Bill's Unofficial Cub Scout Roundtable
A compendium of Ideas For Cubmasters, Den Leaders and those who help them.
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Bill's Unofficial Cub Scout Roundtable
A compendium of Ideas For Cubmasters, Den Leaders and those who help them.
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As I write this, the new Cub Scout Den & Pack Meeting Resource Guide has been available online now for about a week. By the time this issue of the Bugle is out, I expect that a lot more material to be published and ready, both physically and on the net, for the annual pack planning meetings.
Enough material is out to indicate what is going on at National and to speculate what might happen as a result of the changes. It will take significant time for program support agents in districts and within the packs to organize and prepare to take advantage of these changes. Making the program available four months before it goes into effect is a good start, and a change for how National often does things.
My first impression is one of surprise and admiration for the quality and quantity of the work that has gone into this project. The plans that I have examined are well written, well structured and intelligently presented. There is more and concerted attention paid to the aims and purposes of Cub Scouting. Also, there is much more support for parent and family inclusion in the program than I expected. I am impressed.
I wish National would be more open and identify the people who make good things happen. In all my years of Scouting ( some of them actually spent working on National projects) I never got a clear idea of who did what there. Good councils and districts often publish organization charts - some even include phone numbers and email addresses. National never seems to do that. I wonder why.
The Den Meeting Plans are especially well done. The den program is firmly based on the boys’ books rather than on themes. The books - Tiger, Wolf, Bear and Webelos - are full of adventures, challenges and fun. The various den plans I have studied use these with imagination and flair. The authors of the have been able to restore the spirit and the delight that were always supposed to be there in both the requirements and the electives. I was a bit apprehensive that advancement in a den setting would be more like a continuation of school work. The pros and volunteers responsible for these plans have been able to work a bit of magic here. Kudos to them! A good den leader will have a great time with these plans. There is enough flexibility built in to allow for making great use of local resources. More experienced and adventurous den leaders should have few difficulties building on this framework.
The home assignments are significant additions to a den leader’s arsenal. I always encourage more advancement to be completed at home and I recognize that some den leaders find this to be a difficult procedure. Den leaders who use these tools should now get more cooperation from parents and the boys should get better Cub Scouting. Even more surprising (and welcome) are those instances where Webelos Activity Badge requirements are recommended to be completed at home and signed off by parents.
Certainly den meetings needed this sort of boost. Up to now, the recommended den program was dominated by themes which failed to to support the quality ideas in the boys’ books.
The Pack Meeting Plans, though, are something of a disappointment. Removing themes left a big hole in pack meeting programs. The attempts to fill the hole with homilies and guest speakers just doesn’t cut it. This has resulted in reducing the pack meeting to just a meeting - nothing more than an ordinary, plain, very dull meeting. A Pack meeting must be more that that. It should be a show - a party - a joyous community celebration that catches and holds the attention of parents, Cub Scouts and siblings every month. The last thing we need is another dull meeting. Themes, at the very least, provided a basis for a party.
As our good friend, Sean Scott has oft reminded us:
First, don't think of your meeting as a 'meeting'. Start to think in terms of a one night show, a production. Meetings are dull, we go to them every day and rarely (if ever) look forward to them. A show, however, is entertainment! People want to be entertained, and while they'll forget to go to your meeting, they'll remember that they have tickets to your show!
Pack meetings make poor venues to teach things like Character Connections or Ideals. You can celebrate them and even promote them there but the explanation and teaching is much better accomplished elsewhere. Where? Anywhere else.If you think about it carefully, not much real Cub Scouting takes place at a pack meeting. There just isn’t the time nor the tools to make it happen with such a diverse audience. Instead it is the the introduction to all the rest of the program: the den meetings, the home and family activities, the service projects, outdoor action, and even to the Boy Scout program. You might think of pack meetings as the gateway to Scouting. Without pack meetings, those other things might not happen at all.
Den Support at pack pack meetings. The pack meeting should provide an arena for your dens to show their stuff. Strong dens perform regularly at pack meetings in ceremonies, skits and other activities that can be seen and appreciated by parents. Unfortunately, the November plan injects a den skit, cold, immediately following the CM reads (that’s right, READS) the announcements. No cheers, no run-ons, no fun songs, no set-up at all. Just, “Get out there, kids, and open the show.” Good, well trained Cubmasters should easily work around these problems.
