Scoutmaster Podcast 140

And now the old Scoutmaster Breaking up a little bit there. Walter, there's something in the tubes, It's. You're still. You're still breaking up. Pretty good, it almost sounds like a build car, Old-style cars Going by.

Would you know, leave that static discharge in the air over the radio years ago? Oh, yeah, Yeah, yeah, years and years ago, which could be the electricity was kept on the way from my Podcast. Oh yeah, you're still. It's still not work. Oh, There's podcasting game. It's kind of complicated.

There's all kinds of electronical things going on. Hey, this is podcast number 140.

Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Take a quick look in the mailbag. Dave wrote in and said: bed and Powell with an iPod, priceless. That's in the logo. If you haven't seen it, scoutmaster cgcom, take a look.

Baden Powell of an iPod, actually just with your phones. But you know, thanks, Dave. Thanks for getting in touch. Love the podcast each week, Enjoy the music and sounds.

Where can I download the music? It is available somewhere and that's from Victor Victor at scoutmastercgcom. On every Post that contains a podcast, You'll find this little Amazon widget where you can go and find the music From the that I use on the podcast and you can download it.

You got to buy it, but you can buy it right there from Amazon, So I hope that helps you out. Had this message from Another, Dave. He said I just listened to podcast 137, 4%, and I'd like to get a hard copy as soon as possible For my son who just made Eagle Scout, and I'm. I'm Recording Dave's message because I've gotten a lot of such messages. There is no hard copy available.

It's only available as a Kindle edition right now And if you read very carefully the posts online and you listen very carefully to podcast number 137, Mike is working on getting a copy of the book. So before you write and ask me, There isn't one yet and as soon as there is one I am going to tell everybody.

I really, really well, Tom Tom wrote in and said this: with Tom Tom, That's the guy who does the GPS thing, isn't it? Yeah, but anyway, Tom Tom wrote in and said: I'm always learning something new each day.

Well, thanks, Tom, So am I. I Guess maybe he meant he was learning things from me, but well, you never know.

So in this podcast we're going to go to our Scoutmaster panel discussion. It happens every month.

Usually we have four of us but one of our buddies, Larry, who is out traveling, gallivanting around the country. At least that's what he said he was doing- gallivanting, specifically gallivanting.

So we missed him this time. But we're gonna be talking about the journey to excellence. We're doing a little comparison between the troop requirements for Last year and this year. A couple little things changed there. A little general talk about the journey to excellence, then jamboree on the air and jamboree on the internet. Quick mention of that to remind you that that's coming up this month and That's gonna do it for this podcast.

So let's get started, Shall we?

It's time for another Scoutmaster panel discussion. You, So we're back with the Scoutmaster panel discussion again, and Joining us this time around is Tom Gillard, down in Tolahoma, Tennessee.

How you doing, Tom? Just fine, Clark, Thank you. And way out west there in the wilds of California, Walter Underwood. Hello, Walter, Howdy, I'm tanned and ready back from backpacking trip with my wife and no scouts.

Really, now, you must tell us about that, because some of our wives would not go backpacking on a bet. Well, you know I didn't have to bet or anything, But it was with her and a friend, another couple, that friend from her college days And there's a beautiful campsite, Eagle Spring, On the backside of Mission Peak. It's got great views.

We went up to Mission Peak for to look over the 11 million people in the Bay Area, the suckers living down in this city, and So we had a good time. I think when we go all get together, We're gonna get together at Walters house. One of the things that I thought would be interesting for us to look at is This year's journey to excellence for scout troops. For those of you getting up to speed on this, the journey to excellence is What used to be. Most recent iteration was the Centennial Award.

It was the Centennial Troop Award, I think. Centennial something, Yeah, I think that sounds right. And the much more familiar to us old-timers was the quality unit award. And This journey to excellence program has been developed and it's been in place for one year now. I actually like it quite a bit Because it gives you tiered ratings for different aspects of the way your troop is applying the program and It kind of gives you some targets to work with And I find it a lot more useful than some of the former iterations of the quality unit award or the centennial award. What's been your guys experience with it.

I I went through it last year and You know there was there was a lot of the. The first couple of Points have a lot of math involved and I lose interest real quick, but it it's got. It's got a Little area for about everything that your troops should be doing, just to give you a heads up as to what you should be doing.

Walter, did you get involved with this with your troop at all last year? I was advising, luckily, rather than calculating, but I think It's gotten. There was a stretch in the previous system where you had to like Predict what you were going to do and work against that, and it was really hard. It's- it's funny that the Scouts have taken this long to get to this of management by objective, which my, my dad, my Daddy's a preacher and he adopted with from all these young engineers, the refineries at the church.

