Scoutmaster Podcast 117

And now it's the old Scoutmaster. You know we do have a lot of fun recording the Scoutmaster panel discussion. I got to tell you and and you can be part of it.

You know, email me scoutmastercg at Verizonnet So you can be part of the next one. You can. You can call in and be a guest and ask a question.

Here's- here's a sample of the fun. Does that make any sense at all? I guess I don't. Wow, Yeah, I mean yeah, but I, it's just that was that.

Okay, We're puzzled, We're puzzled about it. So, yeah, That's the first. We're stuck, Clark. Wow, We still haven't left Larry's, because you did have something to say about.

Okay, That's right. All kinds of fun. Hey, this is podcast 170.

Hey, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clark green in this week's mailbag.

Let's see, here is another five-star review over on itunes by so Cal Glenn. Thanks Glenn for Getting over to itunes and leaving me a nice review. He says I love the timeless knowledge and values expressed here. As a cub master, It's refreshing to hear some proven wisdom and have a few smiles during Clark's pithy and to the point podcast.

Thank you so much, Glenn, and You know what You can do the same thing. You can go over to itunes if, if that's what you use to access the podcast and leave a review or a rating or a comment, That'd be great. Chris Servine is Scoutmaster of troop 1911 and he says: thank you, That was very helpful, Clark. Thanks for your quick reply to my question. We enjoy and learn a lot from your Scoutmaster cgcom messages. Keep up the good work.

Well, thanks for being in touch, Chris. Greg combs said this again: Thank you for all you do. I'm a new Scoutmaster as of February 2012..

Well, congratulations, Greg. This is becoming one of my favorite resources. I love to listen to the roundtable discussion podcast.

Well, I think what you're referring to is what I get to call the Scoutmaster panel discussion, But you know six of one, half a dozen of the other. Thanks, Greg. Thanks for being in touch. Will Hensman is Scoutmaster of troops 777, he said. I've said it before, but it deserves repeating. Your encouraging emails, Blog and podcast truly helped me in my quest to be the best Scoutmaster I could.

Thanks for all that you do. Well, thank you again, will. And Glenn graduate writes. I hope I got graduate right there, Glenn. Since I recently found your podcast.

I have learned so much and truly appreciate the knowledge that is shared. Well, thanks for getting in touch, Glenn. I really do appreciate it. If you want to get in touch, You'll find out how to do that towards the end of the podcast.

And wow, what a whopper of a podcast we have this week. It's going to be a long one.

It contains our Scoutmaster panel discussion, but before we go there, I want to talk to you for a minute And contextualize one of the subjects that we talked about in the Scoutmaster panel discussion, because after we recorded the session, I looked at a few more resources and things and I looked at some Discussions quote-unquote online, and I thought it would be just good to spend a moment and do this. I want to share some advice with you that made my life a little easier and Certainly made my work in scouting a whole lot easier and a whole lot less stressful. I'm saying this in the context of one of the things we're talking about in the panel discussion: the tool use Guideline that was just published within the past couple of weeks, and you're going to get more details on that in the discussion, and It's linked in the post that contains this podcast at scoutmastercgcom. When I first became a scout leader, I was an impressionable young man of 24- and That was about 30 years ago- and I entered into a culture of fellow scout leaders who were really kind of suspicious at best and At worst they were downright antagonistic to our district and council and national folks. There was one guy who had been a Scoutmaster for a dog's age and who I particularly admired and had a very high profile in our council but who was a Real renegade and really difficult.

In the course of time I've come to see that not only he but the- you know, the group of scouters that Were around when I first became a scout leader taught me To distrust anything from our district or our council or a national, And I think it was because they really saw the changes as an attack on their sovereign idea of what scouting ought to be. And You know, I didn't know any different and I persisted in this attitude for a long time And I got a pretty good reputation for being kind of difficult and cross-grained about stuff, because when anybody came to me with Anything I would be suspicious of it. Somewhere along the way I got the idea that perhaps- just perhaps These district and council and national folks weren't trying to kill scouting, They weren't trying to make my life difficult, they weren't trying to take things away from me and They weren't trying to kill scouting as I knew it. Perhaps they were really just trying to help me, as a Scoutmaster, deliver a decent program to my scouts. And that was kind of a new idea and I changed my attitude and things became a lot less stressful and a lot less difficult.

