If You Could Change CS Advancement

[clemlaw]

>>>>>Oh I dont know, the program was Lions and Webelos before it was changed to two years of Webelos, what is the difference?

[dkurtenbach]

drmbear wrote: "Our elementary school has boys all the way through fifth grade - why would we think we have to separate them?"

 

drmbear, thanks for asking. I'm suggesting that we pull "Webelos" out of Cub Scout packs and make them separate units for a few reasons. You may not agree and that's okay. I'm not in charge anyway!

 

1. As Barry has described, a major issue with Cub Scout retention is adult leader burnout after 2 to 3 years. I have seen this myself -- the den leader who was the Tiger, Wolf, and Bear den leader continues on as the Webelos den leader, but is running on fumes. Taking the Webelos program out of the pack, and of necessity reorganizing to some extent, would provide a clean break that allows the long-time adult leader to step down and let someone else pick up the program.

 

2. As we have discussed, a major issue with Cub Scout retention is boredom. I have seen this also -- even with the enthusiastic, energetic den leaders, there is more often than not a failure to grasp the differences between Tiger, Wolf, and Bear on the one hand, and the Webelos program on the other with its change of program emphasis to more outdoor activities and giving more responsibility to the boys. That is, Webelos dens are run just like Tiger, Wolf, and Bear dens. Taking the Webelos program out of the pack would clearly mark Webelos as something different than the Cub Scout program.

 

3. Even though they may only meet once a month with the rest of the pack, the Webelos dens are still heavily involved in what the pack is doing: fundraising, Pinewood Derby, Blue & Gold Banquet, spring and fall Pack overnighters, day camp, summertime activities, etc. Taking the Webelos program out of the pack would unburden the Webelos Scouts and parents from all of those obligations and allow the Webelos units to formulate a program geared to them, rather than being attached to a program dominated by younger Cub Scouts. It also would allow the Webelos adult leaders to focus just on the Webelos Scouts and their program, rather than also being part of the pool of adult leaders working on pack-wide activities and events.

 

Hope this answers your questions.

 

Dan K.

[BadenP]

Barry

I just gotta disagree with you, I was a Webelos leader right before and at the conversion to two years(late 80's) and there were NO LION scouts. I did the program both ways and I can tell you personally that the two year program was the death knoll for Webelos, transition to boy scouts dropped significantly and continues to do so. Two years is WAY TOO LONG for a single rank. The program now uses the Arrow of Light like an additional rank to earn in the second year, but guess what all my Web's earned the AOL in the one year program. Webelos in its current form is a joke, the LDS still use the one year program, why try to fix what wasn't broken.

[AKdenldr]

Interesting discussion.

 

I think having the parents transfer to a Webelos program then yet another boy scout program risks retention.

 

I also think that this forum's vision of what a Webelos den program should be (outside, more boy scout activities, less of the same old activities with pack) is not fully documented in either the Webelos handbook or the Webelos leader material and training.

 

IMHO, Only a quality program and systematic, experienced, leader can lead a den full of boys to reach AOL as it is written in a school year. The other rank awards are, although challenging for their age group, easy to reach by G&B season. National needs to write an advancement program where the Web boys can have success in the wide spectrum of packs and dens. (After all, boys don't pick the packs they attend in the most part it is what is available in their school or town or church community.)

 

If the Web program was only 1 year long, would the boys on average have the maturity to move into Boy Scouts? Now we are talking about boys who might not yet be 10.

 

My thoughts, AK

[clemlaw]

>>>>>If the Web program was only 1 year long, would the boys on average have the maturity to move into Boy Scouts? Now we are talking about boys who might not yet be 10.

[5yearscouter]

As my user name implies, I've been a scouter for 5 years, going on 6. Not a long time compared to many, but I've done all my time as pack leadership.

 

1. If I could, I would take some of the go see it's from tigers and put them into wolf. by wolf year, parents know a bit more about how it all works and can have more fun going places together. This includes the elective go see it's that usually get left out of the tiger year. Tiger year has more ideas for outings than any other year, which is great for excitement but poor for actually being able to get em done.

 

2. I would pull some of the activities for making collections and building things simplified and use them in tigers instead, or perhaps fluffing up some of the electives in tigers

 

3. Bear is my favorite year. It has some of everything possible a cub scout should know or do. I would pull the easier things out half of the achievements and put them into wolf perhaps, because there is way more in bear than what you can effectively do in the bear year, and wolf year we sometimes have done every single achievement when we have a group that was in tigers, and worked on wolf from June thru May and found the wolf book lacking.

 

4. Tigers is an issue. The shared leadership program never works quite as intended--although we do tend to get all the parents involved, but they don't really take turns running meetings. I try to explain that they all try out the job of den leader, and often find that the person who is good at it is not the person who said they wanted to be leader and that person takes over for wolf. It would be nice to have a built in leadership review at the end of the Bear year as well--cause often we really need a new leader for Webelos, someone with a different skill set, but the parents seem to think they are stuck as leader at that point.

