Timing of earning Bobcat and testing by leaders

[Sephrina]

I am curious how long you would expect a new Tiger Cub to take to earn the Bobcat award and if the dl and/or pack leadership are supposed to verify the completion by testing the scouts after I, as a parent, have signed that it was completed? My son completed the Bobcat Trail in October as a condition of joining the pack of his choice. Last night at the pack's combined den meeting he was tested on the elements, but due to the length of time there were a couple of elements he could not repeat everything, so the leadership did not sign off. At this point, it looks like it will be at least January when he receives the recognition if the rest of the boys in his den complete theirs.

Thanks

Sephrina

[cubbobwhite]

The fact that you have signed off on the requirements means that he has finished the badge and he should NOT BE TESTED by anyone.

[Den5Pack457]

Wow! And Leslie's 100% Correct. Does he even have his totem, yet?

You are his Akela, as the adult partner. YOU "OK" his trails to advancement in his handbook, the Den Leader records it, and reports it to the Cubmaster or Advancement committee chair (depending upon the make-up of your Pack); and they ensure the rank is presented at the next Pack Meeting.

They're first graders with short attention spans! At our Den Meetings, even though they all earned their Bobcat in September; I go over at least five of the eight things they must know for Bobcat, for repetition so they can remember. It's December, and at least three out of my eight Tigers instinctively want to salute, shake, and show the cub scout sign (Akela's Ears); with their left hands! :) If they don't remember something, we remediate on the spot. Even I have to take a peek at the Law of the Pack.

I'd ask the Cubmaster or Committee Chair why he has received his Bobcat, yet. Since you okayed his Bobcat in October.

[Apache Bob]

You are his leader and you signed off on it. It's his.
I know that sometimes when the award is being handed out at Pack meeting the Cubmaster sometimes will ask the boy what he did to get the award. But no matter what the boy answers he receives the award.
Has your Cubmaster and others in the Pack been trained?

[Sephrina]

He hasn't received anything yet. After reading Leslie's message yesterday, I did talk to our cubmaster this morning. I asked point blank if she knew they did not need to test the boys on anything a parent signs off on. It seems as if at some point in the past couple of years they have started doing it. I don't think there will be any problem changing. I wasn't so successful in convincing her that we do not need to present the awards to all of the boys in a den at the same time though. It looks like it will still be January before my son receives anything. Since my son isn't complaining about it, it's not worth making a big fuss, I'll just keep pushing for the change.

There is a wolf cub in the pack that did not earn his bobcat as a tiger last year. I'm not sure if this is due to the testing of the pack or if he truly did not complete the requirements. If he was signed off on the requirements before he completed first grade and completed all the requirments for the tiger rank while in the first grade, should the pack award him the tiger cub rank patch now?

[Nuts4Scouts]

If your Pack has not awarded him his Bobcat he can not receive any rank awards, Tiger or Wolf.

If both the Bobcat and the Tiger requirements were completed while the boy was a registered Tiger, the boy should have received both awards. Since last year was the first for Bobcat before Tiger, some Packs chose to wait and do the Tiger first for one more year. Unfortunately, it does not sound like your Pack is one of those.

For this boy to receive his Tiger award, a few things need to happen. First, your Pack has to admit that the way they are handling awards, Bobcat in particular, is against BSA policy. Then they have to agree to go back and "make it right" with the boys. Last, if any work at all was done on Tiger requirements when the boy was a registered Wolf he is ineligible to receive his Tiger award. Rank awards are age specific. A boy can not go back and earn awards from a lower level.

Somehow I don't see your Pack admitting that they are doing anything wrong so I would not count on them presenting the boy with a Tiger rank award.

As for your boy, what a shame. Not only have they not followed BSA policy about immediate recognition, but they even waited 1-2 months to do their own version and test him. Now I take it they are saying that either all of the Tigers get Bobcat, or none of them do? Good Grief!

The standard for all of Cub Scouts is "Do Your Best". As a Pack, we have had Bobcat ceremonies each month, Sept thru Dec, for all of our new Scouts in all dens.

Purchase a copy of the Cub Scout Leader Book and show your CM the parts about immediate recognition. If this not help, consider looking for a new Pack.