Now you know what We're Americans and the suspicion of authority is a fundamental part of who we are. We understand What power can do, that that can be dangerous and we resist anyone trying to assert power over- as it's in our culture, own governmental DNA.

So we kind of naturally resist it when people come down and they say they're changing things, or people from who are, you know, Perceived to be an authority over us, make decisions and things without consulting us. It's.

It's a very powerful thing and I think that you know there's. It's it's partially healthy. But at one point You kind of have to drop your guard a little bit and you have to view the things that you receive from on high with a little bit more of a Positive attitude.

Let's say now, the new guidelines for tool use were just published. Within the past few weeks, and After we recorded the Scoutmaster panel discussion, I did a little looking around online to see what was going on about them and what opinions were. And, man, I'll tell you, there's some harsh words out there and I really wish That Scouters Were a little more courteous and thoughtful about the way they express their opinions online. But I understand that sometimes this intensity of emotion and things like that Can be an expression of how much scouting means to a person. That's the best positive spin I can put on it.

And we're gonna be talking about those new guidelines in a moment and as we discuss them, I think you'll see us forming an opinion of the whole subject. We're a little skeptical about them to begin with, but I think in the end we agree that it's a pretty good approach.

Now, one thing is not very clear in our discussion that I think is very important. These are Guide lines.

All right, shall we all say that together? Guide lines, guide lines.

Now, What's a guideline? Is it a rule? No.

Is it a policy? No. Guidelines are best practices or recommendations. One of the things we discuss in the panel discussion is the use of wheelbarrows. I read the guidelines over.

I kind of glossed over them real quick before we had our disc, and then we looked at them in a more detailed way And I looked at this thing about wheelbarrows. I'm going like: wheelbarrows, Come on.

What's the matter with wheelbarrows? Why can't a boy push a wheelbarrow?

Or? And then it looked like: well, wait a minute.

They say even things with four wheels, So that's like a wagon. Why can't a boy use a wagon? And I got a little upset about that.

But then I You know, you need to look and see that it's guidelines, and then you need to think, well, Why in the world would they put these on? Why should I be worried about wheelbarrows and wagons and stuff like that?

Well, well, this was not just something that somebody- cavalry- came up with at their desk, You know, last week. This is something that has been researched and considered and looked at, and so it I said, Okay, so I need to think about this, because I'm not understanding something and I thought, oh, you know what an overloaded wheelbarrow That could be quite dangerous, especially in the hands of an 11 year old, even an overloaded wagon, You know, it could upset and it could harm somebody or harm the kid using the wagon and something.

Well, hey, so that made me think. So.

The next time We're working on a service project or we're doing something in scouts and there's a wheelbarrow or there's a wagon involved, I'm gonna look at the age of the person that's using it, I'm gonna look at what they're doing with it, I'm gonna see if that combination is risky or could injure somebody. And I'm going to look at these guidelines again and I'm gonna say, well, you know what, it's probably a good idea To point the older boys at doing that.

Hey, you know, it's just Common sense. This got me thinking.

Alright, so go back to the. You know the, the early years of scouting, and a scout troop or a patrol would go out and they would maybe, you know, go to a lake or something like that and go swimming, and.

And then people started building swimming pools in scout camps and you know, boys would go swimming in the swimming pools and things like that, and and there were some injuries and probably some fatalities. And Then it gets to a point where people are saying: you know, this is kind of dangerous and we need to be more safe about it.

So let's come up with a way of doing this. Well, we'll, we'll have scouts do a swim test to make sure that they're capable, and then we'll use this buddy system and that brought up swim tags and buddy boards and and then you know well, we better describe what a lifeguard should be and and and what kind of experience or training they should have, because you know, we're still seeing that that this is a pretty dangerous activity or potentially risky activity, and I'm sure that the guys who sat in our seats, the Scoutmasters of the time, probably got in a bit of an uproar and Said that this was going to ruin scouting.

And you know why shouldn't boys be able to go in and swim and and all that stuff? So do you understand what I'm saying here? We get smarter, We get smarter as an organization and we are out to protect our scouts.

