Monday night, Brian earned his Tenderfoot badge in Boy Scouts along with several other boys.  It was really cool to see what our Boy Scout troop does here in Leavenworth. I am really excited for both Brian and Bryce to have all the opportunities that our scouts have.  We learned that our troop has a high percentage of boys that become Eagle Scouts.  I really hope we are able to stick with it all the way through.  This summer they have several trips planned.  In a couple of weeks they will be going on an overnight hike.  In July they head off on their Western Washington Excursion where they spend four days traveling around Washington state. In August is their 50 mile canoe trip.  The boys will miss that one since it is the same week we go to Tennessee. Then in September they have another overnight hike.

One of the cool things about our troop is that they get to meet in the Ski Hill lodge which was built during FDR's administration (1930s) when he initiated the CCC.  There are plans in the works to fix the lodge up and do some landscaping around it.  It just seems to be the perfect place for our Boy Scouts to hold their meetings.

Speaking of meetings, last night we had the "privilege" to attend a meeting of the drama club with Bonnie.  There has been a lot of "drama" in the drama club lately, and it finally came to a head.  A meeting was called for all of the students, parents, directors, and principal to attend. Brigadoon was Bonnie's third play with the current directors.  With each play, we heard an earful of how the directors handled the cast and were concerned.  With the first play, we just told her to deal with it and to make sure that she was on task and respectful to the directors.  During the second play, we continued to hear about how the directors would yell at the kids, make them cry, were emotional, and caused a lot of frustration among the kids.  After one practice where Bonnie became the target, Todd decided it was time to sit in on a practice to see for himself what was going on.  With this play, we heard about more drama between the cast and directors and it finally came to a head.  Bonnie along with a few key actors approached the principal with their concerns.  Once the play was over, Bonnie and the other drama students met to try to discuss with the directors some of the changes that needed to be made for this drama club to continue (Several students have left the club and won't work under the current directors.) .  Unfortunately, that meeting didn't go well and thus we had last night's meeting this time with parents and the principal.  It was interesting to say the least.  Will it make a change?  I don't know.  A retired teacher sat in on the meetings and had a lot of good insight.  The best thing is that she has agreed to mentor the directors and help them with classroom control and basically teach them how to manage the club.  That is the biggest problem.  The directors have no idea how to set boundaries, establish rules, and hold to them, therefore the students push and push and the directors get frustrated, angry, and lose control.

What impressed me the most is how Bonnie handled the whole thing.  She was very careful with her words.  She was able to rephrase comments made by other students who were emotional so that the comments were constructive and not offensive.  She really has become the voice and the leader of the drama club.  The current drama club ...ahem...president... refused to speak or make any comments during the whole two hour long meeting.  Even the principal stopped me after the meeting to tell me how impressed he was with Bonnie.  Yep,,, that girl is doing great.