Assistant Scoutmaster

[Hal_Crawford]

Our troop meets throughout the year except the week between Christmas and New Year, the Thursday of Spring Break, the week of summer camp and anytime a national holiday falls on a Thursday. We cancel if the schools have closed for snow and we sometimes cancel in summer if too few show up. It's a small troop though we are now growing.

 

We do a week of summer camp and a week of high adventure. We schedule campouts in July and/or August but they sometimes get cancelled for lack of enough scouts. We did not manage to do any weekend camping last summer.

 

This year we did not plan summer campouts at the annual planning campout in September. We are gathering family vacation schedules now and the PLC will schedule an August campout at their May meeting. They might do a July campout as well but I doubt it as the high adventure outing is in the middle of the month and most of the senior scouts will be doing that. A couple of other senior scouts are working as counselors at camp so leadership will be thin in July.

 

Pet peeve: When my son was in Cubs our pack was not active in the summer except for Webelos camp. I guess that is fairly typical. At the time you had to be a 12 month unit to qualify for Quality Unit Award. The DE asked our CM why he didn't submit a QMA form at rechartering and he said we didn't qualify because we weren't active in the summer. The DE said that he should just say that we were on the form. The CM just said, "no, a scout is trustworthy. I will not lie on the form". It bothered him that the DE would encourage dishonesty. I later learned that DEs are evaluated on how many Qualities Units they have and it can directly impact their compensation. It bothers me that BSA puts their professional staff in that position. Though the standard for QUA has changed the quest for numbers still encourages dishonesty.

 

 

 

[Lisabob]

None of the troops I know of hold a regular meeting schedule all summer long. Some do nothing except summer camp. Some hold a curtailed schedule.

 

My son's troop meets in a school and so we stop with weekly meetings when school ends. We have a number of service activities and fundraisers throughout the summer. We camp in June and we go to summer camp in July. This year our venture patrol is doing a week-long backpacking trek in August but the troop as a whole doesn't typically camp in August.

 

Back when I was a cub leader we had a couple of summer activities each month but it was really hard to get attendance and the few leaders who organized and showed up aometimes felt taken advantage of. It did not seem to matter what the activities were either.

 

I guess there's a balance. I hate to see units that basically only run from October to April. But you have to make sure you aren't burning out your leadership too.

[Beavah]

Yah, I've always found da summer shutdown thing odd. Maybe it comes out of da south, where it gets so hot in da summer? Up in the north, I can't imagine lettin' da months of June, July, and August go to waste. Troops should double their number of meetings and have 'em all outdoors!

 

That havin' been said, I've surveyed a lot of troops and districts on this over da years. My best guess is that it's close to 50-50 in terms of troops that run a summer program other than camp. Maybe 60-40, but no better than that.

 

Never really looked at what caused it. My best guess is adults comin' out of cubs who are used to that school year cub thing.

 

I know that da Catholic units are instructed by their national office to run a full 12-month program. Does anybody know if any of da other Chartering Partners with a national presence have similar requirements? LDS?

 

Beavah

 

[Mister T]

Thanks for all the replies, I'll post back after I discuss this with the SM.

 

LisaBob, I understand the concern about leader burnout, but I'll be totally available to help throughout the summer.

 

Mister T

[Mister T]

Well, that was easy.

 

We are now a year round troop.

 

Mister T

[scoutldr]

WOO HOO!

 

As someone famous once said, "Pity da fool dat shuts down for da summer"

[Eagle732]

When I first became a Cubmaster our pack didn't have a summer program. I changed that and created a summer program with less indoor meetings and more outdoor activities and camping. The result was that the pack doubled in size. When I became a Scoutmaster our troop took off during the summer except for summer camp. I changed that and now we have meetings and camping trips during the summer months. The jury is still out on what effect this will have on membership but I expect the troop will grow because of it. In both the pack and troop I saw boys who were active during the year take off for the summer and never come back, Keep them active and engaged and they will want to come no matter what time of year it is.

[IM_Kathy]

BSA troop - we don't change our schedule for summer other than we don't have a meeting the week the boys are at camp. We have a campout every month - the month we have summer camp we count summer camp as their monthly campout.

 

when my son was in cubs - our pack had a pack meeting/outting every month... some dens met during the summer at regular meeting times, some met but with different times, and some didn't at all. The summers after my son' Tiger and Wolf years we didn't meet as den, but once they got done with Bear's and started Webelos we did. Living where there is a winter you almost have to meet in the summer to be able to get all those outdoor activities done. I was DL those 2 years and during the summer I didn't work and all the boys had a relative or sitter that could bring the boys over during daytime hours so we met after lunch once a month for a few hours and did all kinds of outdoor learning.

 

 

[ThunderFox]

Following is what I say to units who shut down for the summer.

 

If Scouting is a program to teach character building and values to your son, why would you take three months off?

 

What happens during the summer that makes teaching character building and values to your son unnecessary?

 

Cheers,

Ol' Thunder Fox