Scoutmaster Podcast 11

And now, to you, Scoutmasters. Hey, welcome back to the Scoutmasters podcast.

Mark Twain said, When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But, but, when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

If you're living in the same house with a boy of 14, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And I've been there, but I got to tell you, they do turn around after a while. Yeah. They go from thinking they're much smarter than we are, they can't stand to be around you, to whether I actually talk to you like a human being. Hang on, it'll, it'll, it'll change. It will, trust me.

This is podcast number 11.

If you're a blogger or a podcaster, you already know what I'm going to talk about here. What happens is, is you sit down somewhere and you set up your microphone and your computer and you yap and then you try and fix things and you work on stuff and you try and put together something that you hope is going to help people. And you have no idea. You have no idea what's going on once it's published.

If you're very fortunate, you get a little bit of feedback here and there and people start sending you comments and questions and reviews of the work that you've been doing. And it's very satisfying. One of my listeners sent me this audio feedback, and it's always nice to get a little bit of a pat on the back, especially when you're just sitting in a room somewhere talking into a microphone.

So, hey, here it is. Hey, Clark. This is Kevin. I thought I'd give you a little audio feedback. I just listened to podcast number nine, and I just wanted to say thank you for imparting with all of the wisdom that you've gathered over the years in scouting and making it available to us green scouters, if you will. This is my first year as a scouter, and I'm loving it, and I hope I can put in as much time as you have.

So, again, thanks a lot for all you do, and thanks for sharing, and I'll talk to you again soon. Take care. See you. Kevin was kind enough to email me earlier about a couple of the earlier podcasts. I'm no audio engineer. If you haven't been able to figure that out, I really have no idea.

I'm learning as I go along. And what I had been doing was I had messed up some of the levels in recording so that some parts of the podcast were quieter and some parts were really loud, and apparently I was driving Kevin out of his pickup truck cab because he would have the volume turned up and something would blast at him, and then he'd have to turn it down, and then he would have to turn it up again. But Kevin was kind enough to point that out to me and recommend a couple of solutions, and I hope the past few podcasts have shown that his expertise has gone to work.

So right back at you, Kevin, I have to thank you for helping me out and helping me improve the podcast. Remember, you can get in touch with me in a variety of ways. The blog is scoutmaster.typepad.com, and you can leave a comment there. You can email me at ClarkGreen, C-L-A-R-K-E-G-R-E-E-N, all one word, at gmail.com. And I'm also on Facebook at Scoutmaster Blog and on Twitter at Scoutmaster Blog. Thanks very much for the feedback again, Kevin.

Thanks for all of you who have been emailing and leaving comments. Certainly do appreciate it.

So this time around we're going to talk in Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. I'm going to give you a little report on an outing that my troop recently took. It might give you a program idea, but the real point is to kind of explore the youth leadership role in a troop and how it exactly works, and I have a little interview with my senior patrol leader as a part of it.

Then I have a story to tell you about one of my most memorable nights at summer camp, and then we're going to start with number one of a four-part feature about avoiding the drama that can sometimes surround all the stuff that needs to get done to become an Eagle Scout, and we can maybe avoid a little bit of the drama, huh? Well, let's get started. Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less.

I interviewed our senior patrol leader on a recent outing, and I had two intentions. One was to kind of give him the opportunity to talk about his role in setting up the outing and leading the Scouts, and also to give you a program idea, which is an outing that we have done now for the past three or four years. The Scouts have elected to put it on the schedule, and it's called the Magical Mystery Tour.

So the mystery part of it is none of the Scouts, except maybe the senior patrol leader and maybe one or two other Scouts who are working on the program, actually know what is going to happen on the outing. And what they have done is over time this has developed into an outing where we explore some world culture.

One of the times we did this, it was Mongolia. One of the times it was the Inuit cultures, which are, I guess, most people would know as Eskimos, but the Inuit people who live in the northern polar regions. One of the times it was Scotland. And this most recent one was Australia. And it's interesting. The guys build a program around the theme.

And I'm going to get you started by listening to some of this interview I did with the senior patrol leader. Prior to the trip, since this trip is a special trip in which we don't necessarily let the Scouts know exactly what we're going to do, so we've just done basic camping skills to make sure that they're actually ready for winter camping, I went out and researched about the Aborigines culture. And I was also in charge of getting food for tonight's dinner, which I can't say because they still don't know what it is. And that was a lot of fun.

And so I had to research some stuff for that. And I had to make sure that when we left the church to come here that all the gear was in place and everybody had a ride and permission slip and stuff and double check on that.

So here I'm just going to interrupt and mention a couple of things. The secret dinner he's talking about was kangaroo burgers. And I was really amazed at his ability to go out and find the fixings for kangaroo burgers. He did a really good job. Actual kangaroo meat.

So, hey, who knew? Here, I'll let him continue. The adult leaders are there for support for the youth scouts. Make sure that things run smoothly. They're there to help out the scouts whenever there's a problem. And they help us come up with a solution.

