Programming
Training our Chartered Org Reps
As noted in a recent blog post, North Star District is making a big push as a part of Rechartering season to get our leaders trained for their position or reclassified to avoid the need for new training.
At this point, our Chartered Organization Representatives still are nearly 2/3rds untrained.
This is easy to fix through Council’s online training. Just follow the link, read the PowerPoint slides and report the training through the link in the training. That is it.
It will take Council nearly two weeks to update records, so print out evidence of training for Rechartering.
Who should serve on Boards of Review?
Boards of Review can become points of contention. That is not their purpose. The best means to avoid conflict is to know the rules from the Guide to Advancement (2015) well.
Since Troops, Varsity Teams, Venturing Crews, and Explorer Posts can hold them (troops exclusively up to First Class, see sec. 4.3.1.4), these are the general rules through Life rank.
Here is the key part that you need from the Guide to Advancement (2015) (underlining added for emphasis in text):
8.0.2.0 Particulars for Tenderfoot Through Life Ranks (or Palms)
The preceding applies to boards of review for all Boy Scouting ranks, but there are a few differences for the ranks other than Eagle, and for Eagle Palms:
- The board is made up of three to six unit committee members—no more and no less. In units with fewer than three registered committee members available to serve, it is permissible to use knowledgeable parents (not those of the candidate) or other adults (registered or not) who are at least 21 years of age and who understand Boy Scouting’s aims. Using unregistered adults for boards of review must be the exception, not the rule. Registered committee members familiar with the unit program, who have had a background check, and who are Youth Protection trained are preferred. Scheduling boards of review when and where committee members can attend usually alleviates the problem of not having enough committee members for a board.
- For a Varsity Scout team, the committee member responsible for advancement, the advancement program manager (youth), and the Coach serve on the board. Composition for Boy Scout rank or Palm boards of review held in Venturing crews or Sea Scout ships is the same as that for Boy Scout troops.
- One member serves as chair. The unit committee decides how he or she is chosen. The chair conducts review meetings according to BSA procedures and reports results to the unit advancement coordinator.
- The location should be comfortable, such as the unit meeting place, a camp, or a leader’s home.
- The review should take approximately 15 minutes, but not longer than 30 minutes.
- Ranks and Palms shall not be presented until the signed advancement report is submitted to the local council.
- If a Scout is to be reviewed for more than one rank (Tenderfoot, Second Class, or First Class), each rank should have a separate board of review. While these boards may be conducted on the same date, it is preferred—if feasible—that different members be involved on the boards to give the young man an enhanced experience and an opportunity to interact with a variety of adults.
Just run to the books where you have questions.
Ideas for Summer Camp
As October drifts away and November arrives, it seems to early to think about summer activities. Yet, November is often the last push for the year to do much big in scouting until January. Once January hits, more units focus on summer camp and activities.
If you want to do something different, the November PLC is a great time to take a poll of your scouts or November Pack meeting a chance to poll your Cubs about where they would like to go to summer camp.
My home unit used to have a practice of going to some place out of council at least once every four years. One of our District’s bigger troops goes to Canada every other year. Both are great ideas for keeping scouting interesting for all your scouts.
Last year, Scouting Magazine ran a great article about wonderful Scout Reservations around the country. (Ransburg made this list!)
The Summit at Bechtel Scout Reservation is now running both high adventure and older scout summer camp opportunities.
In addition, your future troop youth leadership can attend White Stag, our local version of the National Youth Leadership Training. (Introduction to Leadership Skills for Troops/Crews is a prerequisite, which we may offer at Winter Camporee, if 
sufficient interest exists.) This one-week, Wood-Badge for youth course is well worth for future or past SPLs, patrol leaders, Troop Guides, etc. (Crossroads BSA website has not been updated for 2016 yet.)
Start the discussion in November, so information gathering can be planned and implemented. Then less pressure is on in January 2016 when real planning needs to begin.
News from Council Operations Meeting
Last night, Tuesday, October 20th, Council held their semi-annual Operations Meeting. North Star was represented by Mark Pishon as District Advancement Chair, Brian Crow as District Camping Chair, District Commissioner Jeff Heck, and District Executive Con Sullivan. We were not able to cover the break out sessions for Programming, Family Friends of Scouting, Activities, or Communications due to lack of representation.
Vice President for District Operations Stroh Brann opened the meeting. As a past Wood Badge Course Director, he recognized our most recent past Wood Badge Director Jason Creighton of currently of Del-Mi District, formerly of our own Pack 358.
Carolyn Small recognized one of our recent White Stag Course Directors (whose name I did not catch).