Pack outings and other special pack programs are still recommended and haven’t changed much. I wonder how the same people who are doing such a great job with den programming could make such a mess of pack meetings.
However, I am impressed with how the program is packaged and presented. Most plans and support information is easily downloadable, making it instantly available to any leader on line. Navigation is a bit hit or miss but I could usually get where I wanted to go.There appears to be a feedback channel being established that will permit upward communication from unit leaders directly to those at National. There will be many good ideas generated in local packs and dens as leaders gain experience using these plans. This can only lead to good things. For the first time that I remember, the internet is being used intelligently by National to really promote unit programming rather than to promote some obscure agenda of a high-ranking pooh-bah in Irving.
I haven’t seen anything yet on Roundtable or training. Good RT will be essential in getting this whole project off the ground and up in the air. The track records of Keys-3 and RT-admin. are quite weak when it comes to Cub Scouting and following National’s suggestions. I regularly visited Roundtables as I traveled and I rarely saw the old RT-Guide being followed. Too often, the meetings were run by one of the district Key-3 for their own personal agendas. It probably doesn’t matter what is in the new guide if the districts won’t follow it. We need a good shake-up there.
Training is another matter. Thanks much to Wood Badge influence, there is a discipline in most district training teams to faithfully follow the manuals and directives. Also the current Cub Scout Position Specific manual is (at least in my estimation) the best training to come out of Irving (or North Brunswick) in the last half-century. This last one was produced by a group headed by Ted Rohling of the Alamo Area Council. The professionalism and adherence to standards of adult learning practices mark Ted as the top suspect in why it works so well. I hope that he is still involved.
All in all, I am confident that things are improving and Cub Scouting is safe, alive and thriving. There are good people in charge, not only in our dens and packs, but also in the committees and task forces that generate the program material.
This will be my last Training Tip. My age and health are finally catching up with me to the extent that I can no longer pretend that I could put out a quality column.
I certainly have enjoyed and value my association with Dave and all the gang who work on the Bugle. Dave, especially has been a special part of my Scouting life for the past several years. His dedication is an inspiration for all of us.
Come October, I will have completed my 48th year as an adult Scouter. It’s probably time I started taking it easy.
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Training Tips
Training Tips
The annual pack planning process is probably the most important task ahead. The quality of your next-year’s program will depend almost entirely on how well you plan it.
Make it work
Be prepared! This year we will be working with the CUB SCOUTS 2010 material. Things will be a bit different, but that should not be too much of a problem for most packs and most district teams. The good news is, that from all I have heard, the volunteers who have made up the National Cub Scout Committee are still there so we should expect high quality work similar to what they were producing during the last several years. This was some of the best stuff I have seen coming out of Irving is all my years of Scouting.
MyScouting.org informs us that:
CS 2010 leader materials and training should be in local council service centers
between April 30 and May 7, 2010.
Barely in time for the May Roundtables. Several correspondents have noted that National doesn’t have the best track record in getting stuff out on time. It is still a great improvement over waiting until the Nation Business Meetings in early June as they normally do.
The two big changes that will have immediate effects in pack planning this summer and pack programs starting in September are:
Let’s look at each of these in turn and examine how they will affect planning, programs, Roundtables and training.
Themes
Themes will go the way of Tiger Big Ideas, Den Mothers, and Be Square - it will just disappear from the lexicon of Cub Scouting. Actually very few Cub Packs have used themes exactly as outlined in our planning literature. Pack leaders would typically choose themes in whatever order worked for them, sometimes choosing a theme from another year or making up their own. It was not unusual for packs to plan a whole month on some other program item - like the PWD or camp. When I was a CM (back in Paleolithic times) we would often base our month on some upcoming event like a fishing trip or a bicycle rodeo.
Den leaders had an even more cavalier attitude and joined in on what the pack chose to do only if it might make their den meetings better. Tigers rarely used themes.
It is almost impossible to create a monthly theme that would work for all climates, all local customs and resources and all leaders’ abilities.
What did work for many packs was when the theme (or whatever they chose to use) would catch the imagination of the boys and make the meeting exciting and FUN.