 

5. I'd like to see a modification of the tigers must have a parent present requirement. We have parents who rework their whole lives for care for siblings and get to go see its, and they have a blast. It does get them hooked on scouting often if they HAVE to come to those first months of meetings. They want to do things for the pack, be committee, cubmasters, etc.--usually they volunteer for these things by about Thanksgiving. Their kid is comfortable with the other adults in the tiger den, the kids are getting comfortable with each other.

 

But the parents run into a wall--they may not be able to really take on a pack job if they have to be right there with their kid for every part of the den meetings and the pack meetings. As a pack leader, they need to be able to go help a new scout get registered, or fix an issue with the building use with the school custodian, or other jobs that pop up (since we all meet at the same location we have things come up)

 

Then as the requirement that they have to be there drags on, arranging for babysitter for the other kids becomes a hassle or a financial difficulty, so mom ends up dragging all the other siblings along to the den meeting when her and then scouting becomes not so much fun. While scouting is a family program, forcing the parent to HAVE to be there with their 1st grader pas the initial getting to know you period, when the kid goes to school every day and is around a teacher, often has gone to daycare and away from mom and dad.

 

We usually lose tigers about February, sometimes right after blue and gold. they got their badge and mom or dad just can't handle the 100% attendance with their kid requirement anymore. Yeah, maybe it weeds out the slackers, or uninvolved parents that we didn't really want in scouting anyway--but it also weeds out the parents with more than one child, often one who will have a younger sibling brother that will also miss out on scouting.

 

In our society, the way our culture is, we need to have tigers find the balance between 100% parental participation (which most of us just can't do, even committed scouters sometimes miss meetings), and drop off BSA = Babysitters of America for the tiger program. A time limit, recommend parents must be tied to their son for 50% of the time, or for the first 3 months of membership or something. I think we could keep more scouts and get parents more involved in the pack level leadership if they don't have to be 100% tied to their son for the first year of scouting. I think it accounts for why we lose so many tigers.

ok my message is too long already and I haven't even gotten to Webelos.

[5yearscouter]

ok, I'm not done yet.

 

Tracking Bear electives and achievements is confusing. if you took out half the stuff and spread it to wolf or webelos, and make stuff either achievements or electives, not both would be great.

 

Webelos...

 

I do NOT like the idea of moving webelos out of the pack. From a pack leadership perspective, you gotta go find yourself your 3 committee, 2 leaders, and you'd also need some kind of scoutmater/cubmaster type person if they were their own unit. And perhaps a different meeting place or chartering org, someone else to track the money, advancements and activites and coordinate with the cubs and the boy scouts both for kids who have siblings in all the units. It would only serve to complicate things more than necessary. KISMIF for the adults too!!

 

Realistically Webelos works fairly well, but I agree that fitness is a horrible name for a badge about drug and alcohol abuse prevention. Physical fitness and athlete could be combined, both talk about how to be more healthy and choose healthy foods.

 

I'd love to see belt loops and pins out of the webelos program-- it is so confusing having the conversation with the parent and new advancement coordinator about webelos activity pins, that most people call webelos badges, not to be confused with the webelos rank badge, not to be confused with sports and academic pins or belt loops. did your scout earn the citizenship belt loop and pin, or the citizen webelos activity pin (badge)? And many of the belt loops requirements match up with the webelos badge req, except maybe one part, just add the one part to the webelos badge and call it good enough.

 

I do not want to see Webelos joining troops before age 11 for maturity reasons. and why does the arrow of light say 10.5, or 6 months since the end of 4th grade, but boy scout joining req says age 10 with the arrow of light? yes, you might have a boy who skipped a grade or two and might be able to get his arrow of light because he's 6 months out of 4th grade, but isn't 10 yet, but what would you do with those precocious boys? if they have to wait to join a troop and can't join when the rest of their den does, they usually just drop out. I'd rather see the whole den have a requirement of minimum of halfway thru 5th grade to join boy scouts or something similar.

 

Webelos we usually get thru 1 year and 6 months and the boys lose interest and have most badges they want. why couldn't it be a 1.5 year program? I do think that a 1 year webelo program you might as well just take out half the badges, and you lose something by boys not going to some kind of summer camp 2 summers as webelos to get ready for boy scouts.

 

the new cub scout 2010 plan has a lot of flaws. An overview of each den plan against the others shows that different dens are doing different kinds of activities at totally different times of year. makes no sense in a small pack, and even in a large pack it seems reasonable that if all dens are working on sport at the same time they could then have a pack wide activity together to share and bring all the boys together with a purpose.

 

Our pack realigned the 2010 plan as much as possible so that each den was working on similar activities at the same time. But it was a LOT of work on our part, that nationsl should ahve done. there should have been a coordinated effort to align those things around the character connections/and typical cub scout pack activities.