They also overwatch. And when needed, they can also help out with stations or ideas as to what we can do and sort of guide the scouts. Most trips are like this. One person in leadership doesn't always have to be the senior patrol leader. Normally it's not, actually. Another youth member would be in charge of planning it, setting it up, and developing a program for that weekend.

Troop meetings. We have two troop meetings a month. We also have a patrol meetings council and a patrol meeting. The troop meetings are normally the two meetings before a trip. We do demonstrations. We instruct.

And we have the patrols go so that they can learn. And we do that for two Mondays.

In those meetings, we also finish any gear checks we need to do. And if anybody needs some minor advancements, we can probably get some minor advancement work required done. It's actually really easy. We do all the plannings at patrol meeting councils, which are the Monday after a trip. That's where all the youth leadership get together and all the patrol leaders get together, along with the adults, just to advise and put in their input if we ask.

What we do there is we'll set up the meetings coming up and we'll set up trip ideas coming up and who's going to be running those trips so that things run smoothly. And we try to do these a couple, at least a couple of months and ahead so that we know what we're going to do. And it stays pretty organized. It's actually going really nicely. We got to build our didgeridoos and paint them last night, along with we played our Australian ruled football, which was a lot of fun. The weather is kind of cold, but we're getting through.

And it's going really great. We have dinner coming up, and it should be a really fun rest of the trip.

So if you're not too sure about a didgeridoo or what a didgeridoo is, I'm really not going to try to explain it here. But it is an aboriginal instrument.

And here's an example of what they sound like, at least just after you've made them and you try to play them.

The important takeaways from this are the independence that they had in making decisions and in figuring out what they were going to do. The role of adults being in a very background kind of supporting role. They're to answer questions, to help out, to do the things that they can't do, like make reservations and drive cars and such. It turned out to be a very enjoyable weekend. The boys really liked it. They have added Australian rules football, or their interpretation thereof, to their slate of games that they love to play.

And I hope this kind of helps fill out the picture of a youth-led operation and also gives you a little bit of a program idea. You were always on the Beat Boy, Beat Boy. Yeah, you were always on the Beat Boy, Beat Boy. He was dancing to the Beat Boy, Beat Boy. This has to be the truth, folks, because there is no way anyone could make this up. Some of the best times I ever spent in scouting was the years that I worked as a staff member at our summer camp.

It was just a wonderful time. And we got to see some things that, you know, a general person going down and camping and kind of hanging out would not be able to see. Some of these were good and some of these were bad. But one night stands out as being a really remarkable evening at our camp.

So around about, I guess, around about 10 o'clock, tap sounds. And the campers are all off to their campsites and off to bed.

And one of my friends and I decided we were going to head into town. And so we took the old camp road out.

And, you know, the camp road is about a mile long or so. It's, you know, a dirt and gravel road. And as we're headed out, there's a car coming back into camp. And I'm looking at this car and I'm thinking, that's kind of unusual at this time of night for somebody to be headed into camp. And they're kind of swerving around and things like that. And we see this car approaching.

So we kind of stop and we signal them to stop. And there's a couple of fellows in the car who we don't know. And we asked them if they're camped there this week. And they said, no, we're kind of lost.

And we say, well, you know, you're headed into a scout camp. You probably want to turn around and head back out onto the main road. And it appeared to us as though these guys had had a few too many. And we're very confused about where they were headed.

So they said, yeah, well, you know, we'll turn around, I guess. We'll head on out. And they were kind of arguing with each other. But I got back in our car and we proceeded to head out the road, imagining these guys would turn around and head out with us. And, nope, they just kept on going down into camp and we saw that.

And so we turned around and we followed them into camp. And we stopped them. And, oh, one thing led to another.

And, you know, it turned out to be a couple of guys who had a bit too much to drink. And we called the police.

And so my buddy and I got back in our car and headed out to go and wait at the gate for the police to show up. So we were waiting there for 10 or 15 minutes. And we see some emergency lights up on the main road.

And we say, well, there's the police. They're coming in.

And so we're sitting at the gate. And I stepped out into the road and kind of waved to indicate that we were there.

We were going to lead them into camp and show them what the problem was. And a fire truck comes through, screaming through the gate of the camp, right past us, beeping the horns, sirens and everything, and starts screaming down into camp. A fire truck. A fire truck. A fire truck.

So I looked at my buddy and he looked at me and we said, well, we better get back down into camp. Something's wrong.

And so we got in the car and we started heading down following this fire truck. And we get a certain way down the road. And all of a sudden there is this amazing bright light shining down from the sky into a grove of trees beside the road.

And we were really freaked out because it looked like an alien invasion. I'm not kidding. I mean, it was this tremendously bright spotlight just going through the trees and everything.

And, you know, we hit the gas. We said, oh, my gosh, what in the world is happening? And we started heading back down the road into camp. And we got into camp and we found out that what had happened is there had been a staff swim at the pool after taps. And one of the fellows had injured himself.

