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First Year as a Bear Den Leader


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my first year as a Bear den leader is coming to a close. Wish I had found this site sooner but should prove useful for the next group of scouts. Anyway, relatively new to the scouting experience, and definitely new to the forum so greetings to everyone, hope to get some good advice later on and might even give some from time to time.

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MarkF.. Welcome!

 

Sort of tagging on to Seattles questions -

 

You said "my first year as a Bear den leader is coming to a close." and

"useful for the next group of scouts"

 

I may be wrong, but it sounds like you are not moving through the ranks as the Den leader for your son and the others in his den.. Rather you are planning to release your Bear Den to someone else for Webelos, and pick up on a new set of Bears..

 

Not bad, but it is rare as most adults are enjoying the expirence with their sons, so want to go through the program with them, climbing the ranks as they climb.. If your program is set up different, I'd love to hear more about it..

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  • 3 weeks later...

First my apologies for my poor forum etiquette (that's putting it politely I know).

 

Next, my (belated) thanks to Paul, phips, scoutfish (aka other MarkF) and everyone else for your kind words and welcomes.

 

To Seattle pioneer and moosetracker: It has been a pretty good year all things considered but also rather weird. Our group is small. The year started out with my son being involved in football and since there was only one other bear, we put him and the webelos together and I assisted the other ... um ... leader. Looking back, I am not sure what den leader he was as our cubmaster doubles as our webelos leader. Of course this was on paper, so as it turned out, I was the assistant to this guy who taught the webelos and my one bear. Not the best arrangement but as I said our group was small. As things progressed, we picked up some additional bears with our fall recruitment and it became obvious I would have to separate them from the webelos. As it turned out, the leader I was assisting and our cubmaster had a disagreement and he (the leader, NOT the cubmaster) quit. Unfortunately the cubmaster doesn't communicate very well (and I did not take enough initiative to contact him and ask either I am afraid) so I did not know what we would be doing at our next meeting. Between the two of us we managed to put something together at the last minute. After that, I had something planned for each meeting with only a few exceptions. Next year, I am not sure what will happen. My son will be a first year webelo and the cubmaster's son will be a second year webelo. I would like to advance and be the webelos leader but I am not sure the cubmaster will allow it. At least not on paper, tho if things continue as they are now I will be the de facto webelos (and probably bear) leader anyway. I don't like the situation but it is what it is.

 

My camping and outdoor skills are pretty good, tho admittedly I have some gaps and lack of practical experience with certain things but so far those are few and far between.

 

Thanks again for the warm welcome.

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Hi Mark!

 

I'm getting ready for my first year as the Wolf den leader for my pack. My son is a Tiger, and the cubmaster has been acting as both the Tiger den leader and the cubmaster both...he was pretty happy to find that someone was interested in taking over for next year!

 

In the process of getting ready, I have found the 'Den and Pack Meeting Guide' book published by BSA to be really useful. The book is only like $6, and has den meeting plans for all levels of cubs...and they even published most of it online for free.

 

Here's a link to the Webelos I page, if you are interested.

 

http://scouting.org/scoutsource/CubScouts/Leaders/DenLeaderResources/DenandPackMeetingResourceGuide/WebelosDenPlans.aspx

 

Best of luck!

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