or someone they recruit from outside the organization. Take the money and applications at that point. I'd love to come lead Webelos again... Everyone in the entire pack has to lead -- weither on the committee, as a special event organizer, or as a den leader / assistant den leader.
  14. After the meeting, Boy Scout Mark Nitkiewicz told the Ann Arbor News it was his first public meeting. "It was very interesting, there were a lot of good points," Nitkiewicz said. "I thought everybody had some fair points." Good Citz in Comm public meeting. I'm sure I'll the scouts I counsel on this badge would have been interested and attentive.
  15. I agree with all the advice here. Except a den of 12 tigers is too big. You need 3 dens. Boys do not feel necessary to the club in a large group. (For Tigers this is their first 'club'.) Full participation will suffer. Part of the advantage of scouts is working on social skills in small group settings. You don't get that in a room full of 24 people (plus younger siblings.) If some families drop out and dens are as small as 5 that is a-okay and very good. (My eldest's tiger den was 5 and they all bridged into boy scouts together.) I always capped my dens at 8 because that was
  16. Scouts and troops need extended time with each other away from distractions of normal life (that's why a week of camp is worth more than a year of meetings.) If camps were closed it would put too much pressure on troops to provide their own week long camp type experience. Smaller troops would dwindle.
  17. It is a hard transition. I asked all my crossing Webelos to go to summer camp and try boy scouts for a year. We called it the super glue agreement. Perhaps something like this will work for your son. Is your son in a patrol with the other guys that he crossed over with? Can he plan some activities for the patrol? Perhaps even locate a STEM type merit badge that the rest of the patrol would be interested in (and merit badge counselor.) You could mentor him in making those arrangements. At this age even a sleepover is great fun for a patrol. Boy scouts is individual paced rather t
  18. I think the leader's guide suggests this especially in terms of a personal fitness plan.
  19. 1/2 of 1% is the yield. So for $10,000 in Amazon Smile sales your troop would receive $ 50. Here's an interesting article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brady-josephson/why-amazon-is-smiling-and_b_4360405.html I'm sure there are other reward programs (Kroger in our community) that would have a higher payback for your time and energy in promoting their business and getting your families to enroll. OTOH buy local and get 'good will' in your community. It probably is worth more....Definately more than $ 50.
  20. I agree with Beavah. But the troop does sound unusually chaotic. You might assist at home by helping son be organized. At our house our son copies all blue cards before he hands them to anyone (even adults lose stuff). He also copies the rank pages periodically (in case that handbook gets lost). Periodically we throw those copies out. Do have your son fill out the camping and service logs in the back of his book. Plus find another place (composition note book?) to track all scouting meeting and events: date, activity, miles, what scout did (cooked desert etc...), guest speaker etc.
  21. My guess is that this troop has spent a lot of time boring everyone with announcements and threats in the past about deadlines. No one pays attention because it is like all the popcorn sales announcements in the fall. I'll bet you have organizational skills and a talent with that stuff. If you choose to do it next year: Enlist a friend, and implement some of the changes recommended above, I think you would enjoy your volunteer task more. I personally would not spend the winter making announcements, talking about how terrible it was before, talking about how unappreciated and disrespec
  22. Hands on, announcements at the end. Put them on a piece of paper people can take home. You know, like they do at church? Professionals (and their lackeys) at a table where you can visit them if you wish. (YES great idea) If I am not the popcorn kernel, don't bother me with 15 minutes of announcements over each of the next three months. I do love the recommendation of getting discussion ideas from scouters. Bring in an expert for some of them. I quit going to my RT -- glad someone else has the duty, so I don't know if they have changed much. Our representative comes bac
  23. Round here a Saturday camp would not work. Alaskans are out of town in the summer. During the school year our cub scouts are over scheduled. I don't see how you would get consistent attendance. Our cub camp runs Tuesday* through Friday. It is a cub scout resident camp but is a close enough drive and offers the day time programming to day campers. After our first year of resident cub camp the den leader came back with such stories of 8 2nd grade boys in a cabin at resident camp (in the midnight sun) that our Pack developed the 'tradition' of not sleeping over until WEBS. (The open
  24. Krampus asked, "Does the retailer offer protection of the transaction?" yes. But treasurers from troops should do their own research.
  25. I work for a small non profit. Our credit card processor takes bank account information also. The donations from checking or savings have MINIMAL banking fees (25 cents per transaction). Whereas cc is 2.75 - 3.25 % depending. They provide a secure (they host) processing page where supporters can enter their own (or we do it for them) information. Our website links to that site. Once those payment types are setup for a supporter, they are available in the future for additional charges. The main thing about that webpage is that we can setup the codes for the different funds and events and
×
×
  • Create New...