JosephMD

My son's first real interaction with a Muslim was through scouting, National Youth Leadership Training. Wouldn't you know it, the course was occurring during Ramadan, but just the tail end. Their blue patrol decided to fast on the last day and have a big party at sundown for Eid al-Fitr. I think it was a good experience for him, a learning experience in other cultures and religions. Although I know he went through a lesson on Islam in the home school, that was more history and less, today. He also learned that turkey bacon, while kind of tasty on its own merits, does not deserve the term bacon in it.

Of course. My younger son is probably the most proud of his medal and hopes to get it presented at the year's last pack meeting, hopefully his extra dangly bar will come. Older son thinks the medal is cool, but was more interested in the patches. It was an expensive day for sure. $10/person registration, included event patch and participation CSP. $10/medal plus $5/add on bar (they didn't have the one for cub scouts). $5/ for the "earned" CSP looking patch, which they didn't have for our hike. $15 parking, so, over $100 at this point. The good news is that most of the "profit" goes to the council history committee, my son the patch collector gets some goodies, and a good time was had by all. Obviously, some left overs from 2015!

Today, my sons and I spent the day in Washington DC walking James E. West History of Scouting trail. One of four hikes put together by the National Captial Area Council History Committee. My older boy tried to get this going with his patrol but had no takers, so decided to take his little brother instead. It was't a long hike, at least not the planned route, but logistically challenging and took much of the day for various reasons. The idea is you walk to various locations via instructions given on a guide and answer challenge questions at various stops along the way. Some of them were easy, others, not so. If you ever have a unit or patrol in Washington DC, be sure they know about these hikes. They take you around all of the sites in the down town federal zone around the mall, captial, and white house. http://www.ncacbsa.org/activitiesevents/host-hike/

Somewhere in my 20's I picked up swearing as a pretty bad habit, it is finally wearing off over the last several years. When it comes to scouts, I really don't worry about their language very much, it has never gotten to the point where it would bother me. There are times when an expletive is just the right word. I suppose, if I were a scoutmaster and the swearing got excessive or inappropriate for the situation, there are several points of the scout law than can be discussed in a scoutmaster conference. It is funny though, when they do swear, and they think you, the adult, heard them, there is that look, like, what is he going to say, like they are waiting to be reprimanded.

Our council's cub resident camp confuses me, it is hard to tell if it is considered family camp or resident camp, I mean, it is a resident camp, yes, but they don't go with den leaders, they go with parents, which is understandable for 1st-3rd graders I suppose. My older son went 3 times, after tiger, wolf, and bear (yes, after bear he did two camps). The year after the tiger, the program was great, but each year following, it wasn't quite as good as the previous year. My younger son isn't as into camping, he went to that camp the summer when he was a tiger after joining in spring but he wasn't quite ready for it so we didn't go back. He was also the only one from his pack to go. A major difference in philosophy between the cub camp and the webelos camp is that the cub camp liked to put all the singles and doubles together in a group. The webelos camp liked to put the smallest and the largest together, so the den of 1 joins the pack with 3 dens of 7, which I think worked out a lot better. As far as the program went, it was very much like a day camp during the day, you just ate breakfast and dinner there, and slept at camp. The cub programs generally ran Friday, Saturday, & Sunday. Friday - camp tour, swim test, campfire. Saturday, program, Sunday program & evening campfire. Flags in the morning and evening, before breakfast and dinner, uniform expected. Not wildly different than the first two program days of webelos camp really.