While we're discussing all this, I want to talk about one broad assumption that that I hear often from scouters, and That is is that policies from our national organization are established because they're afraid of getting sued, and Because they're afraid of getting sued and they're so risk adverse, They're taking all the fun and manliness out of scouting. That's a pretty common assumption. You may share that assumption.

I think it's horse feathers. I really do. I've been a camp director and and thus been in the direct employee of our, of our council. I've been trained in All kinds of safety procedures and things like that. I have done all of the online training for volunteers that is safety related. I've read through the, the Guide to safe scouting and everything.

You know what. If I will go into it with the attitude that they're just trying to protect themselves from being sued, Then I'm going to be kind of suspicious and I'm going to and I'm going to be upset about these policies and rules and procedures.

But I want to challenge that because I want you to ask yourself this: could all of this stuff actually be about keeping scouts safe? I Think about it Instead of the fear of litigation.

Could this just be about keeping scouts safe? It's not about removing every risk, because we still do risky activities- copes or risky activity. Canoeing's a risky activity, Swimming's a risky activity. It's not about removing every risk. It's about managing that risk in a wise manner. The Boy Scouts of America has 1.1 million adults serving 2.7 million scouts and cubs and ventures nationwide.

That's a huge organization with huge responsibilities. Can we attempt to understand that when they tell us things, That those things just may be intended to make the program better instead of worse.

It's really kind of simple, isn't it? I mean, if you suspect that your district, council or national folks are trying to make your life as a volunteer more difficult, Then everything they say or do is going to be Appears suspicious, There's going to be an attack on you. If, instead, you base your assumption on the idea that these, all these folks want to support you, that they have a great deal of experience and wisdom and have the best interests of your scouts at heart and They have your best interest at heart, You may find that your burden lifts a bit.

And I'm going to tell you something that will always be the assumption on this podcast and on the blog: We're all in this together, folks, from the chief scout executive all the way down to a brand-new tiger cub, You know, at his first meeting. We're all in this together and we have to consider, and the sooner we understand that we're all pulling in the same direction, the easier life gets and the more we are able to do to develop the character and Fitness and citizenship of boys.

And that's the real aim of the mission, isn't it? Okay, I want to get to the Scoutmaster panel discussion and we're going to hear that in just a moment. Hi, I'm Kevin Callan and I'm listening to Scoutmaster ipod. No, I Have Kevin Callan, the happy camper, and you're listening to the scope master podcast.

Time for another Scoutmaster panel discussion. So it's time for another Scoutmaster panel discussion, and joining us Are Larry Geiger from down in Vera, Florida, How you, Larry? Hey, Clark, and we got Walter Underwood out there in the hills of California. Good evening, Clark. And down in Tallahoma, Tennessee, Tom Gillards, a board.

How you doing, Tom? I find, Clark. We're gonna look at a number of different things in this panel discussion and a couple of documents have come across From our national organization, and the first one we're going to look at is called age guidelines for tool use and Work at elevations or excavations.

So we're going to just call it the tool use guide, I think, and this is a fairly new publication that I received last week and that we've seen mentioned on a couple of other I guess, Walter, you said you saw it on the scouting magazine blog yesterday. That's right, So they must be official. They must be official. I Did not make these up, I promise. Basically, the outline on the tool use Document is just describing what age One must be to use different tools and everything like that and this kind of updates. A Chart that I guess many of us were familiar with, the age guidelines chart That used to be in the older edition of the guide to safe scouting.

That handled lots of things and mentioned tools, I guess in one or two lines, and now that we have a three-page piece of work here, So I was interested to see what you guys thought about it. I Can't believe they don't let kids under 14 use post-hold diggers.

Is that what it sounds? Yeah, Well, I think the worst blisters I've ever gotten were for post-hold diggers. Oh, absolutely, I Guess. Yeah, I would say that your average 11 and 12 year old with a full-sized post-hold digger- I Mean it- He's just really not able to work that thing. He's just too small generally.

But, yeah, okay, so I will hit himself in the foot with it. I think it's probably when, when they did the survey a while back, the number one Problem with scouts was foot injuries and that's when they came out.

That's when they came out with the closed-toed shoes, No sandals, Hmm, tennis shoes or sandals with the closed-toed and, and I think- and You know no axes on- that was part of the contact Thing was splitting, Yeah, Contact axman ship is, and so post-hold digger I, I can guess that might be part of, because, I agree with you, That's a fairly benign tool. It's a very benign tool, But I believe I was about 11 when I learned to hate it with a hot passion.