[Sephrina]

When I talked to the CM this morning, she said packs could choose to present the awards to the dens together or individually.
The pack is struggling right now. The ACM just left to join another pack, last year's CC/secretary/cr has resigned totally. She was going to continue as cr and help out the new cc (me-because she needed someone-I don't really think a brand new cub scout parent is the best choice), there is a Webelos den leader that wants to count bear achievements towards Webelos requirements. I'll admit this is my first experience with Cub Scouts, but this seems wrong.

Hopefully, the cm will be willing to consider some changes. Already, she's is talking about involving the boys in the pack meetings. We haven't had a chance to really talk about everything yet.

I guess a good start for me would be to purchase the cub scout leaders book. Any others I should buy? I have done the training I could online as I missed the council ones and I couldn't get into the pack committee training online. Hopefully, I will be able to start attending our leader/committee meetings (the last two were not held on the scheduled nights, so I had other committments that took priority) and the monthly roundtable

I've known the cm for years and my son wanted to join this pack with her son, even though he is a bear. After some real hesitation, I made a deal with my son (complete the Bobcat by xx date and you can't quit if you don't like the pack - you must try another one first) to join this one. Until he wants to leave, I can't make him. I just hope nothing spoils the experience so much he wants to quit (he is already planning on being an Eagle Scout)

Thanks for all the helpful advice

[Nuts4Scouts]

When I talked to the CM this morning, she said packs could choose to present the awards to the dens together or individually.

Your CM is incorrect. While many Packs do hold awards until all boys have finished, this does not make it right. BSA policy is that boys get their recognitions as soon as possible after they have earned them. Packs do not get a choice in this matter. While the Cubmaster is in charge of the program aspect of the Pack, you, as CC, have every right to insist that BSA program and policies be followed.

there is a Webelos den leader that wants to count bear achievements towards Webelos requirements. I'll admit this is my first experience with Cub Scouts, but this seems wrong.

Whoo Boy is it ever wrong! Sorry, but to me this sounds like a lazy Webelos leader who wants to get out of doing as much as possible.

I guess a good start for me would be to purchase the cub scout leaders book. Any others I should buy? I have done the training I could online as I missed the council ones and I couldn't get into the pack committee training online. Hopefully, I will be able to start attending our leader/committee meetings (the last two were not held on the scheduled nights, so I had other committments that took priority) and the monthly roundtable

The Cub Scout Leader Book ($8.99) has most of the general info for Cub Scouting. Many of the BSA's pamphlets are available online. While BSA has 2 months of Program Helps online, you might consider buying Cub Scout Program Helps 2007-2008 ($2.99), to have the entire year and make it easier for advance planning.

There should be no need for you, as Committee Chair, to be missing Committee/Leader meetings. You should be running the meetings. If you can't make a meeting reshedule it to when it is good for you.

Make a point to go to your District's Roundtables. You will learn things about how Pack meetings should be run, what is going on in your District and Council, and best of all, get to know other volunteers and Council staff from your area. Carpool, take your CM, and any other leaders you can get, along with you. Not only is it more fun going together, but they will come away with new perspectives on the Cub Scout program!

You should plan a casual get together with your CM and your Charter Organization Rep (COR). Inviting your Unit Commissioner (UC) might not be a bad idea either. The UC can offer lots of suggestions and support. You will need to look at what your Pack needs in terms of volunteers (secretary, treasurer, advancement, BALOO, etc), and decide which of your Pack parents would be the best choice for each position, and how you will convince them to accept (think how/why YOU ended up saying yes!). Make getting every leader trained a priority. Ask your UC to contact the District Training Chair and see if it would be possible to set a date and bring training directly to your group.

Read as much as you can. Become informed. Remember why you are doing this. You have a long, and sometimes frustrating, but always rewarding, trail ahead of you.

The most inportant thing to remember is that you are not alone. You have folks in your Council/District who will help and you can always ask for help in any of the online Scout forums!

Good luck - HAVE FUN with your Tiger!

[WB Bear]

Read as much as you can. Become informed. Remember why you are doing this. You have a long, and sometimes frustrating, but always rewarding, trail ahead of you.

The most inportant thing to remember is that you are not alone. You have folks in your Council/District who will help and you can always ask for help in any of the online Scout forums!

Good luck - HAVE FUN with your Tiger!

