I am SO SORRY that I missed the last two committee meetings, everyone! My deepest apologies!! Both were simple errors on my part… ☹ I do have some advancement information I wanted to share with you – please read on…
There is a Court of Honor upcoming on March 16th. That gives us a deadline of March 2nd for the last Tuesday for scouts to have a Scoutmaster Conference for a rank advancement. It also means we have just 5 Tuesdays before Court of Honor to wrap up anything we’d like to have awarded before then.
We currently have 5 rank emblems ready to be awarded:
Scout – Nolan
2nd Class – Kameron
Star – Andrew
Life – Jack, Gabe P.
Also, 3 scouts have recently earned their Eagle ranks: Andrew K., Josiah, Ethan
We have 48 Merit badges ready to award, including:
9 Welding
9 Nature
9 Disability Awareness
THANK YOU to all the leaders and counselors who have worked with our boys over the last year to keep them engaged in activities like this, despite the obstacles!
I passed out individual advancement reports on Tuesday to each of the boys and asked if all of the open and incomplete merit badges were ones that everyone was still intending on completing. Only one or two opted to close out an old merit badge – the rest seemed intent on finishing everything they had open. But there is a LOT that’s open. Now that we’re able to meet in person again, it would be great if our in-troop merit badge counselors could make a point either reach out to some of the scouts they’ve worked with, to see how they can help encourage them to finish, OR to come on Tuesdays once or twice over the next month to be generally available to meet with those scouts. This will help us wrap up some of those merit badges before the next court of honor.
In addition to a smattering of merit badges that boys are working on individually, here is a list of outstanding GROUP merit badges which our scouts should probably work on wrapping up soon:
• Archery x 6 (8 available in OTC, including Tim Page) – Ian, Kameron, Zane, Josh, Jack, Evan
• Art x 5 (Cathi) – Dylan, Henry, Sheppard, Gabriel, Seth
• Astronomy x 3 (Gwendy) – Sheppard, Sean, Seth
• Chess x 18 (Don) – Corbin, Dylan, Henry, Sheppard, Ian, Justin, Sean, Connor, Josh, Quentin, Josiah, Jack, Ethan, Carson, Seth, Gabriel, Andrew, Kameron
• Climbing x 7 (Martin Thompson) – Orion, Quentin, Sean, Josh, Evan, Ian, Andrew
• Fire Safety x 14 (Don, James H.) – Corbin, Dylan, Orion, Ian, Zane, Connor, Josh, Andrew, Quentin, Jacob, Josiah, Gabriel, Derek, Duncan
• Fishing x 6 (Bill, Paul) – Josh, Sheppard, Ian, Kameron, Gabriel, Evan
• Game Design x 4 (Aleck Thompson, 7 more in OTC) – Sean, Andrew, Henry, Sheppard
• Golf x 16 (Bill, Paul) – Nolan, Ethan, Jacob, Corbin, Dylan, Henry, Sheppard, Ian, Kameron, Andrew, Quentin, Josiah, Gabriel, Evan, Derek, Duncan
• Kayaking x 6 (Karl?) – Andrew, Corbin, Connor, Josh, Derek, Duncan
• Mammal Study x 4 (Michelle) – Orion, Ian, Sean, Jack
• Oceanography x 6 (Michelle) – Zane, Josh, Andrew, Jared, Jack, Evan
• Personal fitness x 10 (Karl) – Sheppard, Josh, Gabriel, Seth, Kameron, Ian, Sean, Andrew, Jared, Evan
• Photography x 4 (??) – Henry, Sheppard, Josh, Jared
• Wood carving x 3 (Bill) – Henry, Sheppard, Seth
If anyone has any bright ideas about how we can help boys wrap these up, please let me know!
I’d LOVE to get some of our newer parents and/or newer leaders signed up to double up on some of these merit badges for good measure. I’d also love to encourage our newer parents and leaders to sign up to be a counselor for ANY merit badges that interest you, so that as a troop we have a good idea of where our resources lie. This will also help us continue to offer a well-rounded program to our scouts. Please TALK TO ME if you’re interested in signing up to be a merit badge counselor!
Our scouts also just started working on their requirements for the Public Health merit badge. THANK YOU to Dr. Saxman for being willing to sign up to be a merit badge counselor for this!
Again, thanks to all our hard working leaders for all you do for Scouting! You make this all possible and we couldn’t do it without you! ♥⚜♥
Gwendy Darling
Advancement Coordinator
509-886-5793