Lisa Titus wrote in a Cub Scout forum:
All I really know is that the themes are going away and they’re being replaced by the core values. .... I say there is nothing wrong with the core values ....BUT ....I just don't see the FUN in them.
Themes are not really being replaced. They are just being eliminated. Core Values are not new; we have had suggestions for two monthly CVs for almost ten years now. We were supposed to be incorporating them in all our den and pack programs, weren’t we? Now we will only have one. What will replace the theme and the other CV?
Lisa is right about the FUN though. We are also supposed to fill our meetings with activities that appeal to boys ages 6 through 10. This usually means things like games, skits, run-ons, and those wild ceremonies that Sean Scott would suggest. Our best pack leaders have excelled at choosing these kinds of items. Also The Cub Scout Leaders’ How-To Book is scheduled to be around now for at least several more years.
It does seem a bit much to spend an entire pack meeting preaching to parents and boys on a single message on building Character. I recall that Baden Powell once wrote:
Also, when visiting the parents, don’t go with the idea of impressing on them the value of Scouting so much as to glean from them what are their ideas of training their boys and what they expect of Scouting or where they find it deficient.
Some packs conduct regular surveys of families in their packs to determine which events and other program items to keep, change or drop. Some of the more successful surveys are on the pack web sites.
Roundtable staffs should be able to fill their programs with both fun stuff as well as ideas on how to incorporate CVs into pack and den programs. This sort of stuff has been going on for years — it’s not rocket science or M-Theory.
Personally, I am glad to see the end of suggested themes. I have always regarded them as being overly restrictive rather than helpful. Occasionally there were some wonderful themes that introduced Cub Scouts to new adventures like foreign countries, history or literature. I see nothing wrong with putting a few of these in your programs. This new approach seems to offer more choices, more flexibility for leaders. We will have to see what the new guides have as they become available this week, but so far I like what I have seen.
Fast track
I have, for years, believed that the position of den leader was one of most difficult jobs in Scouting. Den leaders must come up with some thirty to fifty meetings a year and do most of the work to plan, lead and provide everything for them. Scoutmasters, on the other hand, have a bunch of Patrol Leaders and other Scouts who do most of this work.
So I regard anything that helps DLs do their jobs as an improvement. The Fast Track approach seems to do that.
We lose a lot of Cub Scouts every year when dens fail. Looking at membership records for individual packs reveals that a significant number of packs retain almost all their boys except for a single age or grade level where 100% drop out. An entire den disappeared! This happens in different packs at different levels all the time. Now it’s hard to imagine a den program so weak that all the boys drop out, but it is easy to visualize a den leader so frustrated and overloaded that he or she just gives up. If you also consider typical high ratios of registered DL to DA, then it is likely that there is no one to take over the den. Many dens lack a registered assistant leader and few of those we have are trained. So, the den fails and we lose all those boys.
Therefore something that supports the den program, or that make the job easier, or that encourages the leader, is going to help. What is really give me confidence are the reports that most den leaders that have tried the new system enthusiastically support it. If den leaders like what they are doing they are more likely to be successful.
A couple things do worry me a bit. Putting more of the advancement process in the den meetings has the potential of making the den more like a continuation of school work than an escape to fun and adventure. I am confident that most den leaders I have met can cope with that, and will to some degree. Yet, a long-time Scout leader I know observed that it seemed like National was more interested in putting more badges on kids than attaining the purposes of Cub Scouting.
Another worry is that there seems to be a decided shift away from the Home and Neighborhood concept. The stated reason for this is that family structures have changed since Huber Hurt’s time and we can’t get parents involved like we used to.
Yes, families have changed and for the better! It’s easier these days to get parents involved. We now see more diversity in the family members who support both the pack and the individual Cub Scouts. In the last dozen years I have marveled at the ability of single parents to not only be excellent Akelas for their Cub Scout sons, but also take on major responsibilities in pack leadership. We continue to see more fathers become den leaders and more grandparents return to the program.
Getting parents involved usually is accomplished by some variation of the following three-step program:
A buy-in by all the leaders. Everyone is marching to the same drummer.
Introduce the Parent Agreement to the families, the night the boy joins (when the parent has the Application in hand.) And the parents do agree to it and sign it.
