Katydid

OGE and Nldscout. When the committee began the selection proces we asked the NSM to come meet with the boys and take part in some activities with them. So for 2 months he did this. He seemed like a good guy, still does. He was very complimentary to the way the troop was run, said he thought the SPL was doing a great job. But kind of whiplash like we hired him and immediately at the committee meeting he started talking about the changes that needed to be made. So I guess ya never know the "stranger" until they want you to know them. But we shall plod along. Parents started to complain about him so maybe it won't be too long until we start the process of rehiring.

Thank You guys, I thought I heard all of this correctly at training, I also read the training manual. The scoutmaster in question feels that everything the troop did up to his taking "command" was wrong. He is new to our Troop. Son not very active. He has declared that our boy led troop is not working. He went so far as to tell the senior patrol leader that he no longer needed to make a plan for the meetings that he would do it. Next meeting the Scoutmaster is ill. Luckily the SPL has a plan prepared. Of course the next week the Scoutmaster had a complaint with this. The boys should have called him when he did not show up. So me and another committee member talked to him and explained to him that change should come gradually or the boys would hate him. He said he is there to be their leader not their buddy so they did not have to like him. We will once again encourage him to be trained.

This seems like a very easy requirement for a Scout to complete. My son has been asked many times if he could go to the movies on a Saturday and his reply has been "no I have a scouting camp-out this week" The friend usually asks what they do at the camp out and my son tells him. Requirement met. Last week one of his friends asked him how to join scouts. He said that the activities sound like fun.

Last Month my sons troop whcih I am the Committee Chairperson for selected a new Scout Master. Since his selection he has become a thorn in my side. Last week he told me that I had no right to question his decisions made about the troop. And furthermore he would tell me what he needed from me and the committee until then we could just basically twittle our thumbs. After several conversations with him I was close to quitting but the boys in the Troop said that I am the only one who seems to be fighting for them. So here I still am. But I am quickly losing my scouting spirit. I am slightly confused. Does our Troop committee have the right to question the Scoutmaster on issues of Fairness, Safety, the way he speaks to his senior patrol leader and other issues? Is it not our right to make sure the boys in the troop are happy? Don't we also have the right to fire the Scoutmaster and interview the next one better.

Gopherjudy I will tell you as a family that moves alot that this is a problem which military families face all the time. My son was born in September. He started kindergarten in New York. We then moved to another state where the cut of Was is August. My son was a whole year younger than the kids in his class. We had to hold him back a year. He just did not fit in with these other boys. They were talking girls and he was still playing with match box cars. We run into the problem alot with sports. Little league. Half the class is in one age bracket the other half is in another. The only way to solve the problem is a nationalized standard cut off for school to start.

This is a quote from the Judge presiding over the Michael Jackson case: Judge Melville's penchant for order may arise from a time when his personal life was rather less orderly. He has acknowledged taking his first drink during a Boy Scout trip when he was 11 or 12 years old and quickly beginning a destructive 20-year love affair with alcohol, including drinking and driving in high school, binge drinking in college and indulging to the point of blacking out as a young lawyer in Santa Maria in the 1970's full story http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050228100709990001

last year I was consoleing the boys who lost thier races and were eliminated from the pine wood Derby. One Senior Webelos said "That's o.k. now I can run it on the consolation track. We are going to see whose car flies off the end the farthest". From the mouths of boys an audible gasp was of course heard from the father another boy said "I told my dad he made it wrong" I long for the day when the Pinewood Derby is a track set up and the boys sticking their cars on whilly nilly and racing them down the track. No winner no loser just the fun of the race. Much like sandlot ball before Little Leagues came along.

Thank you very much for your suggestions. Our committee is very interested in seeing this boy Reach the Eagle Rank. He is a really great kid who many times gets overlooked because people think he is stupid. From talking to him many times I can tell you he is far from stupid. He just has problems expressing himself. So our first solution is to always have an adult with him when he talks to the organizations he needs to contact. That way we can be sure of what he is telling and what is being told. In the next week we will be meeting with his LD coach to determine how much additional help he may need. This is a boy who has worked for several years at scout camp and works extensively with the youth in our community. We are all cheering for him. He is also the first to volunteer for scout service projects.

