Are Pack meetings required?

[lizzygo]

At our planning meeting last night we considered not having pack meetings and replacing them with activities.

 

Is this allowed?(This message has been edited by lizzygo)

[mtm25653]

We don't have pack meetings in June and July, and replace them with pack summer activities. Then the August pack meeting has all the awards from day camps. Also, our May pack meeting is a campout for graduation from one level to another.

 

We don't actually call the monthly pack gathering a meeting, because meetings are boring to boys. We call them powwows, and try to have something different/exciting at each one so the boys want to participate.

[Lisabob]

To a certain extent, it depends on what works for your pack. I've seen packs go in both directions and be successful. But watch the extremes. From my own experience, during the summer between my son's wolf and bear years we switched packs. The primary reason was that the original pack had BORING pack meetings (more like monthly business meetings for adults, attended by a lot of squirming boys) and the new pack did things/went places instead.

 

There are advantages to having a more outings/activities-focused pack meeting. It is exciting, it can keep the interest of the boys, and it is sometimes less work because all you have to do is show up for the activity, which may be run by the staff at your outing location (like a zoo tour, or whatever).

 

Depending on how you structure it, there are also disadvantages. You may lose out on things like den skill demonstrations, brag tables, goofy skit time, award/recognition ceremonies (not just Blue & Gold but every month), time for the dens to play a game, make a craft, or do some simple thing together, etc.. You may find that an activity schedule gets too hectic for parents, gets too expensive, and becomes too dependent on the scheduling needs and whims of the places where you go for your activities. After a while, you may find that planning a new pack activity every month becomes exhausting for leaders, and that you have to keep going further and further afield to find things most of the boys haven't done yet.

 

What I learned from the two packs we were part of, as well as training and (later) from observing other packs that had very successful traditional monthly pack meetings, is that a standard pack meeting does not have to be hard to pull of and it certainly doesn't have to be boring.

 

And eventually what happened was that the original pack we were part of "got it" and spiced up their pack meetings - today they're one of the most successful packs in our town. And the pack we moved to began inching back toward a more traditional pack meeting too. Even when they go on pack field trips, they are now more careful to incorporate most of the elements of a traditional pack meeting into their plans.

[lizzygo]

Thanks for the feedback.