The program will depend on the camp. I take from the information you provided that this is for Webelos scouts. The real answer is, it really depends on the camp culture, camp director, etc. I will give you an example of how one of my council's Webelos camps ran their program. Sunday - camp tour, check in, swim test - evening campfire Monday - set time activity periods at stations like, archery, bb guns, waterfront swimming, nature, scout skills cooking, handicraft Tuesday - set time activity periods at stations like, archery, bb guns, waterfront boating, nature, scout skills knots, handicraft - evening foil meals in camp Wednesday - set time activity periods at stations like, archery balloons, bb guns crazy targets, waterfront choice, service project, scout skills choice, handicraft - evening water fight Thursday - set time activity periods, build your own den schedule from activities above, plus more activities such as hiking, boy scout camp tour, readyman, swimming hole, arrow of light program - evening scavenger or staff hunt Friday - open program, take a buddy to any program area in camp, take some adults and go for a hike (hikes leave the camp) or go to the swimming hole (a shallow stream, my youngest son's favorite activity) - evening campfire Saturday - get up early and depart, the staff is looking forward to their day off! There are two standard flag ceremonies per week day, morning before breakfast and evening before dinner, uniform expected, dens sign up for flag duty. Lunch / siesta usually two hours, gives plenty of time for camp service project (my oldest son built nice toilet paper rolls holders for latrines, so much better than a nail!) I think they run a pretty good program there. The design is to adjust from that structured day camp program that the scouts and parents are used to, to a less structured boy scout camp program where you get to choose your own adventure. A den leader doing this right will turn the Thursday schedule over to their scouts and give them advice like, maybe you should start the hike in the second period, as it is better timing for lunch, and besides, everybody else starts it at the first period and it'll be crowded! My oldest son went with me the first year, he was the only one from his pack so we teamed up with a pack that had three full dens of Webelos where he fit right in and they appreciated the extra adult as well. His second year he talked the webelos in his pack to go back to that camp and he went with his leaders and not me, had even more fun I think! New pack, my younger son and I ended up the only ones again, this year, he is going again, my wife is going this time as there are only three scouts.

This was similar to one of my ticket goals. As the troop committee advancement coordinator my goals were all related to advancement. One was to provide the scouts with material explaining the various awards and achievements outside of the trail to Eagle. Since it wasn't a project, only a ticket goal, it was focused only on boy scouts, and unit awards didn't occur to me. A couple of the scouts have shown interest in the Nova awards, and one is considering working on the Hornaday award because environmental causes are kind of his thing.

I can tell you exactly how it was handled in my middle school when I was a kid. Part of my wall of text that I backspaced out of last night was my own experience doing that as a middle school student, in school. A couple of us crushed up smarties, snorted them through a dollar bill. One of the assistant principals called us in, asked us a couple of questions, called us idiots, and told us it wasn't a good idea and that we probably shouldn't do it again. Like he had to tell us, I still remember the unpleasantness that was snorting crushed smarties into your nose. I'm happy to say I've never snorted anything since.

OK, what is up with my backspace key? Lost another wall of text. Well, it was great, wet, muddy, chilly, but still great. Seems that most scouts had a blast. Our chapter's contingent of 17, 12 youth & 5 adults was the largest conclave attendance from our chapter in recent memory. I can only imagine how much more fun would have been had with great weather!

That darn backspace button, I lost a wall of text. Anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about it beyond a short discussion about setting the example and how that wasn't the right example to be setting. If the scouts think he isn't living up to the respnosbilities they expect of their senior patrol leader, they should replace him.

Whew, had all my transportation and carpooling worked out, and poof, one of my drivers got into an accident last night, they are OK, but we are now short a vehicle. Fortunately, I had already decided to take my wife's minivan to transport the two youth members who I had already planned to drive. Looks like I'll have three more. The lodge will give me transportation funds now in the form of a gas card because I'll be transporting at least 4 youth. I think I'll spend that buying the youth lunch on the way home on Sunday. I knew it was a good idea not to go down early. My son caught a ride with some other scouters who were leaving this morning to help get things set up with some good weather.