Follow-up regular parent meetings, reminders in ceremonies, newsletters, web sites, etc.
I have taught this at all sorts of training events and Roundtables since I first learned it at Philmont forty-some years ago. I used to get a lot of flack over it whenever the subject of parents came up. The opposition seemed to stem from people unaware the process or the values of parent involvement and those unwilling to put forth the effort it takes to make it happen.
It does take a bit of effort (and patience) but it does work and the results are certainly worth it. The biggest and best packs I have ever seen use some version of that 3-step method and get lots of parent involvement. A wise Director of Field service once told me, “Any pack that solves the parent problem has very few other problems.”
Getting parents involved does not seem to be the problem it was even 10 years ago. Certainly nowhere near as contentious as it was back in the 1970’s and ’80’s. I haven’t seen the parent problem show up in recent years in the CS email forums I monitor. It used to be regular topic a decade ago. The last time I was challenged on the issue was at a Pow Wow in 2000 or 2001. I think though that those leaders were more worried that parents might dilute their authorities rather than their being uninformed or lazy. They were protecting their turf - something I see more in Scout troops than in Cub Packs.
So I wonder where all this trepidation about unwilling parents comes from. Does someone in Irving really believe that today’s parents don’t love their kids or don’t aspire to see them grow into competent, useful citizens? I, for one, am proud of these parents I see today, and I am proud of their children.
The arithmetic favors parents. A den leader can spend a few minutes a week in one-on-one special time with each boy. How much character building, how much citizenship training doe that provide? Parent have the ability to spent hours doing this with their sons. They can, and will, so long as they are motivated to do so.
All we have to do is to convince parents that it just take one hour a week.
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Training Tips
Kevin was in the first group of boys to join our Cub Pack in October 1963 when three neighbors and I started it in our back yard. My wife, Shirley, had told me that I could be Cubmaster as long as she didn’t have to do anything. When Kevin’s den mother up and quit, Shirley took over den 6 and inherited Kevin along with the others.
Some of the first things I noticed about Kevin were that he loved Cub Scouting and that his mother was always around to help with the den or with our monthly outdoors activities. His dad was noticeably absent - I recalled something on the application form about him working on a ship. It wasn’t a big deal; as long as we had one parent contributing, that was a huge plus.
A couple months later, I finally got to meet Kevin’s dad. We talked for a few minutes at the end of a Pack Meeting. He told me that he was appreciative of how much Kevin was getting out of Cub Scouting and he felt guilty that his job prevented him from being a part of the program. He described his job as being the navigation officer on board an oceanographic research ship.
At that time, Oceanography was one of those new, esoteric sciences that was mostly a mystery to the general public. Sort of like what many of us are presently unaware of what goes on at the CERN Laboratory in Switzerland. I nodded my head in dumb agreement with little real understanding as he described the project. His duties, as he described it, were to plot a course along a “survey line” and then plot another parallel course a few miles away. “A very boring job going back and forth across the ocean.”
The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) website describes Oceanography at this period of time. 1963 - The first operational multibeam sounding system was installed on the USNS Compass Island. This system, and other multibeam sounding systems that have evolved since, observe a number of soundings to the left and right of a ship's head as well as vertically allowing the development of a relatively accurate map of the seafloor as the ship proceeds on a survey line.
The next time that his ship was back in port at pack meeting time, he dropped a real bomb shell on us.
He asked if any kids might be interested in a tour of the ship. He said that Kevin and siblings had been there several times and had pretty much lost interest in it.
Well, I knew that very few members of our pack had ever been aboard a real ocean-going ship so the pack committee and I jumped on this invitation. We used Kevin’s mom as our contact point, arranged a date for the tour, chartered a bus and were on the dock when the Navigation Officer came down the gangway to welcome us.
It was a great tour! We went from the engine room to the bridge, with all sorts of stops along the way. The crew was magnificent, describing the equipment, answering all the questions that kids have and then inviting us down to the galley for some ice cream. We had briefed the boys on proper etiquette aboard a ship and what to expect there and their conduct exceeded our expectations. The boys had great time, gave good will, and we were proud of them.