Nuts4Scouts is right and is heading you in the right direction. There are a lot of resources available. Training will be invaluable for you and it sounds like the rest of the leadership. Roundtables are great. Your Unit Commissioner should be able to be there for you most of the time. The changes you hoped the CM would consider are really not her call. It’s the call of the Pack Committee.

Please don’t become disheartened, it’s a great program and well worth working through a few issues.

[Sephrina]

Thanks. I plan on picking up the cub scout leader book tonight, and meet with the cm this weekend. Our next roundtable isn't until January, but I'm planning on attending. As far as our committe/leader meetings, hopefully there won't be any more rescheduling unless it's a permanent change as I'm beginning to get a complex. I've been involved two months and both months the meetings were moved to a time I had a prior committment.

My son expects me to be involved as long as he is, so I will do my best to help the pack get back on track.

I did speak with the wolf parent, who stated her son had not completed his bobcat last year, so there is no issue of needing to correct that over sight.

Thanks for all the advice. This is a great forum

[Apache Bob]

By all means contact your unit commissioner and as committee chairman of the Pack ask for his/her help. If you do not know who he/she is call your council office and ask who you is district commissioner. He will know who is the unit commissioner for your Pack. If he tells you that one is not assigned then tell him that you expect him to do the work. It is one of his jobs to have a unit commissioner for each unit in his district.
You are the committee chairman of the Pack. You set the time and place for the committee meeting (no one else) but do take into consideration the others work schedules.
Don't give up even if you keep running into brick walls. The walls will get fewer and fewer as you go along. The program is a great one if run by someone who follows the program instead of making it up as they go along.

[Sephrina]

We made progress. All the tiger cubs were awarded their immediate recognition totem last night, no bobcats yet, but it's a start.

[Nuts4Scouts]

GREAT NEWS! Glad to hear that, the boys deserve to be aknowledged for their work. I sure hope you did a bit of a ceremony for them so they could get their 5 min of fame!

Keep working on those Bobcats!

B

[Westergaard]

Don't forget these forums and the internet for information.
MacScouter is a great source for materials as well as several other sites.

[1st Mate]

Sephrina,
The best advice I can offer you is to get your Basic Training, and to get ALL your adult leaders through Basic Training. That would include New Leader Essentials and the job Specific training for their role in the pack.

Read the sections of the Cub Scout Leader Handbook as situations arise. For instance...got a committee meeting coming up? Read and follow the section on committee meetings. Got a question on advancement? Read and follow the information on advancement, etc..

Follow the advice you would give your child...be a cautious user of the Internet. There is A LOT of inaccurate and incorrect information out there posing as official BSA material when it is actually personal opinion or altered BSA information. I do not share Westergaards endorsement of MacScouter or similar sights. There are plenty of official sites mostly linked through www.scouting.org for you to make use of where you can get current and accurate information.

Also your local scout office has a number of excellent resources to help you and the other leaders be successful leaders.

I hope your son has a great time in Scouting! My son turns 20 in a few months and has just reregistered in his Sea Scout Ship. This will be his 13th year as a Scout.

[Nuts4Scouts]

MacScouter is a great site for all sorts of resources. Resources do not have to be official BSA to be useful. I have not seen anything on the National site yet about DO cooking! Between the Pow Wow and ceremony materials, you should be able to find some great ideas to share with (and maybe inspire) your Pack leaders.

Good Luck and Happy New Year!

[WB Bear]

While there are some great resources available online from sites other than BSA it is imperative that we are knowledgeable of official BSA literature and stay within their parameters. Many times I have seen Scouters and units doing something contrary to BSA and in discussing it with them they said they found in online or read online of others doing it.

Scouting provides a lot of leeway in delivering the program, however there as some basic guidelines that are not to be deviated from. It is important for us to know the difference.

[1st Mate]

Here is a specific example of trouble with unofficial Scouting sites. This is a direct quote taken today from macsouter.com. It is from their ceremonies section.

Akela: You are now Bobcats in this pack. You have promised to help other people. Helping other people is called a doing a good turn. So that the pack can see that you are living up to your promise to help other people, we are going to put your bobcat rank on upside down by turning you upside down. You may turn your rank around after you have done a good turn. When the pack sees your rank right side up, they will know that you are helping others.