I will let myself be taken advantage of at the patch auction, but that's because I know the funds benefit good stuff. That can always be a problem with adults and youth trading patches though. When I was a youth, our chapter adviser was asked to step down and the word was that unfair patch trading was at least part of the reason. These days, we have the Internet and its trading groups, my son does it a lot, I really have no idea what he is trading, but he avoids trading anything he doesn't have more than one of unless it gets him something he really wants. I know our lodge shows team has been working really hard on the entertainment, they've done a great job with shows at the last few fellowships, each being better than the last. The weather might cooperate enough to keep the shows dry.

As the member of committee who focuses on advancement, the Court of Honor is the night where I get to see my efforts publicly recognized. Of course, I'm still in the background, just watching as the SPL and the MC for the night do the announcing and awarding of merit badges, rank advancement cards, etc. It is like getting a pat on the back that nobody else knows about. The scouts are still using the same old tired script they've been using since my son first joined. I suppose at some point they will figure out that there are seven ranks and more than 121 merit badges. Maybe I'll ask the SPL if he is still enjoying using the same outdated script. The troop generally has three per year, January, May, & September, with September being the one where a lot of merit badges are awarded as it is the first following summer camp.

This weekend I will be attending the Section NE6A Conclave at Goshen Scout Reservation Hosted by my lodge, Amangamek-Wipit 470. I'm looking forward to spending time with over 400 arrowmen, 17 of which are from my chapter. It is our chapter's largest contingent in a while (since I rejoined at least). 5 adults and 12 youth is not a bad ratio and at least two of our guys have staffing jobs, one on the cook crew and the other plans to put his BSA lifeguard to use staffing the waterfront. Our lodge is large and it dominated registrations by two to one over the other two lodges combined. Attendance is down overall from the over 600 who attended the centennial NE6A conclave, that can be explained I suppose by it not being an extra special centennial celebration (will NOAC suffer the same fate?) and because our council camp is a really long drive for everyone, but especially the other two lodges to the east of us. The weather doesn't look like it will cooperate, with Saturday, the program day being cold and rainy, quite cold for May in the mid Atlantic. Maybe that'll keep the water skiing line a little shorter! I have a feeling that after trainings there will be a lot of cards and board games being played.

Just when I thought my son had taken on as many roles and responsibilities in scouting as he could handle, he goes and accepts the nomination for Venturing Officers Association President. Son, listen to me, if nobody else is taking the job, maybe there is a reason! Anyway, that's what I was thinking when he told me how it went down. Our VOA is weird, our county is split into two districts, neither of which had enough venture scouts to make a VOA viable (it is weak even combined), so they created the County VOA. I really don't know much about it really, I'm going to leave him to his venturing world and try not to get too involved. He seems really excited to do it, and is already working on his vision for the next year that he has to deliver at two different roundtables next month on the same night! I just have a feeling that he has finally exceeded his capacity, but there's nothing like learning the hard way, and he may yet prove me wrong.

I have noticed that progress has slowed since the BSA acquisition. It could also be that it corresponded with major program changes that would have required a lot of software work.

Yes, you award the Webelos badge when the scout has completed the requirements. Depending on your den and your scouts, it may take them to the end of the school year, or they may finish up early. I generally subscribe to awarding the badge as soon as possible after the scout has completed the requirements, the first pack meeting after is ideal.

For a unit that has been doing advancement by hand, there are many options out there all with various pros and cons. ​I have been using ScoutBook.com to track troop advancement, and my younger son's webelos advancement. The big disadvantage to ScoutBook.com, it is online, the big advantage to ScoutBook.com, it is online! I find that it generally works and is kept up to date with the latest advancment changes. Parents can be involved in the process, which is important for cub scouts, but of course, they have to be online. It can do calendar too, e-mails, some simple financial tracking, and so on, but it is really best at advancement tracking. ScoutBook.com is about $1 per scout per year, in multiples of 5. It is not the least expensive solution over time, but it is one that is easy to budget for. Explaining to parents that registration fee is going up $1 to improve the advancement recordkeeping shouldn't be a hard sell. My wife is a Pack CC - they use packmaster. I liked packmaster and troopmaster, but I don't think they really handled the move to online very well and still seems to rely heavily on a complex software package to be installed on your computer. I had no problem with the software, but often times explaining the intricacies of the installation and configuration to a new den leader just wasn't successful. The good thing about packmaster was that it was feature rich, it did a lot of things and did them well. I've forgotten how much it costs, but IIRC, it was still a yearly thing, or every 3 years, or something like that.

