Replace 6/8 member dens with rank based dens

[Fred Johnson]

Since this is the place for a civil discussion.... I saw this hinted at on another board. The more I think about it, the more I think it's right. Our pack has been doing it for a few years and it seems to work well.


ASSERTION: For Cub Scouts, I think the idea of six to eight member den is wrong. It's inherited from Boy Scouts and though it's okay, it's less than optimal.


PROBLEMS

1. Not every scout/parent is 100% committed. It's common to have 25% or more of a den missing a meeting. With 6/8 member dens, it makes the den look like 3/6 member den. I know the solution is program program program, but the issue is parents, parents, parents and conflicts, conflicts, conflicts.

Plus, den leaders are doing their best as volunteers. It's hard for them to put on a high quality program month after month, year after year. So, I don't believe program is 100% the answer to membership issues.

2. Life interrupts not only scouts and parents but also den leaders. When this happens in a 6/8 member den, there are few resources (i.e. parents) to pick things up. Often dens become inactive for months at a time and scouts leave. The cub scout ends up looking choppy and not that good.

As kids drop out or have boring experiences, they bad mouth cub scouts to their classmates. "Yeah, I was in it. We didn't do that much." "It wasn't fun." Peer pressure develops that knocks other cub scouts out of the program.


SOLUTION

Keep kids together in a mega-den by rank (grade). It makes absences less apparent because you always have a critical mass of scouts. It almost creates a positive peer-pressure to attend. "Hey, 20 of my friends are meeting tonight. I want to be there."

Our pack has started doing this with some success. The den leader focuses on program. The assistant den leaders get assigned six to eight scouts with the goal that every scout has someone that knows their names, offers them a smile and a greeting and can have at least a short conversation with them.

The big benefit is with the volunteers. More help because volunteers see they won't be doing everything. Also, when one volunteer becomes busy, there are three or four to keep the den going. It seems to create stronger fellowship between the adults too.

Also, you have more resources and higher odds that a parent will be a police man, fireman, military, news man, civic resource, teacher, sports coach, .... So the leaders have more resources to tap to deliver a high quality program.


HISTORY #1

My oldest son's cub scout den lost it's den leader when her son dropped before Webelos. I picked it up. We had four boys. I asked the other den leader of five Webelos if we should merge dens. She said no because she had her plans. Fine. We ran ours and things revived and picked up two new scouts. We had a great Webelos experience. In the end, the other Webelos den almost folded and the other den leader's son crossed into a troop with us. Go figure.

HISTORY #2

Our current pack's fell into doing this because a den kept adding members and it by default became a mega-den. We debated splitting them up, but how do you split up the friendships. So, they found a way to make it work. In Tigers, they started with 10 to 12. Right now, the Webelos 1 den is up to 22 scouts. Our wolf den is at 19. Our new Tiger den is at 19 ... lots of siblings. As with all dens, some scouts are very active. Others not as much. But the active scouts provide enough energy to keep the somewhat active scouts going.


CHALLENGE

The challenge we see is the meeting space and budget. Mega dens eliminate using homes. We have to use churches, civic/business buildings, library conference rooms or school spaces. Also, where den leaders often swallow cost for six to eight cubs, they can't do it for 20 cubs.


It's working and we like it. Our pack has eighty scouts with one Webelos 2 den, one Webelos 1 den, one bear den, one wolf den, one tiger den and one lion den. For one grade, we have over 50% of the boys in cub scouts. Go figure.

[smtroop168]

I'm sure this approach can work for you. A larger group of younger boys can be a challenge so you have to "manage" it more than a smaller group.

[Quailman]

My oldest son joined as a Web 1 in a pack that operated in this manner. They did have three Web 1 dens, but they all met together in the school gym. Usually about 20 boys attended. There were two strong leaders, and it worked great. My youngest one, in the same pack, was in one of two Tiger dens. We rarely met up with the other den.

After we moved, and my youngest became a Web 1, I was recruited to be a leader in one of two dens. The other had two great leaders, but we did okay. I made all the meeting plans with very little input from anyone (not that I wouldn't have welcomed it), and I'm not sure how it would have worked out if we had tried to combine them in that pack.

[Nuts4Scouts]

Having more boys in a den will not automatically make it a better den, and keep the boys in Scouting. In some cases it will just disguise the fact that boys are dropping out because they will be considered part of the acceptable no-shows.

While you disparage a good program as an answer to retaining Scouts, even in a 22 Scout den, it is a good, interesting, fun, program that keeps the parents from opting for a different activity for their sons that IS interesting and fun. Your son's Webelos den thrived because you ran a good program. Perhaps the other den's program was not as good. Would combining the dens have helped both to thrive? Perhaps. However if the program for the combined den was not strong, you might have lost even more boys than you did.

I am glad this works for your Pack.

[Fred Johnson]

While you disparage a good program as an answer to retaining Scouts, even in a 22 Scout den, it is a good, interesting, fun, program that keeps the parents from opting for a different activity for their sons that IS interesting and fun.

I never disparaged a good program. It's important. But a good program does not stand by itself and does not solve all problems. It's part of the solution. I think one reason people choose activities is to connect their sons into social groups. If the group regularly has 3 to 6 of the registered 6 to 8 registered attending, it saps the fun from a good program both for the scout and the leaders that invested their time into planning it.