What I don't give, the four-wheeled cart, I mean to me, what that says is that says a Red American Flyer wagon And you can't use a wagon, no, wheelbarrow's right, wheelbarrow, Again, a full-size contractor wheelbarrow, I mean you know 11 or 12 Right, and you wait in it, He's not gonna pick it up- but a four-wheeled Like those little wagons that they have at Lowe's, or a wagon like a red wagon. I'm not sure I understand exactly that, but anyway, go ahead.

Well, there's the paint roller with the extension pole. Yeah, that one, I, I understand that one totally. How do you, yeah, if you put something at the end of a six-foot pole, Put it in the hands of anybody below the age of 14. He, someone is getting hit in the head.

I Think they're saying a paint roller is okay, right, paint roller is good, I think, when you put it at the end of an extension pole and make it into an implement of mayhem, Yeah Well, not only the paint roller, ninja, but the very well-intentioned boy who you know over Overbalances it and there it comes down and smack somebody in the head, whacking. Yeah, You're looking at it, Does it?

Does it all make sense to you? It's pretty close like The second-page screwdriver- electric, But drill is never mentioned.

If you're gonna use an electric drill for a screwdriver, Like to put up fence boards, like we did a week ago for an Eagle project, You know, and most of the guys are 14 and older, But what if we were drilling holes? And that's never mentioned, There's no, there's no drill.

Huh, you're right, Which I think is a, Not an omission. What would you call that?

I think that's an oversight. Well, yeah, It says this. This list is not not comprehensive oversight.

So I mean, that's pretty common tool. Oh, yeah, absolutely to include, to include a dremel tool, But not a drill, and it's just a miss.

That one I think we know I'm thinking back to. Of course I did. I used all kinds of power stuff in shock class in ninth grade, but we had a. I had a trained teacher in charge of the class and And.

But the robotics team Does all kinds of stuff and there the only rules for robotics is that if you've got somebody under 12, They have to have somebody with over 18 with them. And the same thing is true at tech shop here, where you can take classes and do take welding and laser cutters and Sheet metal breaks and all kinds of good stuff. And that's the same rule under 12 plus over 18 parent.

So does that over 18 person have to have any kind of training or anything like that? No, they. They both have to go through the safety and basic use class class together.

But they do so they do end up with some kind of specific training to the stuff that they're going to be working with. When I was 8 or 9, I've used a drill press.

You know 10 and 11 and above. I've used basically all this stuff and. But I grew up with my dad in the garage Doing everything.

I think nowadays, And- and I'm I'll even speak for my troop- There's a fair number of people That have never touched a lot of this stuff. As a matter of fact, I can tell you there's people- my troop- that don't know what a pickaxe is, a mattock. They may not know what a post hole digger Looks like they probably have an idea what it does. I cutting tools, paint sprayers, I mean They just don't do this stuff. I mean I know a lot of people that don't even own a lawnmower. Their neighborhood is all moan.

I think you're right. No, I think you're.

I think you are right. A lot of the boys that End up joining our troops are not going to have Exposure to this type of thing. The cases that Walter stated and What you were talking about, Larry, when you were younger and you use those tools, you did have a knowledgeable person right there. We weren't allowed to use it without him there until we're like 16 or something.

When I first looked at this, I got my cane out and I waved it in the air and I screamed and yelled and then I started looking at it a little bit closer And I said: you know what? I just don't, I don't know any other way to do this, Because you can't guarantee That you have an experienced, knowledgeable person Working next to somebody who and be able to assure their safety. I I also noticed in my right, Walter, in that blog post they mentioned that they used a lot of Information from Habitat for Humanity. Yes, there's Habitat for Humanity and Department of Labor as well. We just did a.

We were helping with an Eagle project and part of it was shoveling Lots and lots of pea gravel and the kids figured it out fairly quick. But you could tell- like I'm going back to Larry's statement- You could tell they had never had a shovel or rake or hoe or anything anything like that in their hands and They really, really didn't know.

You know exactly how to use it. They could figure out which end was which, but that was about it, Yeah.