I work with Both Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts. I have a yellow shirt for when I work with the Cubs and a Tan for when I work with the Boy Scouts. My problem is that when I purchased my Tan shirt the store only had a mens large. I needed one right away so I said O.K. I will make do with that. The tails on this shirt are so long. When I try to tuck it in i have say too much shirt to tuck. My solution for the moment is to tuch the tails up inside my shirt. Unless someone takes a really good look at me they can't tell that I a tucked up and not in. Why do i have 2 shirts? I like to wear my Cub Scout leader rank for Cub Scout functions and my Boy Scout leader rank for Boy Scout functions. I know I could just change the epulets(?) but I prefer to change the whole uniform.

We found that we a problem with parents leaving early. By the time the Crossover ceremony began only the Webelos II Parents and the clean up team were left. We decided to have the Arrow of Light ceremony in February and the Crossove ceremony in March. We do the Crossover after dark at a campfire. The dark tends to slow the little guys down. We have a Karaoke Machine that runs on batteries that we use as our sound system. Another thing we do different is we don't push every Den to receive their Advancement (Tiger , Wolf etc.) at the Blue and Gold Banquet. They get it when they are finished. No rush we have 3 more months. Last year they trickled in which was nice. We ended up doing one rank a month. We had a cake or ice cream after each one.

Greg, NOw the first thing you have to do is recite the Peace Prayer several times. I do this every night when I help my children with their homework and it really helps. My second thing is a suggestion for next year. I went to the grocery store last week and sitting out front was a Cub Scout Pack collecting food. They were passing out flyers at the entrance and collecting food at the exit. They said they worked one weekend the Girl Scouts worked one weekend and the Boy Scouts another. On their second day the Cubs were at 800 packages of food. Sounds like a lot less walking

A scout in our troop has a mild learning disablility. I believe it is called thought processing disorder. From what I understand it is an organizational difficulty. The example his parents used is that he can know in his head how to do a task but it fdoesn't come out of the hand right. He is 17 and still working hard toward earning his Eagle Scout award. His parents would like to know how much help they should give him for his Eagle Scout project. Some in the troop feel they should let him work on it just like the other boys, Others who are teachers feel that they should provide him the same amount of help that is provided for his schoolwork. To make a long story short we need to know what to tell them now. Running out of time. Has anyone had experience with this issue?

Ka, You could try a product called Goof Off. They make a special kind for fabric. We had the same problem. We did not glue or iron on our patches all though they were the iron on kind. I can only assume that the dryer melted the backing to the shirt.

Being a Military scouter I want to clear up the statement the Scouting is not alowed on military bases any longer. This is not true. Many scouting units which were sponsored by military organizations have lost their charter organization though. What does this mean? This means a military unit can no longer sponsor us. THis does not mean we must dissolve our Troop or Pack. What we had to do was put out a call for a new sponsor and choose between the 6 organizations that stepped forward to help. We chose the VFW. We still have all of our meeting in the same building we always did. The military post can not deny us access to any services which it provides to other non-profit organizations. As an example if they let the Chapel youth group use vehicles for a ski trip they must let us use them also. If the outdoor recreation dept. gives the spouses coffee group a discount on ski equipment, we get the same discount. If our military organization gives soldiers days off to attend school field trips and help with vacation bible school, well guess what, they have to let soldiers off to help with Boy Scout summer camp. The decision to pull our charter from the military unit has not hurt us in any way. It may have actually helped us because now we do not have to meet our Chartered Organization rep along a tank trail to get leader applications signed ( he was always in the field training.) Our new rep is a retired gentleman who actually showed up for our last Court Of Honor. I can not speak for the Scout Troop mentioned in the post I"m replying to but I do know of several Troops who had to take a year off and join with civilian troops because all of the leaders are deployed to Iraq. The spouses left behind just couldn't pull the troop together so they did what was best for the Scouts. So please do not think that our military bases are not friendly to scouts. I have been in many officers offices (ha ha) and have seen an Eagle Scout award hanging on the wall proudly displayed with all of their military awards.

I just took over as our service councils Activities Coordinator and I wanted to know what the difference between bridging and flying up is. I remember my sister many many years ago had a flying up ceremony. They used a big parachute and dolls dressed like all the girls and threw them in to the air. Then they sang a song about flying up. It must have been a good ceremony I remember it 20 years later. I have been asked to plan a bridging ceremony. What is the difference?