 

citizenship/flags in November to coordinate with Veteran's day and a visit to the city hall. and so that in October which is fire safety month, we would all work on safety/first aid/readyman and have a visit to a local fire station and play with the fire hose. doing for others/goodwill to men coordinate with character connection for faith and visit to a senior center for christmas. Those things should have been notices by bsa national and fixed the guides to include that kind of information.

 

to rework the cub handbooks around that kind of major themes of scouting would simplify each rank and fluff out those that need work. Even webelos 1 and 2 badges align fairly well with those kinds of activities. citizenship = citizen for 1st year webelos and scholar for 2nd year webelos for instance.

 

My sons age 10 and 14 came up with the major themes of cub scouting to pattern our cub scout year on, and it was pretty interesting to see what they chose. what would you choose as major themes?

 

oh and unless they've fixed it the 2010 plan figures elective points wrong according to the book directions for Bear. and it says you can do craftsman in webelos in 2 meetings, but then only gives ideas and meeting plans for 2 projects, even though you have to do 2 projects out of wood, 4 out of other materials and a display stand. yes, I guess you can send it home for families to do, but this is the opposite of what they say about how den meetings will include more activities-- in some instances the 2010 sends more stuff home to do with your family than our pack has ever done before.

 

[Eagledad]

>>I just gotta disagree with you, I was a Webelos leader right before and at the conversion to two years(late 80's) and there were NO LION scouts. I did the program both ways and I can tell you personally that the two year program was the death knoll for Webelos, transition to boy scouts dropped significantly and continues to do so. Two years is WAY TOO LONG for a single rank.

[BadenP]

Barry

I agree with you. However if we, or more to the point National, does nothing to fix this problem then IMO we will start to see drops in cub numbers like we are seeing in boy scouts. You are gonna attract and retain more boys with a program built and run like a Ferrari than one built and run like an Edsel, which is where we are today.

[clemlaw]

>>>.Tigers is an issue. The shared leadership program never works quite as intended .....

I'd like to see a modification of the tigers must have a parent present requirement.

[SeattlePioneer]

Personally, I can't say that I "grock" all this elaborate theorizing.

 

However, as District Membership Chair, I find quite a few parents who make a decision not to start Cub Scouts until the Wolf year because they don't think their boy is ready for the Cub Scout program.

 

We do recruiting of boy in kindergarten in the spring. That often produces enough boys to provide the nucleus of a den which gets filled out with fall recruiting. Just guessing, but perhaps parents delay joining Tiger Cubs until fall when their boy is several months older.

 

I do see Cub Packs (including my own) getting in comfortable ruts that repeat the same or similar activities each year. Our district does a fine Bowling Tournament, Marble Tournament and district Pinewood Derby, but they repeat the same thing each year.

 

That probably gets old for boys after they have done it 2-3 times. That argues for a NEW and DYNAMIC Webelos program for those older boys to participate in. If that's what Webelos dens did, I doubt there would be a problem.

 

For those who make the Webelos years more Cub Scouts, they are likely going to have a problem.

[dkurtenbach]

Well, I think it is highly unlikely that BSA would even consider voluntarily lopping off a sizeable chunk of its membership by dropping Tigers (1st graders) or bumping Wolves up to 3rd grade, Bears to 4th grade, and reducing the Webelos to just 5th grade. We can always dream, of course.

 

I realize we've gotten away somewhat from the original topic (changing Cub Scout advancement), but if we are talking structure, assuming the same age range for BSA programs (1st grade to age 21), what _could_ be done to alleviate the problems we see? And not necessarily with just Cub Scouts, but taking into account the ripple effect that Barry discusses?

 

Dan K.(This message has been edited by dkurtenbach)

[Eagledad]

>>What our Pack does I was actually initially opposed to, but I now see the wisdom of it. Our Tiger den meetings are once a month. We also have a few Go See Its that can't be done at the regular meeting time,

[UCEagle72]

The original Lion program ended in 1967/8. My pack kept the Lion den for a couple of year after that. When I was in Lions, Webelos was basically a 1/2 year program, and really, the only emphasis was the Arrow of Light! (And it was the first time, outside of our Cubmaster and his Assistant, that we had a male den leader!)

 

I crossed over in 1969 - and already knew everything that needed to be done for Tenderfoot (no "Scout" in those days).

 

[Oak Tree]

The absolutely stupidest part of CS Advancement is re-earning the belt loops for Webelos pins. That idea was just awful.

 

I concur that the Wolf and Bear requirements are too complicated. Even Webelos - it can be a real pain to figure out which camping trip counts for which requirement.

 

I like outings, but it can be hard to coordinate a lot of those. I definitely like the idea of more active things, and less writing/classroom lecture.

 

And actually, I'm fine with the age ranges - that doesn't look to be much of an issue for us.