Yeah, at the end of the day they understood what, what it was good for, but I think it's. I Think that, first of all, everybody should be alerted to the existence of this writing now and Review it and take a good look at it. I mean, I've spent most of my life working in the trades and working on construction sites and things and I've seen lots of Kind of sketchy things going on.

So And I've seen accidents and we did mention that- that there are height- I'm not going to go into them in detail, but there are height limitations as to ladders and things like that- and there's also depth limitations to excavations and that's I've never have thought of that, But that is a very smart thing to have included in there, because you can do some awful things if you're down below four feet. Osha recently did some studies and they found that The training were way behind because they found that there were a lot more people crushed, buried and damaged by By excavations than other things that they had been focusing on.

So I don't know if you're in that kind of a business, You may have noticed recently. Usually once a year you hear of a construction crew that cut that corner and, Yeah, X number of people died because it, the walls came in and it was. It was maybe four or five feet deep And you go.

How can that happen? Unfortunately, it's easy to have happened, but Well, let me. Let's take a look at this other. The document that came along with this was was the service project planning guidelines, and I'll just read the introduction here in part: the guideline. These guidelines can be utilized for all scouting service projects, Not just those for Eagle service project. The guidelines Must not be construed to be additional requirements for an Eagle service project, but they do Represent elements that should appear on the scouts, candidates, final project plan, and it says These guidelines can be used- It's not requiring these guys that you have this all filled out for a service project.

And it talks about hazards, hazard analysis and recognition. It talks about Going through a process. It notes the tools and equipment and weather conditions and health and sanitation conditions To to have a good, safe project. And again it kind of surprises me. We really haven't had anything like this in the past. But it makes good sense, It.

It lets the, it gives the, the kid the opportunity to, to learn What it takes to have a project, a safe project, and stuff that he wouldn't even think about any other way. Yeah, I agree that You know, given this to a kid It's a little bit long, but for, like, an Eagle project, I just had an Eagle project and as he went through it and filled it out, I think it was a real eye-opener to me.

I think it's. I think it's a good thing, I Think it's great.

You know, anytime you can get a list Like of you know things to watch out for. That's based on Experience and from experts. It's a it's a really good thing. I wish we had this kind of thing for outings.

I feel like our risk, You know, management for outings is. There's not a lot of support for that. The new tour permit, the new tour plan, has Some guidance, which is good.

You know what I think of when you mentioned that, Walter, was this sweet 16 of Scouting safety, which pretty much, if you, if you look at that- of course It doesn't give you a blow-by-blow description of as detailed as this- Yeah, I think it's pretty important thing. No one understand the sweet 16 is is is a good, high-level Help, but I just wish that there was a lot more detail.

I've been just started looking at Andrew Skirka's book and he says, okay, for you know, desert in the winter, This is what you want to think about, and that's a much more focused set of concerns. What do you think that might be something that they are looking at?

Maybe you know more, better definitions or a way of defining what the the things are saying. You know, when I was a kid, most troops had people that worked at General Motors or, in my case, at Kennedy Space Center or wherever, or, like you, Clark or carpenters or you know And stuff, and they went to safety classes and they learned Stuff.

You know, or I know about troops in our area, where most of the adults are computer guys or their professional guys in certain fields, They don't go to those safety classes, They don't get that level of stuff on a monthly and annual basis that the Environments they work on in it's not required and so like in my building There's 200 Employees. They're almost all IT people, Documentation specialists. We don't have a safety meeting every month. We don't have a safe. I mean, it's just not even a topic.

I guess we're all gentlemen of a certain age now And so we've seen enough that we know that. Yeah, you do actually have to think about this stuff.

Right at Kennedy Space Center, you know we had a safety meeting with every meeting. It was required.

Every staff meeting included a safety section and it's kind of a mindset and I think scouting needs and Is starting to address some of that and that's that's. That's not the kids, That's us adults and, like y'all said, the the outings. You really have to think about it a little more. It's one thing for you to go do it on your own is another to take 15 other people's kids out with you to do it.

So there is a bigger concern there. Yeah, I would love to see the track safely Class, redone into something a little bit longer and more detail.

I think that is a big competence builder for for a leader or for an adult involved in scouting, when they're able to Take that stuff and have some familiarity with it. When we go to summer camp They offer a Few times during the week they'll offer a safe swim, defense or Actually talk to real people that that this stuff may have happened to so and that helps a lot too.

