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We've registered as a Varsity Team and have activities every week, but...
How can I tell if its really Varsity Scouting
?
Its Varsity Scouts, if you can answer "Yes" to most all of these questions:
- Does your overall program have a high adventure emphasis? That is, does the team conduct an outdoor or sports-related Program Feature quarterly including an adventurous,
physically-demanding activity at least monthly?
- Does your Team have at least these officers:
- Captain
- Program Managers for the five fields of emphasis: Advancement, High Adventure/Sports, Personal Development, Service, Special Programs and Events?
- Does your Team have a calendar that specifies activities for all five fields of emphasis on a regular basis (like, no less often than quarterly?
- Are the weekly activities planned and led by individual boy Program Managers, with help from Program Advisors who are adults from the Team Committee with
assignments to support specific fields of emphasis?
- Is the Varsity Scout pledge recited regularly in Team meetings, along with the Scout Oath and Law?
- Is an agreed-upon uniform worn to activities by most of the Varsity Scouts?
- Does the team hold its own Parents/Awards Nights (preferably quarterly and separate from the scout troop)?
- Are the majority of the Varsity Scouts working toward or achieving activity badges, Varsity letter, and Denali awards, and progressing toward Eagle?
Do you have an adult-run activity program?
- Adults can plan great activities, because of their greater experience.
- Often, however, young men become dissatisfied with and will not support an adult-run program
- Even more important, much of the learning and benefit to youths can come through having the major responsibility for planning and leading their activities.
A wise man observed that in youth programs the process is more important than the product, that most of the growth available through youth activities derives from learning how to develop and carry off an activity rather than attending an activity. Adult run activity programs deny young men the greatest benefits of these programs.
Is your Varsity or Venturing program operating as an appendage to the Scout Troop?
- Some wards may try to do this, mistakenly identifying the achieving the Eagle rank as the purpose of all of the scouting programs and keep older boys attached to the troop.
(The overall purpose or aim of all of the scouting programs is to help young men grow in character, citizenship and fitness. The various recognition programs, including Eagle, are one among several methods used to achieve these aims. Young Men in Varsity and Venturing programs can continue to work on the Eagle rank along with awards specific to these older-boy programs.)
- Varsity and Venturing have been designed to meet the special needs for the Teachers and Priests age groups (which are known to be among the young men most at risk in the Church),
and when implemented expertly are much more apt to appeal to the total group of young men in these two Aaronic Priesthood quorums than the regular scouting program which in the Church we use for 11-13 year
olds.
- Varsity and Venturing are the activity programs designated for use with the Teachers and the Priests quorums, as clearly specified by the Scouting and Young Mens handbooks and in
current instruction from the Young Mens General Presidency of the Church.
Are you trying to run a "Duty to God" activity program, rather than using the scouting program for that age group?
Is your activity program for Teacher or Priest age young men based on the Spalding Theory of Youth Leadership?
- This theory holds that if a young man bounces a basketball 10,000 times while in the young mens program, he is certain to go on a mission.
- The best available evidence is that the Spalding theory is not true.
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