They then had a short introduction of the STEM Scout program which is currently rolling out in beta testing in the Crossroads 
of America Council. One of its District Executives Zach White announced that the Council took delivery of the new Vortex truck the previous day. I had an opportunity to walk through it. The tools’ delivery is expected in the near future. 
The STEM DE told us a little bit more about the program. The unit in STEM Scouts is a called a “Lab.” The first “Lab Manager” position specific training is November 2nd from 1 pm to 5 pm at the Scout Center. This a great opportunity to learn the program from the inside.
Break-out Session Reports
Membership. The Council Commissioner and the Membership Committee held a joint break out to discuss recruitment and retention. Field Services Director Rob Hemmelgarn provided data on recent trends in the Council for the past 5 years. In that period of time, the retention rate has improved from 66.6% year-over-year in 2010 to 69.2% in 2014. Current projections for 2015 are 70.9%. We are doing an increasingly better job of retaining scouts once we recruit them.
The bad news is that our recruiting and market penetration is down markedly in that same period of time. In 2010, we had 903 traditional scout units. In 2014, we had 757: a loss of 146 units across the council. In 2015, we are projected to loss another 50. This unit loss has had a direct impact on scout recruitment. In 2010, we recruited 9,307 new scouts. In 2014, we recruited 6,779. In 2015, we hope to stay level, but we have only recruited 5,104 as of September 30, 2015.
Many ideas were thrown around about the cause of problems, but the numbers seem to indicate that poor Tiger Cub and other Cub recruiting is hurting all programs. Since 95% of Boy Scouts come from Cub Scouts, this Cub Scout recruiting problem is having a cascading effect on all scouting programs as the years pass.
Rob reported that nearly all youth programs from scouts to athletics are reporting similar declines. Questions were raised about financial explanations. Rob reports that the professional literature is pushing the notion that it is attributable to video games. This writer wonders whether the video game explanation is just a symptom of financial issues. Video games have a larger up-front fixed cost and smaller costs to continually upgrade or add games. It requires no additional time away from home. It allows parents who are busy at work to make sure their kids are occupied with a significant investment of time from the parent. This works well in financially struggling households to allow more work time without additional child care costs or investments in time and effort.
The question in recruitment has a marketing component, a sales component, a training component, and a first-60 days retention component. These components were all alluded to but not answered.
Upcoming Council Events
The next Council meeting is the Cub Scout Promotional Team Kickoff on October 29th at Camp Belzer. November 2, 2015 is the first day of Cub Scout Camp registration for summer 2016.
Council has meetings on November 15th and December 15th for the Activities and Training Committees and the Commissioners at the Scout Center. Start time is 7:00 pm.
The Governor’s Luncheon is December 14th at the JW Marriott hotel.
Training New Board of Review Members
Often troops recruit a new parent to serve on the advancement committee or on an ad hoc Board of Review. New parents often get eyes as big as saucers. Our troop has written a pamphlet with typical questions included. Another option is to offer the new scouter a chance to review some of the YouTube videos prepared by the BSA.
They can take 15 minutes to learn from YouTube Video from National on Boards of Review in general. More specialized topics on the subject are available on advancement from Scouting.org.
Don’t forget to have them review the Guide to Advancement section 8.
UPDATE 10/28/15: Here is an article on the “Do Nots”, too.
Merit Badge Counselors: Annual Renewal
Did you know that
- Merit Badge Counselors are considered part of the “District Staff” and not as an adult member of the Troop or Crew that enrolls the Merit Badge Counselor? Consequently, this position does not appear on the unit’s recharter paperwork.
- District has a member of its Advancement Committee, Merit Badge Counselor Registrar Mike Yates, whose primary duty is to maintain an accurate list of Merit Badge Counselors living or serving within the District?
- District has to recharter just like any of our units?
- Merit Badge Counselors who have not maintained their Youth Protection Training are scheduled to be dropped from the list?
- As part of that process, Merit Badge Counselor staff are subject to a drop-add from membership in the district rechartering process?
- While District Executive Con Sullivan is primarily responsible for the District Rechartering, he relies heavily on the accuracy of information from the units and Mike Yates?
Background
You may remember in July of this year I published an article about why many long-time Merit Badge Counselors suddenly in 2015 found themselves no longer registered as Merit Badge Counselors. This de-registration was primarily due to the District Rechartering process and our prior District Executive’s adherence to the Guide to Advancement’s procedure (section 7.0.1.5 page 47), described in that article, for determining if Merit Badge Counselors are willing to serve in the new year.
Current Status
Our District Executive Con Sullivan has begun the process for rechartering the district for 2016 in cooperation with the District Chair Steve James, Advancement Chair Mark Pishon, District Merit Badge Counselor Registrar Mike Yates, and District Commissioner Jeff Heck.