And they got so upset about the injury, they decided they would call in the medevac unit. And this is what the bright light was. It was this helicopter with, I guess they call it a midnight sun. And it's properly named. It's this giant searchlight on the helicopter. Of course, they had no idea where the pool was.

So they were kind of sweeping through camp. Of course, they hit a lot of campsites.

And the story was, I heard from several scoutmasters the next day, you know, that bright light and the helicopter kind of sweeping through camp. And all the scouts got up and cheered and waved to the helicopter. The reason the fire truck was there is because apparently every time they call out a medevac, they call out a fire truck in case the helicopter crashes.

Which is very reassuring, isn't it? But the medevac finally sat down and they got the guy and they took him out. Fortunately, the injury wasn't as serious as anybody thought. And he was back to camp within 24 hours. But, wow, I'll tell you, what a night.

If you ever get a chance to serve on camp staff, you know, take the advantage of it because it's a lot of fun. And, you know, you never know what you're going to see.

So stay up late and keep your eyes open. Then, you know, you know, you're the killer. And it wasn't as bad as camaraderie. And you're going to think about it because nobody needs to have fun. But it wasn't as bad as an 이유이면. But it wasn't as bad as a roadying season.

And it was three kids for a night that wasn't as good as the time were hungry. Which didn't have fun at this time, and did not help him to find out today. And one of the things that didn't pay for it or should have been found today, it got to be the hjeki.

To be surprised at the window of coffee, you know, like, you and try to give our final video Ikati curveball to the best one with Whole markets. Although all the issues that 그만味钱 can eat as possible. When there are a major problem withéisco hypommt in the battle in the case of ice.

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This is part one of four in a series that is titled Avoiding Eagle Scout Drama. Drama. Oh, man. Unfortunately, there can be a lot of drama associated with scouting, and a lot of it seems to center around the process of becoming an Eagle Scout. And I'm going to share with you my experience and what I know. I do not know everything.

I have not seen it all. But I will tell you, I've worked with about, in round numbers, somewhere between 50 and 60 scouts who've earned the rank of Eagle. And becoming an Eagle is beset by difficulties, and it should be. It's supposed to be challenging. Unfortunately, the normal difficulties are often compounded by totally unnecessary complications, and I call those complications drama. All too often, it's the Scoutmaster that ends up causing the drama.

Yeah, I have. I have. I'm guilty as anybody, but I have picked up a few things along the way. I mean, somehow, there are a number of Scoutmasters who act like they are the gatekeepers for advancement, especially when it comes to the rank of Eagle. And really, they're supposed to be coaches and guides and mentors. Some Scoutmasters develop the idea that their personal standard of achievement is all important.

They wield the Scoutmasters conference and signatures on documents like a weapon, making it a pronouncement of their often capricious judgment. This all sounds pretty dramatic because it really is dramatic. I mean, Scouts and families take a huge emotional hit when the shockwaves extend past the Scoutmasters' actions into their home. Narratives of these dramas unfold as if they'd been scripted. And I'll tell you, I get emails about this all the time. I read about it.

I have people talk to me about it. Here's the way it usually works.

You know, a Scout has completed their Eagle project, their six months of leadership tenure, their 21 merit badges. They've had six previous Scoutmaster conferences. And they sit down with the Scoutmaster and he ambushes them with one or two pronouncements. It can be that he's not met the active requirement or that he has failed to show Scout spirit. Sometimes the Scoutmaster may set the Scout a task to appease him. And sometimes the Scoutmaster just slams the gate closed and says, you're never going to become an Eagle Scout.

I mean, can you believe that this happens? It does. It happens more than you would think.

And why does it happen over and over again? Usually because the Scoutmaster either lacks an understanding of the advancement system or he is just generally frustrated.

Now, what do I mean by just generally frustrated? The best explanation I have is drawn from my personal experience. Most of us develop an internalized, idealized concept of what an Eagle Scout should be. And it becomes a standard by which we judge Scouts. And this idealized personal standard supplants the advancement process and results in a whole lot of frustration. I got to tell you, it took me a lot of years to understand that no Scout was going to measure up to the idealized standard of perfection that I had developed for myself.

I'm not perfect. I couldn't measure up to that standard. But I had in my mind that an Eagle Scout should be this way. And that was the way it was going to be. And upholding that standard was doing a lot more harm than it was good. The antidote to this dilemma was an understanding of what Scouting is really about and what makes it different from any other field of endeavor.

And something that I'm going to explain my understanding of in the next installment in this particular series. So do tune in to the next podcast and we'll continue talking about Eagle Scout drama. Eagle Scout drama. It's Clark, C-L-A-R-K-E-G-R-E-E-N at gmail.com. Clarke Green, all one word. And we'll, oh, wait a minute.

We can't leave yet. No, no.

We have that obligation that comes around every time we end the podcast. And that is to read the disclaimer. The Scoutmaster blog and the Scoutmaster podcast are not official publications of the Boy Scouts of America.