My thought on first class in the first year is that if you have a good program, an active scout who really wants to do it will have enough opprotunities to earn first class in his first year, or at least close. I just sat on a second and first class board of review for a scout in my son's troop who earned it in about 14 months. He had finished up everything but a couple of the swimming requirements and became the squeaky wheel with the SPL about getting in some pool time and the SPL announced that he'd be at the YMCA pool on Saturday at 5 and any scout that wanted swimming requirements should join him there. My son went just for the fun of it, and this scout showed up and completed it, called the SM for his conferences, and had 3 committee members present for his BoR last week. When a scout has completed his BoR, the SM is notified and presents the cloth rank patch ASAP, in this case, at last Wednesday's meeting. This Wednesday the troop is holding a court of honor, which was this scout's motivation to finish when he did.

It was a nice course, 5 of us were taking it, I was the only one that wasn't already an ASM There were three Eagle Scouts in the course, myself, and one new leader who had just recently come from cub scouts. We skipped some of the games and stuff and replaced it with additional discussion. A lot of the time I was thinking to myself, I could totally be teaching this course. Every scouter has an idea of what a scoutmaster should and shouldn't be doing. Some good ideas come out and some bad ones. There was discussion of new scout patrol, standard patrol, and older boy patrol that was part of the official course delivery. Yes, we all know the advantages, but weigh them against the disadvantages. There was a some discussion about aged based patrols, so that older scouts and younger scouts weren't mixing. I don't know if I subscribe to that. I think that in some ways, scouts naturally segregate by age, but there will always be that older scouts that work well with the younger ones, and younger scouts that advance and grow quickly with the program and fit in better with the older scouts. Aims & Methods - always surprises me that scouters don't know these, even parents. Our trainer noted that if it isn't part of the aims and methods, you shouldn't be doing it. So, would going to see the latest star wars fit the aims and methods, I don't know, but I wouldn't say that if scouts wanted to get together to watch a movie, that they shouldn't. Talked a little about first class in the first year also. It still seems to be something that is desired, but less emphasized than I remember it. The new ST21 requirements make it a little harder to fit that much program into one year, especially when the scouts want to do other fun things as well. A little discussion on the new program was had all around. The role of the troop committee had us laugh a little, with the committee on one side and the SM/ASMs on the other, in reality, I think we know that many of us are wearing hats on both sides of the line, myself included. For me, it was worth it to check the box and say, I've done that training.

My wife is the pack committee chair. If you ask her, the committee's job is whatever she says the committee's job is, and the same goes for the other roles as well, but she is reasonable. Basically, the committee sets the direction and plans the program at a high level, and the den leaders / cub master delivers the program and plans the finer details. The cub master, for example, his role is to plan and run the pack meeting, it is completely under his authority, whatever he wants to do, which is the expectation that has been set. The committee has set the time and date for the pack meeting, and secured the meeting place should the cubmaster want to use that. Like many packs, hers doesn't have a fully functional stand alone committee, so den leaders, etc are often serving in committee roles as well, which does blur the line a bit. On to your cubmaster: Is this guy even trained, been to a pow wow or university of scouting? Maybe he thought being a cubmaster put him in charge of everything, making all the decisions. DE, district chair, none of this is in their realm, really, this is an internal pack thing. those guys are not your bosses, they don't give you direction or have any control. Internal pack problems looking for a district resource to help better understand the how to resolve it the scout way whould be looking toward their unit commissioner. The District Chair and Executive should know this. Set the expectations for your leaders. Training is required, not just the online stuff, which Is a great start, but there is so much more to the program, and many councils offer great training beyond the basics. What national says cubmasters should do: http://www.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/510-237.pdf (not bad actually)