Eagle Project Ideas
In our meetings with local community leaders, District Executive Con Sullivan and District Commissioner Jeff Heck ran into the Nora Alliance.
The Nora Alliance is a neighborhood advocacy group in Nora. They are looking for ways to enhance the Nora Community. Increased pedestrian space, parkway like enhancement, improvements to the Monon trail.
They want to make the Monon a more park-like environment, especially in the more sun exposed section from 86th St to 96th St.
As part of that goal, we discussed whether Eagle Scouts could do improvements along the Monon. Maybe each section of 40-50 yards could have improvements of slightly different character and elements, while being part of a larger theme. That way each Life Scout could give it his own twist, while making the larger project coherent.
The idea is still in the works, but there is the potential for at least 6-12 Eagle Projects in that area. This might take some adult coordination on themes and procedures to make the politics a bit more manageable for the Life Scouts. Still, in this vision, each Life Scout would have to observe the theme and general rules, while being responsible for the blue prints preparation and approval of his own section. Then he would be responsible for the time and materials to make his blue print spring to life.
We would like feedback on whether this idea has merits and how we could make it work.
Nov. 1st Cub Hayride: Update
Pack 358 has decided to pay for the entire costs of the wagons. That means that all other packs only need to pay $6.00 per car (out-of-county residents) or $5.00 (Marion County residents) and contribute a pitch-in dinner dish per family.
To RSVP, click here.
For more information and a flyer to distribute to your Pack, click here. Pitch in dinner dish requests are by age level, and are printed on the flyer.
Teaching the Scouting Way
As ever, Clarke Green brings us another lesson from Lord Baden-Powell’s writings. This time a wonderful lesson in how to teach without a lesson plan.
B-P makes some comments on the type of volunteers he seeks in scouters. He then starts talking about an impressive schoolmaster (note the term’s similarity to “scoutmaster”):
Yesterday I was talking with our village schoolmaster, a true educationist, by the way. He was explaining some of his methods which had rather raised the hair of an old-time school inspector, but which, in principle, are much in accord with our methods in Scout training.
Take one of his cases as an example. A girl was hopeless at arithmetic, so he had a talk with her, and asked her which of the school subjects she liked best. “Oh, cooking.” And which she liked least. “Arithmetic.”
“Well,”– very confidentially– “don’t tell anyone, but it is just the same with me. I don’t like arithmetic, either. And now, talking of cooking, how would it be if instead of the arithmetic lesson today you cooked a tea for two, with some good scones and a cake, and we can have it together. You order the necessary ingredients, but don’t make it too expensive.” This idea she joyfully carried out. The following day he said– “That tea was a huge success. Can you manage to cook another, on a larger scale, say for five, to which we can ask some pals?” It was duly and enthusiastically done.
The result was that in working out her quantities, prices, etc., the girl had all unconsciously had her arithmetic lesson. Interested in her job, and proud of being trusted with the responsibility put upon her, she was not only learning arithmetic but was realising its practical use at the same time.
It is on this same principle that the Scoutmaster, through the medium of Scouting items which interest the boy, inculcates such qualities as he wants. He educates the boy by encouraging his self — expression instead of disciplining him by police methods of repression.
Too many times, I see scoutmasters that wish to offer classes or push Merit Badge Universities. I teach at such classes. Even so, I try to emphasize the role of the boy in talking. I try to ask questions so that the boys become the lecturers. When I teach on different types of countries, their governments, and economies, the boys talk about their previously researched countries. I ask questions to encourage them to compare the different governments.
But what lessons can we teach our scouts that are more like the schoolmaster in B-P’s story?
Eagle Boards: Need Board Members
UPDATED 10/17/15 to add videos.
UPDATED 10/20/15: boards for November and December have been fully staffed. Thank you for the willing participation from so many units!
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North Star District has a joyous problem. We have more Eagle Candidates than our regularly scheduled boards’ capacity.
District Board Coordinator Jerry Simon has set a goal of moving as many Eagle candidates through their boards before year’s end as possible.
District is planning on holding extra boards on November 11th to meet the demand.
We need board members to volunteer that evening, and possibly again in December. Please contact Jeff Heck if you can serve on a board or two that evening.
Please encourage new scouters in your troop to volunteer. This is a wonderful way for scouters to learn about Eagle process. Jerry will give new board members instruction on their duties. They can also learn more from the Eagle Board of Review YouTube video from the BSA, with this blogger’s favorite scouter on the internet Clarke Green as one of the presenters. Since Eagle Boards are nothing more than specialized Boards of Review, it also pays to listen to this YouTube Video from National on Boards of Review in general. More specialized topics on the subject are available on advancement from Scouting.org.
We may need nearly 20 volunteers to serve on these November boards.
CAC North Star Unofficial Website 
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