Also, masking. I think it is important to have a large den masking scouts that leave or are absent. It's not about disguising acceptable no-shows. It's about protecting those interested (but not gung-ho) from those that are inconsistent attenders. I've just rarely had luck changing the attendance pattern of a family.

If you go from 20 scouts to 16, it's still a healthy size with plenty of resources and friends. If you go from 6 to 4, your den is at risk of disappearing. You probably will lose more just because the small size den is just not as fun.

Scouting has patterns. I guess I was thinking about this because there's a common pattern that cubs quit because dens fall apart. Not all dens. Not all cubs. But it's a patterns in scouting. I heard it a lot when parents were looking at our pack. Things like they were in cub scouts, but then their den leader left and the den dissolved. Or, their friends quit and they didn't have any other friends in scouts. Or their den just didn't do much. So they quit.

[Quailman]

Perhaps a good program would include elements of both, where the den leaders plan together. They can keep their dens' identities yet take advantage of opportunities that they can all enjoy, like a nature hike led by a naturalist at the local state park. In my experience, (the only) one that we got together on was Mars Exploration Day at our local natural science museum. They had stations that the scouts rotated to in groups the size of our two dens combined. Since the kids knew each other they didn't have to do the showing off that kids that age often do when put into an environment with kids they don't know.

[6yearscouter]

Ideal is a bit more than 6 for most of our successful dens, you are right on that point, but over 10 is not so good either.

When we have extra large dens>10, we always lose boys until we reach a point of about 8 in a den. over 8, the boys often feel like nobody will notice if they don't show, that the den leader barely knows who they are.

Our most successful dens are about 8-10, a bit bigger than the 6-8, but not overwhelmingly so.

I find that the den leaders who do well with 20 boy dens, are usually school teachers, or others with experience doing things with larger groups of kids like coaches. That may work well for them, but then does scouting become more like school? sit down, do this paperwork? or with centers rotating the boys thru all the activties trying to keep so many boys occupied?

Don't make the mistake of assuming a 20 boy den will work well for all leaders, it is totally frightening for many parents, but when faced with doing a few projects with 6-8 boys, the adults aren't quite as intimidated.

.

[Fred Johnson]

Perhaps a good program would include elements of both, where the den leaders plan together.

Fully agree. Why does each den leader need to redo the same plans again? My experience though is that once the dens are split, few dens ever coordinate. I think it would better if the same-rank dens assumed they work together. I think it would work great for some activities such as go-see-its or Webelos activity pins (sportsman, ...).


6yearscouter - Good points. Our dens often have coaches or church youth leaders in them. They do try to rotate stations. Our key is that we do try to make it three sub-dens that just meet all at the same time doing the same planned program. And the dens have at least four strong leaders if not more.

When we looked at splitting our 1st 16 member den up, all the natural divisions (neighborhood, activities, friendships, preference, ...) left one den really strong and another terminally weak.

Thanks for the thoughtful responses.

[smtroop168]

[quote="Fred Johnson Fully agree. Why does each den leader need to redo the same plans again? My experience though is that once the dens are split, few dens ever coordinate.
[/quote]

Different issue..maybe that's what you need to work on vice just having one big Den. If I was a new Den Leader that split off, I would get the existing info and go with it. That would be covered in the Leader's meeting.

[Fred Johnson]

I agree it's something to work on. The challenge is once you split. Your pretty much on your own. You might coordinate at committee meetings, but unless you meet together (same place, same time), your depending on a smaller group for resources and potentially have less than critical mass of scouts/leaders to go forward at times. If you, as a leader, become sick or job or ..., your den probably will suffer because there are few if any existing leaders to step in. If your in a big den, you must have multiple leaders to make it work.

[Quailman]

Fully agree. Why does each den leader need to redo the same plans again? My experience though is that once the dens are split, few dens ever coordinate.

Different issue..maybe that's what you need to work on vice just having one big Den. If I was a new Den Leader that split off, I would get the existing info and go with it. That would be covered in the Leader's meeting.

Probably too many den leaders find themselves in the position that I did. I was asked to be an Assistant Webelos Den Leader just as the school year started. About a week later, my Webelos Den Leader's wife left and took the kids. He really wasn't into it after that, so I was on my own without even any time for training. I had support but not assistance from my parents. Three were already Cubmaster, Treasurer and Advancement Chair for the pack. Three others were single mothers. I didn't know anything about planning. The only thing that got me through the year-and-a-half was the experience of accompanying my older son to his mega-den meetings at our prior pack. In hindsight, we probably should have combined dens.

[Mrw]

My dens ran anywhere from 4-8 boys at a time. And i do remember a few 2 boy den meetings. The really small ones where they really got full attention were some of the best ones and where they really got to do the most. I did not lose any boys because of small dens, but because they just were not interested. Or the parents were not interested, as the case may be.

[jr56]

An interesting alternative. If you can get enough assistant den leaders, and they can all work together, it sounds good. I had the same problem for several years in Scouts. We had Patrols of 12-14 boys on paper, but in reality, there would be about 6-8 at any given meeting or campout. You are correct, it's not program, program, program. It's conflict, conflict, confict.