Eventually, I'll read this whole thread too. But for now, I'll give my thoughts on the OPs initial questions. I'll start with, that is a really strange tradition, the father son thing. Every lodge is different, but what we look for in adults is adults that can help us deliver the OA program. Can you act as an adviser in some capacity or fill some other adult rule like, health and safety? Can you spare those extra camping weekends and drive scouts from your chapter / area to and from camp? I suppose it is our lodge's way of limiting the sash and dash on the adult side of things. Yes, for those who are active, it is extra meetings, activities, and camp outs. Any additional program would have that. What the OA does really depends on your lodge and / or chapter. Service is the big thing. Exactly what service depends on some factors, what projects are available, what the youth want to do, and that may be, raking leaves. My son's first year in the OA went like this (off the top of my head) Ordeal - the built a new trail in a national park Section Centennial Conclave - a lot of fun was had, awesome shows, awesome food, over 600 of his fellow arrowmen and he started a new hobby, patch collecting & trading Lodge Spring Fellowship - more fun, service to camp, set up a lot of tents and cots Camp Bus Loading (our council's main camp is over 3 hours away, so they have a bus) National Order of the Arrow Conference - he really lucked into this one picking up a late drop out spot from a neighboring lodge County summer camp dance demonstration (our county hosts a week of camp locally, geared toward first year and merit badges) Lodge Fall Fellowship - more fun, his first time on water skis, and service, not sure what he did, might have been making A frames Webelos Mountain Staff - our chapter runs an annual weekend where Webelos and Patrols camp together (he's actually running that this fall) Lodge Banquet They had the Carolinas Indian Seminar on their schedule, but snow cancelled it Arrow of Light Ceremonies for the cub scouts Lodge Spring Fellowship (they moved it before the ordeal this year) - service, setting up camp cots Call Out Ceremony Ordeal again - Ceremonies team I'm sure there were a few things I missed. Maybe this sort of thing wouldn't interest a scout, but it did for me when I was a youth, and my son can't get enough of it! The why for a scout I think really comes down to, do they want to do more? If yes, that's why. The why for an adult is really is, do I want to help them do more? If yes, that's why! And by help, I'm being more general, maybe it is just driving to that camp out, maybe it is helping a scout that rushed through the personal management merit badge handle an actual budget, for an event, events larger than one would expect at the troop level. Maybe you are a certified Range Safety Officer and help facilitate shooting sports at a fellowship!

For many, especially scouters, it is hard to string together several free weekends in a row, because, well, we already do a lot of scouting on the weekends, so I'm not sure it would help much when it comes to volunteers. I have never known anything different than a 5 day week of day camp, from all the way back when I was in a Wolf den in 1987. Later, staffing day camp when I was a boy scout was a pretty big deal for me. I've had a son go to cub scout day camp continuously for the last 7 years, always been during the week, some times both sons, and a son attending and a son staffing. This will be the first year my older son doesn't staff as it conflicts with NAYLE. I guess it comes down to, how broken is it now? We all know the phrase, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I take it a step further, if it is a little broke, be really sure that you are really fixing it and not breaking it more. I don't think you have to worry about the preparedness for resident camp as most of the new scout problems at resident camp aren't addressed. Going back to what I know, some day camp activities require a bit of setup and take down effort. Ranges come to mind and depending on where your day camp is held, staff may be faced with setting them up and taking them down several times instead of just at the beginning and the end of the week. If you are talking about this summer's day camp, well, it is mid May, is there really time to adjust everyone to a radical new idea? One change I could see to day camp that might be helpful is to include a Saturday. Every one I've ever been to has been M-F, but adding a Saturday I think would be great for parents. Even if it was shifted from M-F to Tuesday - Saturday.