We were talking just a little bit before we, before we started the formal part of the conversation, in that we really I think the Sense of the group was it would be really good to get some facts and figures about different Risks and accidents and things like that. It would be good to know what people are getting themselves into, sometimes Find that very instructional and keeping ourselves out of it.

So I've got a collection of four questions that are kind of reasonably common, the kind of questions I get in my email or through the blog, and I was just going to go ahead and see what you guys had for answers. And the first question is Says that we've been in discussion about the best way to show immediate recognition, And that's talking about.

When a scout has earned a badge of rank, What's the proper way or the best way to recognize an Award, that rank? So how do you guys manage that?

Well, we, when the, when the scout passes his border review, We have bought extra Pins and the pin is the temporary, Temporary rank insignia. So at the end of the meeting, during the circle up, We call him out into the middle of the circle and I tell everyone that so-and-so has just completed, Has just passed his border review, and I pin him and everybody gives him a round of applause and he: Yeah, we.

I remember seeing something photo in the newspaper of a Soldier getting a metal pinned on his t-shirt in the hospital and I thought: you know, you don't just, you don't wait for this kind of stuff, You just give it as soon as possible. And so we, You know, after the way he said, border review, he gets a handshake in front of everybody and then The meeting. After that, when we got the paperwork in and the patch back, it gets up again to gets the patch.

We used to have extra patches, but our council is not selling patches anymore until after the advancement report, so That's usually like the next meeting or two. We give them their, The, their patch, and in the card they get at the court of honor, the, the senior patrol leader Calls them up right after the the border review, Recognizes them and then calls them up again the next week or two weeks later and gives them their award at the end of the meeting.

Well, isn't that correct that? The, the, the metal pin, is the temporary rank, The patch is the permanent rank that they sew on to their uniforms.

So we, we do the metal pin first and then go through all the. You know We only have three or four court of honors a year so we wait until then to order the patch.

Once that paperwork, the pen, typically in the past has been for mom And we award, the scout gets his Patch in his card at the court of honor or the card, and then on the card is the pen and he pins that on his mom and Tenderfoot through life rank. That's his practice for his Eagle Court. When he pins the Eagle pin on his mom and Presents the dad's Eagle pin to the dad.

Okay, we've got miniatures that go to mom. You've got the full size.

It's the the scout wears and then the little miniatures go to mom at the court of honor. I think we've been given the mom's the full size in our troop lately.

I think if there's a miniature one, we've been doing the same thing that that Larry and Walter described. We have the.

We get the patch to the boy as soon as we have it in our hands and we hold on to the pocket certificate. That's the card that usually goes along with the patch.

I'm going to go, I'm going to move on to question number two and that is: how does the concept of a boy that troop work when adding new members, new youth members with various levels of attention deficit disorder or autism or Something like that? I'm thinking especially of the challenges or disruption in patrol operations that can occur With boys who have special needs.

When do adults step in? The other adult leaders Find that it is best to mainstream these boys into patrols or not.

So what's your, what's your experience with that fellas? If they're capable of being a scout and in a regular troop, Then there's no difference. The boys when they come in, they just go into patrols. However, any, any other scout goes in and in, the scouts manage that. And if there's such a Behavioral issue that an adult has to be involved all the time and usually when we get him out in the woods and running around in the Forests and on campouts, we look around and go.

You know he's calmer than a lot of that. Stuff disappears in the woods. I'll tell you, and I'm like Larry, we've had one that had an adult, a parent, that had to sort of Sit behind him. Sit beside him, sometimes because of behavioral problems, but That's very rare. They they just tend to blend in. Yeah, I'd agree that you have to to watch the medications because they're in a diff, out of the regular Schedule.

They'll forget or something, Especially summer camp. The other one is.

The thing is that it can be helpful to have an individual scouting plan. I think you could find samples of this- but to talk With the parents about why are you doing this?

What do you want? Do you want to have friends and go camping? If that's the goal, That's what we're doing.

Do you want to be eagle? If that's the goal, would work on that.

Do you want? What does he want to do?

What are the steps? So they'll? Special ed Parents will be very familiar with an individual education plan And you could do the same thing for scouting. Everybody's different.