This visit was so successful and popular that it became an annual event. Lots of word-of-mouth went on in school and that helped recruiting. We heard that the ship's captain liked our visits because our pack was one of the few groups that didn’t try to steal anything not nailed down.
On (I think it was) our third visit, the crew had a special surprise for us. On their last trip, they had mapped the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. When we got to the sonar room, they brought out the echo maps they had made showing the two parallel mountain ranges in the ocean floor and the deep valley between where, the sonar operators explained, were under-water volcanoes. The boys were able to trace with their fingers along the ridges and gaps; they ate it all up. Some of the adults who were up on science were in awe and even those of us who weren’t so knowledgeable recognized that what we were seeing was important.
What we saw was, of course, the early discoveries that led to the theories of plate tectonics and seafloor spreading. This experience helped the Cub Scouts and older siblings who came along with their science education. Some years later one of our den leaders commented, “That was sort of like Galileo inviting our den over to his back yard to view the moons of Jupiter through his telescope.” When a former Cub Scout’s high school science class covered tectonic plates, he remembered: Yeah, we were there when they discovered that.
What was, perhaps, more important. is what we learned about getting parents involved. Here was a father who mistakenly thought that he had little to contribute to his son’s Cub Scouting. His boring job kept him away from home for long periods of time. He had practically no time to work with his son on his achievements or electives and certainly could not be a leader or contribute to the pack program. What really happened was that he gave Kevin’s pack one of its most valuable and exciting episodes. He was a hero; everyone knew who Kevin’s dad was.
We were lucky to find him and work with him. Without those couple of casual conversations it may never have happened. I would guess that we miss a lot of valuable talent and human resources when parents don’t see a clear path into helping make our packs go. It often takes a lot of communication, imagination and exploration on the part of both the leaders and the parents to discover just the best ways for a parent to contribute.
We too often just write off some parents as not worth the effort. And in that way we rob the son of seeing his parents as heroes. Kevin was, I’m sure, proud of his dad.
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Over the years, I have seen several dozen pinewood derbies starting with a couple at Philmont Training Center in 1963 and especially during the years I served as a Unit Commissioner in Illinois. I also have links to about three hundred Cub Pack web sites where I regularly view descriptions and photos of their derbies. It’s a fascinating hobby.
The pinewood derby was originated in 1952 in Cub Scout Pack 280C in Manhattan Beach, CA, mostly by then Cubmaster Don Murphy, and has been one of the most popular activities in Scouting.
There are some good reasons for both the popularity and the longevity of the PWD: It makes a wonderful home project where a boy and whoever loves and cares for him there can work together building dreams and turning them into reality. Just learning what tools to use.
My favorite tool for boys to use is one called a shoe rasp. It is a simple tool with four faces that can remove an amazing amount of wood, easily and safely by a Cub Scout. I would also suggest that he wear gloves and use a clamp to hold the body while he works on it. It’s competitive. Boys (actually most young life forms) need and seek out competition. Dr. Michael Gurian, wrote
“Boys need to compete and perform well to feel worthy...Boys compete verbally and physically, and base some relationships on competition. Competition for boys is a form of nurturing behavior. ”
Competition seems to come naturally, especially to boys. I have marveled at what, when and how they choose to compete. It’s varied, hardly the same from one set of boys to the next.
The derby itself has a dramatic content. Parents and leaders often put on some spectacular shows that add excitement to the competition.
These shows scan serve as great examples for Webelos preparing to be Boy Scouts where they will eventually get to run their own programs. One of the most spectacular derbies I saw was at a pack in Batavia, IL where a group of leaders and parents who worked at nearby Fermi Accelerator and Bell Labs ran a total computer controlled derby. This was in 1984 when home computers were indeed rarities.
Like any Cub Scout activity, a PWD should, of course, be organized and run to adhere to the purposes and ideals of Cub Scouting.
It should then be a simple matter then to organize a PWD to help attain one or more of the ten purposes of Cub Scouting. After all, what could possibly go wrong?
Level the Playing Field
Back when Don Murphy started this, almost all Cub Scout families included both parents and it was common then for dads to have both tools and the skills to use them. Today we often pit a single mother whose tool-crib consists of little more than two screw drivers (one phillips, one slotted) and a non-descript hammer against a father who commands a variety of technical and model-building resorces.