See the problem? Turning a scout upside down for this ceremony is a specific violation of the BSA safety policies and has been for years! It is well documented in the Cub Scout Leader Handbook and in the Guide to Safe Scouting...and yet....the macscouter site endorses it.

These web sites are inaccurate, badly outdated, and usually contain personal opinions and habits many of which are contrary to the methods, policies and procedures of the BSA.

If you want recipes there are loads of camping related cookbooks available on line, at librairies, at the local scout office. If you want information on the scouting program you should get it from official scouting resources or at least confirm the accuracy of online information with BSA resources before following any of it.

We warn our kids of the dangers of the internet and how people and things are not always what they are represented as being...and then we as adults walk head on into the same traps.

[Westergaard]

I was just at Macscouter and I did not see in the Bobcat ceremony any mention of turning the scout upside down to pin the badge on the scout.
I do remember being inverted when I received my Bobcat Pin some 40 yrs. ago.
What we need to remember is that common sense should come into play with everything that we see, read, and do. Especially in the promotion of the scout program.
My intent was to offer sites like Macscouter as a supplement to not the replacement for the BSA materials and printed information.

[1st Mate]

Here is the link Westergaard

http://macscouter.com/Ceremony/Bobcat.asp

What scouting was 40 years ago and what scouting is today is not identical. Unfortunately unofficial sites do not take the responsibility to check the information they display, nor are they diligent in making sure what they share is correct according to the numerous available BSA resources.

Since the only way to tell if their information is accurate is to check it against the BSA resources why not just use the BSA resources and avoid the unofficial information all together?

How many errors must a site have to be dangerous? Like russian roulette, it just takes one bullet to cause harm. All it takes for a site to be dangerous to a program and its participants is one bad piece of information. Well here is just one of the bullets on macscouter, there are others as well.

Are there not ample official resources on Scouting from the BSA to support any unit's needs without needing to risk following potentially innaccurate info found in unofficial sources?

[Westergaard]

Again, looking at the printed ceremony, all I can see is where the parent is asked to pin the Bobcat upside down on the scout not physically inverting the scout.

[1st Mate]

Westergaard... you have the link and the passage, read the ceremony titled "Jungle Book Ceremony for Accepting New Scouts".

Here is another problem on the same site,
If you look at the Eagle Project Book that the site refers you to you will see it is neither current OR the official form, but one that was altered who knows when by a council in Florida. According to the BSA Advancement Committee Guide /Policies and Procedures AND by the official BSA Eagle Scout Application form the candidate MUST use the offical BSA Eagle Project Workbook and nothing else. The form that site provides IS NOT the official Workbook as it represents itself to be.

These unofficial sites are not diligent in their responsibility to see that the information they provide is accurate or current. They are dangerous to use.

[Westergaard]

You are right and I apologize as I did not see it at first read.

[Nuts4Scouts]

We are talking about RESOURCES here, NOT BSA program. For BSA policy and program you use the official BSA literature (However, even the BSA National web site has been known to have outdated info on it).

As far as upside down Bobcat, if a Pack has not read it's Tiger Handbooks, or the Cub Scout Leader Book, or simply chooses to ignore them, I doubt that one (1) obscure reference, on a non-BSA site will make all that much difference. There are still Packs out there doing this, and not because of anything they read on the Web. They are doing it because they have ALWAYS done it this way and don't consider it to be a problem even when BSA policy is pointed out to them.

So, as I have stated many times, if you want BSA rules and policy, go to official BSA web sites. If you want IDEAS for songs, games, ceremonies, cooking, necker slides, outdoor crafts, local activities, etc, go where your council Roundtable and Pow Wow staff go - the internet.

If you use common sense (& I realize that is a stretch for some adults) you can find an enormous amount of great ideas to mine.

As we are taught in ALL of our BSA trainings - USE ALL OF YOUR RESOURCES!

[1st Mate]

I have started a thread on this topic, please see "Beware of unofficial BSA resources"

[Den5Pack457]

Interesting. I only heard that you couldn't turn the boys upside down but never knew of it's origin. WOW.

[Sephrina]

Update - unless something goes wrong the entire den will be receiving their bobcat at the pack meeting on the 24th, along with the young man in the wolf den.

Karen

[Den5Pack457]

Great news! I sure hope they're able to earn their Tiger Cub Ranks (And the Wolf, his); in time for cross-over. Good luck! :)