I think that the boys that are in scouts right now are Much nicer and much more accepting and tolerant of these differences than we were when we were kids. Oh me, Yeah, that's me.

Yeah, I was mean, Yeah, I remember you know, anybody who was a little bit different Got had a pretty hard row to hoe I'm. I'm, frankly, most of the time I'm just amazed at how nice these boys are.

If your troop is run by adults and it's run so close to like a classroom- Which is typically- not always, but typically in a large percentage- Where these young men have problems, as opposed to being run like a scout troop, Which often looks like a bit of a melee in the meetings and the campouts, if you're so close to that school model That you're having trouble with this issue, That's probably the reason why you're having a problem. I would agree that that cross my mind that there's so much mayhem going on anyway.

How do you know which ones with it? For the most part, Thank you, Tom.

I think a lot of the hyperactivity type of thing and the attention deficit- and I've even watched some Boys with who are identified along that autism spectrum or with a developmental delay when they're out camping. It just doesn't seem to matter all that much.

I'm, as long as you know They're- with a group of people who are reasonably tolerant and accepting and so that if they do run into Some kind of a problem It's not that big a deal and everybody just kind of slows down and says, well, Let's make sure that he can handle this. I guess that the the sense of the group is: yes, they basically just become scouts and, Apart from any Any more serious difficulties, right, right, and that's when the adults stepped in is in a serious difficulty, right, Clark, I I'm with a group called the special gathering. Once a year we take 175 mentally handicapped, physically Handicapped folks to a camp Down in Varro Beach.

These, these are the kind of folks that have difficulties in normal social settings sometimes and many of them are in In an organization where their daily lives- you know our structure- different that's. Many of them Do have jobs, but when they get to camp it's like it falls away.

So I think that is why It's a great idea to get out camping. You know, I don't know that it hurts anybody and I think it does actually help everybody.

So My wife would disagree with me. But Yeah, here we go.

Okay, question number three. This is one of the recent podcast talked about leadership positions in the troop. Currently, a scout can hold more than one position. I guess there is nowhere that says they can't.

But what are your thoughts? I have one scout who is a troop scribe and quartermaster and patrol leader.

So what are your thoughts? Fellas, You're taking away the opportunity for someone else to lead if you, if you do all everything.

Well, I think you're right. I think that a very precocious boy who was really into scouting and really interested in stuff Would raise his hand every time that the job came up and would take on, you know, five positions, if you let them. I mean, if I had six kids in the troop, Yeah, I mean maybe scribe and quartermaster. Yeah, I mean I have a patrol leader and a scribe and a quartermaster and a system patrol.

You know, I mean I guess you know if I'm starting off from scratch, but Anything over 10 or 11 scouts, It's. It's hard sometimes to get them to do what's supposed to be done. Much less tight, two or three. You'd want to spread the.

Well, That's an interesting question. I I mean I wouldn't form a rule about it, But I would agree that I think being a patrol leader and anything else is, It's gonna be difficult. Even take a note to the PLC while you're trying to be a part of it as a patrol leader is gonna be hard right.

Yeah, I think sometimes we look at the these positions of leadership and we look at the job descriptions that come along with them And we try and define them very, very closely. I think boys are more likely to kind of share- you know, share- responsibilities and functions as they see fit. Maybe. Maybe everybody's looking a little too hard at those position descriptions and not at the function behind them. The final, the fourth and final question is from a longtime troop activities chair. I've either had or I'm currently having stress.

So you're the troop activities chair, You should be having a little bit of stress with several driving related issues. Some of these are from new parents, while others from older families that know better. And he goes on to explain a whole number of different things, Like drivers who get to camp on Friday but late Saturday night or early Sunday morning They announced they need to head out early. Parent who announces at the last minute something like: since Bobby is the grub master already have his gear and food in the car When we get to church.

So I'll just be, I'll just be driving him. Parents who only want to drive their own son to the weekend, Parents who sign up to drive for an event but then their son never registers for the event and at the last minute They just can't attend for some reason or another.

I think you kind of get the idea. So what, what's your thoughts?

What do you get? What do y'all do about that?

And so we're. We're often an hour, 15 to two hours away for many activities.