Many packs arrange workshops - typically on Saturday afternoons - to aid the tool-challenged families buid their cars. Even large corporations like Lowes and Home Depot are getting into the act. This certainly helps a lot of parents, but it does move the process away from the Home and Neighborhood method that has been part of Cub Scouting since its inception. We get better made cars but which of the ten purposes is supported?
Also I wonder if it is such a good idea to pit families of a Cub Pack against each other. It probably doesn’t help get more parents involved with den and pack activities.
Give Control to the Boys
When a boy makes something, he expects it to do something. The word Do is important not only in the lexicon of boys but also in their actions and their dreams. National CS Director Bud Bennett used to tell us:
When two boys are standing, they are talking about doing something.
When they are walking, they are on their way to do something.
When they are running, they have just done something.
So when a boy builds a toy car, he has all sorts of hopes and dreams about whwt it will do. This goes on from the very start of the buiding process - often before the kit has been removed from the box. Even before the wheels are on I have watched boys, their eyes at table level, moving the half-shaped model along the table top.
Once the body has some sort of car-shape and especially when the wheels are on, I have noticed that many boys seem to lose interest in more work on the car. They are not so much interested in its final form. They want to see it perform - to do something.
What should it do?
There are many more choices. Boys can be quite inventive. Somewhere about 1256th on his list might be:
Handing his car over to some adults in the parking lot and then not touching it again until the races were completely over. It is his car, isn’t it?
Boys know how to race. I have watched kids organize all sorts of races. They have good grasps of process, fairness and use of rules. I’m not at all sure of what we gain by letting adults usurp so much of the PWD race. It’s almost as if we can’t trust our own kids to do it.
Is it true that only adults can organize and run races between kids?
I recently attended a couple of my grandson’s PWDs where the Cubmaster just let the kids race. He divided the pack into two groups, one group would race for about twenty minutes and then the other group took over. The boys ran their races, placed their cars on the tracks, operated the gates, and then ran to the finish line to view the results and collect their cars. By that time, the next Cubs would have their cars ready to race. Bears and Webelos helped Tigers learn to operate the gates and they soon got the hang of it.
The pack had acquired three dissimilar tracks so their were lots of opportunity for boys to race their cars. It was a relaxed enjoyable evening.
Cheating
Cheaters are huge problem in our derbies. I first became aware of it at my first PWD at Philmont in 1963. The PTC staff decreed that the kits would be shaped as trucks. That required that the bodies would be carved and run backwards. When I asked, “Why?” I was told that there had been problems with people bringing in ringers so that they could brag that their cars also won at Philmont. They wanted to ensure that all cars in their PWD were made there by those attending that session.
I was dumbstruck. Actual Cub Scout leaders, those recommended by their councils, cheating in a race of kids’ toy cars! How could that possibly happen?
Apparently it has grown worse since then. I have been informed that one can purchase “guaranteed winners” on ebay and elsewhere for upwards of $100.
The typical response to this for many packs is to enforce stricter rules to detect rule breakers.
The problem here is that the cheaters and especially the vendors of these ringers have a distinct advantage over most pack leaders. They have more technical knowledge about how to do it and more financing than the rest of us.
In reference to all this, Carl Cravens posted this:
I lost my one PWD race when I was a kid. I don’t remember how I felt about losing... I’m sure I was disappointed, but I don’t think it was any big deal. And in retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t, because I didn’t build that car myself. Imagine how a kid must feel when he wins a District championship with a car his daddy bought on eBay for $150. What right does a father have to steal his son’s chance at winning for himself? When my son races, whether he wins or loses, I want him to be proud of his car, because he built it himself.
My recomendation is to make cheating not worth the effort or the cost. Eliminate the grand champions, the trophies and the photos of the “winners” on pack web sites. In other words:
Keep it Simple, Make it Fun
The objective of your derby should not be finding the fastest toy car, but achieving one or more of the ten purposes. It probably doesn’t matter which of the ten you choose. Pick a couple and see how it works.
Have several small championships rather than one big over-all winner. Winning doesn’t have to go to the fastest car. I once watched some Cub Scouts competing to see which car would stop closest to the finish line without crossing it. Stuff like that is still competitive but more fun.
