Great Troop Traditions

[shemgren]

As a district/council level Scouter, I am asked to attend more than a few Eagle Scout ceremonies. One tradition that was passed on to me by an older Scouter was to have the new Eagle Scout sign the program of his Court of Honor. I keep these in a scrap book, and have them all but one boy I personally helped gain his eagle, as well all the Eagles since I started doing this, which has been a while.

 

I noted in the new editon (2002) Scout catalog, that a belt fob pre-slited and pre-punched for thongs is available in packs of 8. It has space for the BSA logo and your troop number.

 

One interesting note: When I made the transition from youth member to adult leader, I asked a Scouter of my aquaintance, what I could do to be a successful Scouter. He replied, "You need to like to do three things: 1) work in the out of doors, 2) work with boys, 3 drink coffee."

I replied, "I understand the first two, but does drinking coffee have to do with it?"

He smiled and said, "When you go a Scout funcution, coffee is often the only beverage available. By the way, bring your own cup." After he stated this, he hand me my first Scouting cup, that started my collection.

[I B a Scout]

Hey, Cool, or Eagle, why are you dissing these guys, most are kewl. Why do you do this? I know your posts were removed, they are gonna find you

[Chippewa29]

We had our court of honor tonight. I tried a few more things that I think really made some good impressions. First of all, I did the Book of Honor. Our oldest Scouts of course got to sign it all the way up to Life, while the younger Scouts go to sign it for either Boy Scout, Tenderfoot, and Second Class. There were a few looks of jealousy as a couple of guys saw their buddies sign the Second Class page while they only got to sign Tenderfoot. They made comments like, "I'm going to be signing my Second Class next Court of Honor and maybe my First Class".

 

Also, I presented each of the Scouts who had earned their First Class with a special Scout Stave that represented the completion of their basic Scouting skills. I even did a few fancy twirls before I presented it to them. Our PL asked if he could do the presentation next time. I said sure and he was practicing how he could do a fancy presentation. The parents were very impressed by it and the younger Scouts were saying they couldn't wait to get their First Class so they could get their "stick".

 

One other thing I did to help with the ceremony is to have the troop do a procession into the chapel where we held the Court of Honor. While they were marching in, a CD player played the Allegro section of Handel's "Water Music".

 

I was very glad to see the Scouts take a lot of pride in the ceremony and our developing troop. Does anyone have any other traditions I might be able to use on campouts (please snipe hunts or left hand smoke shifters) to further our developing troop?

[ScouterPaul]

We are starting our Troop on 1/1/02. The Book of Honor idea was great.

[Weekender]

I worked with a troop for a couple years while my boys were cubs. When a new boy registered with the troop he was given a piece of 1x4 to put his name and the year on and decorate as he wanted. Two hanging loops were then attached to the board. The boards were hung from rank plaques on the wall. As a boy advanced through the ranks his plank was moved up from rank to rank. We had the boy move his name up as part of the court of honor. Those boys who made eagle had their boards placed in a row of boards that encircled our meeting room. When we met we were surrounded by the names of those who came before and had achieved the rank of eagle.

[OldGreyEagle]

While I didnt think of it as a tradition at first, the comments about the scouts looking at the book of honor did remind me that we have an advancement chart, bought at our scout store which is updates monthly. The scouts and see how they are progressing versus friends and "E Gads" younger scouts. Nothing gives them more pride than a solid stripe of color meaning they earned that ranck

[KL Wisconsin]

Similar to WEEKENDER's plaque, I've seen a placque/progress chart that took up less wall space where space was at a premium in the meeting area but was very impressive.

The top of it was a Scout emblem. Attached below using ropes with decoratve knots was a small board with the troop number on it. Below it was a roughly two and one/half foot long board with "Road To Eagle" on it. Hanging from the Road to Eagle board were small plaques with each of the rank emblems on them. Below the appropriate rank was each boy's name on his individual 1 inch by five inch (roughly) nameplate. Each nameplate had two holes in the top and two on bottom. The names were attached in a chain using s-type rings thru the holes. When I looked closer, I realized the nameplates were actually made at a sign shop and were just larger versions of a nametag like you'd use on a uniform shirt Or sometimes on the doorways of an office or cubicle. The plastic was woodgrain and the letters were black. They told me the sign maker only charged about $2.00 per nameplate, engraved.

There, too, moving your nameplate up thru the ranks was part of the Court of Honor ceremony. I brought a sketch of it back to our troop and we're planning to start the same wall of honor.

[scouter659]

Here's kind of a new Troop tradition we started 4 years ago at our first JLT graduation campout. If you're just looking for ideas, you can use this for any ocassion but doing it in camp is really neat.---Upon arrival into our JLT Camp the boys enter one at a time & recite the Scout Law. They stand in the middle of a 3-flame configuration (buddy burner stoves provide the flames) and are given a JLT totem which is worn around their necks. It is a small 1/2" diameter & 2" long piece of wood on a twine-type string which they are told to wear throughout the weekend. At the graduation ceremoney Saturday night, they receive a letter which explains;

Every time they do something to perform a point of the Scout Law they may ask any adult leader to carve a notch in the totem and can get a 13th for doing a 'good turn'. They can only get one notch per day so that the concept is like a personal goal to which they should aspire to. It's interesting to see how excited they get when they finally receive that totem after seeing other boys who have completed the course wearing it. Then it's even more interesting to see their reaction when they have to wait another 24 hours until they can fully realize its meaning.

If you do a course in your Troop, try this and you'll see how, over time, some of the boys have the true meaning of the law 'sink-in' to their heads.

[Eman]

At every campout we have a campfire ceremony. During the day we get any new scouts or visitors that will be at the fire to find a stick. After our opening of the fire which consists of adding the ashes from our previous fires the visitors and new members are asked to come foward and add their stick to our fire sot the ashes of their stick will always be part of our future fires.

We also have a triangle of cedar logs which are bolted together and large. The lower log has 3 candles for the Scout Oath and the 2 upper logs have 6 candles each for the 12 points of the Scout Law. As each candle is lit the section of the Oath/Law is read. When it's completely lit it's impressive.

[Chippewa29]

We've getting a bit on the heavy in the Open Discussion section as of late (some of those discussions may want to go to the Issues and Politics Section), so I thought I'd lighten things up a bit by bringing up this thread again.

 

I was corresponding with our JLTC director recently and she asked me some of the things we used to do for ceremonies and traditions when we first started.

 

One had to do with our end of the week banquet on Friday night. Once dinner was ready, all the participants would be in the dining area at their tables with the SPL at the front. The staff would then do a processional into the dining area and form two lines. The ASPL would escort one of the cooks (all decked out in chef's hat and apron) with a cooked steak (the traditional meal) on a plate to the SPL at the front. The cook would then present the beef to the SPL for approval. The SPL would then cut off a piece, sniff it, look it over very carefully, raise the piece before the group and then put it in his mouth. After obviously savoring it for a couple of moments, he would then announce that the beef was definitely top notch and was fit for our consumption.

 

Another tradition that has since died in our lodge (I'll give you one guess by my user name). We had written new words to "America the Beautiful" to fit our lodge. The entire lodge would sing the song and when finished, the lodge chief would get up on a chair, table, etc. and do a dramatic interpretation of the words to the song while the rest of the lodge (on one knee with their hands pointed toward the chief) would hum the melody of the song. That was followed by one or two rounds of our lodge fight song. Of course, the other lodges in our section didn't like it, but to this day, we never felt more pride than when we sang that song together.