Now I've had, I've had dads that come on the camp out and they want to come a little bit later and bring their son. You know, or they want to leave early or something, and and then it just kind of smooths out.

Now, Walter, I know he goes off into who knows wear out in the boonies, Mm-hmm, You know, I don't think he probably has that problem. Let's ask. Let's ask him. Hands him a backpack.

Well, you know, you've still got to drive to the trail. We we've done it for a while.

This way We get everybody to the church, get everything out of the cars and a patrol leader has got his patrol and his patrols gear and then It may take a while but we get everything back into the cars and leave. But the senior patrol leader is the one who's deciding who's in what car right and making sure that the that the gear gets there and the.

The other thing is that as a tour leader You've got to decide when your responsibility starts, when these people are yours, Right? So if people are driving from to leave in before and after, it gets harder and harder for you to Properly be responsible for them.

So we prefer you always end up with. You know The SATs are all morning, So these people are hiking, and separately, but we try to keep that to the minimum.

Well, on our permission slips we have a place at the bottom where the, the Parent, can say, yes, I want to attend and yes, I can drive. So before we ever get to to the church we know who is available to drive, who's got the pickup truck, and The pickup truck usually is you know it's sitting there and all the kids start putting their gear into the end of the truck and then, like Walter said, the Senior patrol leader or the acting senior patrol leader. I make sure, if he didn't bring it, I give him a roster of who's going and he starts checking off: Yep, He's here, He's here. And When the, when they all get checked off, he says they're all here.

I said, well, are you ready to go? And he says okay, So he Loads them up in the cars. I try and get the senior patrol leader to ride with me if I'm driving, just to have the opportunity to talk a little bit him before the trip and stuff. But There are. There are occasions, if it's something very, very local, like the, the local, our local little camp and The kids going to have baseball that day, dad Drive him out there and he may leave. But he'll come back and get him and bring him back and forth and but on a true outing, Usually we don't even have people coming in late.

They either make it or they don't. Yeah, I think that's the key.

What you said is, is that one camp out? If you're, if you have the kind of troop Where that's your typical camp out from month to month the month, Then this is gonna be a problem from month to month to month.

Whereas I think Tom, you and Walter and I- and I don't know, maybe Clark, That's not, you know, we're not ten minutes away from the ten, fifteen minutes away at a KOA, like campsite or something. We're off, You know, behind a locked gate where they have to get the combination and drive down a little dirt road and You know, or backpacking or canoeing or something. I mean we're- yeah, you can't be late to a canoe trip. No, we don't, we don't wait for people on a canoe trip.

The outfitter is ready to go, We go. I might have the advantage on y'all because within an hour circle- Well, I'll call it an hour and a half circle- of where we live, I've got Probably about five or six different state parks. I've got one, two, three, four, five scout camps and Any number of different places in between.

So most of the time when we're driving anywhere, we're driving for something less than an hour, But you still don't. You still don't let the.

You know it's no need taking 15 cars, No, and the way that we've managed this now for the past maybe six to eight years, is Nobody's laid a hand on any driving plans or any transportation plans other than the patrol leaders and the senior patrol leader, and It just seems to work really, really well. And each patrol leader is responsible for getting his scouts back and forth and He coordinates with the senior patrol leader by telling him: Yeah, I've got this covered and They managed to hash it out if they need an extra, if one patrol needs an extra seat or something like that, Or if there's only a couple of guys from that patrol going and they can get in with them. With another way that it works. I'm pretty amazed at what they're able to do with it.

Sometimes we're standing around for 10 or 15 minutes on a Friday night while they're figuring it out, But they do a reasonably good job of putting it together, And when they don't, Well, they don't and they. Then we're staying around for a half hour. Larry had kind of a good suggestion there, with it kind of off to Incidentally, which is maybe this guy should just go to places farther away and less accessible. That might be a really good thing to do. I mean, it is tempting if you're 20 minutes away and It's possible to get picked up and to go back for the baseball game.

You know, That's one way of that's one way of looking at it. Well, thank you so much for joining us again for the Scott master panel discussion. Fellas, Larry, Thanks very much. You're welcome, Clark And Tom. Thank you, sir, You're welcome, It's been a pleasure. And Walter who won the ping-pong game.

Oh, it seems to be a tournament. Well, thanks very much for joining us again, Walter, it's been fun