In his wonderful book, The Well Played Game, Bernie De Koven recommends that it is important for all players in a game enjoy what they are doing and that you should change the rules of the game to do just that.
One of the strangest comments on PWD that I have read on Scouting forums is that it is imperative that we teach kids how to lose.
Kids don’t know how to lose?
Which kids? I would guess that there are very few in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Watts or South Chicago who need that kind of teaching. Sean Scott, Scouter in San Diego commented that the kids who do need it are probably the ones whose fathers will put up the money to buy them the guaranteed winners.
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Training Tips
About a dozen years ago I wrote the following bit about den leaders. I had noticed that pack organization charts always seemed to put den leaders at the very bottom of the hierarchy and I wasn’t sure that was where they belonged.
The program runs on DLs. Do anything to keep them happy and productive. Don't let anyone pile extra duties on them. They are not someone's personal messenger, or delivery boy and especially they are not your wait staff at the Blue and Gold Banquet. Their only job is to lead the dens.
Leading a den is a tough job! It’s a lot tougher than being a Cubmaster, or especially a Scoutmaster. I had those jobs for several years and each was a snap compared to the few months when I filled in for absent den leaders. Those Tuesday afternoons inexorably came around every week and I had to be ready each time with a newly planned program, all sorts of equipment for projects and games and I had to keep track of all the little marks in well-thumbed books or worry about what might be in books that never showed. I’ve never been a Webelos DL but it seems – at least on paper – to be even tougher. I’m not about to get in line for the job either.
As a Cubmaster, I just had to show up at the neighborhood elementary school once a month and try (not very hard) to make an absolute fool of myself. All I had to do was to wear orange gloves and wave my arms a bit and they would all sing Tarzan or Wetspers, and then introduce the dens: Here comes Den Four! They have a new skit for us!
As a Scoutmaster, I would show up every week to watch our cadre of Patrol Leaders and helpers put on their troop meetings. My only part was to recite one or two BP-like homilies at the end of the meetings. Our monthly campouts were even easier. All I ever did was to sit in my sort of comfortable camp chair, drink a never-ending supply of coffee and watch the boys play the wonderful game of Scouting.
I failed to mention all the help I got from the pack and troop committees. They took care of all the finances, the advancement, got the tour permits and booked the meeting places. They were wonderful for me as a CM or SM.
I’m not so sure that den leaders get that much help from their pack committees. Yet, I truly believe that:
In Cub Scouting, you’re either a den leader or your main job is to help den leaders.
There is no other choice.
So, who should be helping den leaders?
Pack Leaders One of the first things I learned as a Cubmaster was that the success of our pack depended a lot more on den leaders than on me. I gradually found ways to help dens and den leaders become successful. We made dens the stars of our pack meetings. We protected the DL corps from having extra jobs thrust on them. For example: let the DLs take care of the product sales or they could serve the food at the Blue and Gold.
Good Pack Trainers, Treasurers and Committee Chairs can do a lot to ensure that den leaders get the training, funding and support they need to make their programs successful.
Someone in the pack structure should be doing their best to line up assistant DLs and Den Chiefs.
Commissioners Most Unit Commissioners totally ignore dens and den leaders even though the conditions of den programs are better indicators of unit health than most other items on their check lists. District Commissioners, as a rule, are even more oblivious to the concerns of den leaders.
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Training Tips
Training Tips
There has been a lot of discussion in the last year or so about the quality, quantity and effectiveness of Cub Scout Leader Training. This month’s column is mostly directed to members of our district training teams but much also applies to those who staff Roundtables, Pow Wows, Universities of Scouting and other Scout training arenas.
Last year a national team, under the direction of Sam Thompson, produced one of the best Cub Scout leader basic training courses I have seen in my 46 years of adult Scouting. Much of the credit for the quality improvement should go to Ted Rohling, of the Alamo Area Council, who headed up the project. I met Ted at a National meeting a couple years back and I was duly impressed with his qualifications and his outlook on CS leader training. He is an executive of a technical training company and a training chair in his council. More importantly, his education is in Adult Education rather than in pedagogy.
What, you may ask, is the difference between these two types of training? Pedagogy is the teaching of children while Adult Ed. is the teaching of adults. One big difference is that Adult Ed. Is more concerned with how people learn than it is with how we teach. Adults attending a training course come with diverse life-experiences, different skills, a variety of outlooks and cultural backgrounds. Some will come with their own agendas or expectations of what the want to get from the training.
Good trainer will do their best to understand these factors and use them to help students learn. Think for a moment about the different people we recruited this fall to be den leaders. What sort of differences in life style, education, experience and ability do you think are in this group? What different problems exist in their packs that might affect how they view their job, their den, their pack or Scouting in general? Are you really ready to help each of them learn?
Most adults will learn just what they want to learn – not just what we want to teach them.
Part of our problem is that the folks who give the training and those who take the training are often marching to the beats of different drummers. Pack leaders come in with their own unique sets of needs and wants that often times don’t quite match up with what we think they need or what we think they want. They have their agendas and we have ours. We follow our manuals and outlines and think we have communicated. They leave remembering only that their concerns were not addressed. Any good or useful stuff we did cover was lost somehow.
Trainers who take the time to ferret out the questions and concerns that leaders bring with them usually find that they run way over time or have to cut a lot of corners to finish on time.
It would certainly be helpful if we knew before hand what were the concerns and question people had before they came.
There should be a better way for trainers to get some handle on what our pack and den leaders want or need to get from training. In every district, there are district folk who are in contact with pack folk. Commissioners, RT staff, Pack Trainers, membership and finance people all get to talk and interact with those in the Cub packs. They see a lot, they hear a lot and they are aware of what is needed to steer packs in the right direction. It would certainly help if the district team worked ….. well, like a team: that their goal was to improve the program in the dens and in the packs rather than just put on training.
How really effective is our training? Does it really make dens and packs better? How do we know?
What does a good Cub Scout leader really do? Do good den leaders and Cubmasters do things differently than other leaders? Could you tell they were good leaders by just watching them perform? Did they learn to do these things in one of our training courses? If so, which ones?
I was with a group of trainers who played a game where we pretended that we were aliens from another planet who were instructed to contact a good den leader. We needed a list of what good den leaders do so we could identify one. We then compared our list to what we were teaching at our training sessions. It was an eye-opening experience.
Will the people who attend your training sessions do these things? Now that we have a new Cub Scout Leader Specific training that does a great job of addressing what goes on at Cub Scout meetings, we should do our best to make our training effective.
What happens in the den and the pack is much more important than what happens at the training.
Former Scout Executive Dennis Cook put it very succinctly:
It appears that we have lost track of who is responsible for supporting whom. Unit support becomes the primary job of the whole district. This idea would require districts to communicate directly with their units prior to setting the district calendar and to find out what the unit’s needs are. Knowing in advance what their needs are would allow us to plan activities that would help better support them.
When applied to training, those district people who are in contact with units – the Commissioners, DE, membership and Roundtable staff – will be aware of questions and problems in the packs. If they make the district training staff aware of what goes on in the units then the trainers are in a better position to adapt their training to better help the pack leaders solve their problems and improve their programs. Too often a trainer can be sandbagged by an innocent sounding question where an ill prepared answer opens up a can of worms that disrupts the training for all concerned. It is difficult sometimes to foresee what volatile experiences lurk behind any question.
It is part of the duty of our district training staffs to learn as much as they can about the people whom they are going to train and it is the duty of anyone who can, to help them prepare. I would guess that many Pack Trainers should have very valuable advice for the training staff.
Did We Do the Job?
When the training is over, how do we evaluate our training? A lot of our evaluations are superficial and self-serving.
All very nice but they miss the main point: Will the program in the dens and packs improve or was this just a pleasant social get together? After all, that is why we train. Our only purpose as members of the district team is to make Scout units more successful. How can we possibly measure this? Training objectives should be attainable, relevant and – especially – measurable. We should be more concerned with:
We could ask people who would know – like Pack Trainers and Unit Commissioners - to do some follow up for us. They should be able to tell whether or not the leaders we train are becoming more successful. We haven’t really completed our job until we communicate with those who regularly observe the leaders we train.
In the long run we can use metrics like advancement and membership to ascertain the effectiveness of both training and the entire district team’s efforts. These numbers tell us just how successful are our packs. And that is our job: to make packs better.
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Training Tips
Training Tips