About what are we going to do? Each of these areas, let's say what we're going to do each year. This really is good.

It's kind of a mix, though, of some few of these things are our echoes of the national objectives down to the unit, and some that like retention, and then some of the other ones are really about Citizenship and fitness, and you know I could disagree with exactly the gold level on fitness, but I think having a fitness Line item in here is great. So I think you know that it would be kind of nice to know To like separate out which ones are contributing to the, the national Scouting program, which ones are contributing to the unit, but that's really just a. That's kind of a fussy disagreement.

I think that's a good observation, though, because a lot of this is based on what they call leading indicators of success. Any kind of evaluation like this is going to be a little imperfect, no matter how you set numbers and standards.

The thing that I Embrace in it is that you can take this as a reasonable test Against leading indicators on how well your troop is doing. I think it's, you know, It's kind of like a cholesterol number or something like that. It's. It's a good checkup.

Do you? Is there any place that you can find out how other troops are doing? I would imagine that a district or a council level volunteer might be able to fill us in on something like that. You.

Have you seen anything like that, Walter? No, I haven't.

Wasn't? Wasn't this sort of a Matrix for Cub Scout units that would be able to say, Say or look at what's your number, and you could tell them, and they would. They would know by that number How you were doing as far as the organizational part of the troop went.

Wasn't that what you're saying? If I'm understanding you right, Is this final rating that your troop gets?

Is this something that people who are looking for a troop, like Second-year weevils who are getting ready to cross over, are they going to evaluate your troop by this? And I'd say This is definitely one aspect that would give them an idea- not being a weevil is then leader.

Right now, I really don't know how much weight people are giving these different ratings. Well, that that was. I guess.

The Second half of that question was: how did they know? Well, I would imagine that troops are going to promote. If they get a good score, They're definitely going to promote it.

So, and while we're talking about this, because we're assuming that Everybody listening has looked at this and they understand what it is. So let me just give you a little background on exactly how the journey to excellence program works. Once every year, During recharter time, you're going to sit down with the troop committee. They're going to go over. Let me see, this year It's 13 different aspects of the program And you're going to look at these 13 different aspects of the program And you're going to score them and that's going to result in an overall score that decides what level unit you are- bronze, silver or gold.

And I will tell you that last year, my troop, I think we just made it into the bronze. I Think that's about where we were to. It was still brand new.

It was hard to figure out What we were supposed to be doing. Do you know what the you guys did out there, Walter?

I don't remember, but I think we did pretty well Because we've been, we've been picking up a lot of new scouts. This is the what the 1st of October, usually I- I totally forget about this until the end of January when they start talking about district banquet and if you want the, The award, you need to get the paperwork in.

So this is: this has helped me to remember that. Oh, yeah, it's still sitting out there and And and we're a little early in the schedule for a lot of people. Yeah, but it's better, It's really it's.

If you start doing it like that, you get frustrated real quick, because you're having to cram, Trying to go back a whole year Picking up numbers, whereas if you do it Monthly or something you know, just keep track of stuff, It's a lot easier. So let's take a look here. We're not going to talk in detail about every single point here, but I Have this year's journey to excellence specifications and last year's, and one of the things about the journey to excellence program is they have promised that they will update it every Year and they will be focusing on different aspects of the program in changing way that those things are evaluated, and the first one is advancement, and I don't see any change in that between this year or last Year. I like the numbers there.

I think it's a good leading indicator of success in a troop that scouts are advancing and I really don't have any argument with the Standards that they set there. Yeah, 40%, You know it's not that low, but it's, it's good. The retention number is next. That is one of those numbers that looks like a tax form to me- And I borrow that from you, Tom. Yeah, Because this is a little bit like Turn the page over and look at how you're supposed to do it. It does look.

I don't want to put people off too much by that, but you know well, it's online, They can see that and laugh at it. But the gold level Retention is to retain and re-register 85% of the members in your unit or retain and re-register 80% and have two percentage points increase.

So basically that would be If I was a troop of 20 boys. I would have 16 or 17 from last year and I would have added two new ones.

That seems to be pretty doable, Right? The? The third criterion is Building Boy Scouting and that is a net increase of membership.

So not just retaining old members but increasing with new members did change over last year because last year didn't Recognize anything about the present size of the troop. It just wanted you to increase By percentage points.

So when I look at this year's, the silver level, for instance, has changed. It says increase youth members by 5% or have at least 25 members, and last year's It didn't mention the 25 members, It just said increase youth members by 5%. If you start out with a troop of at least 25, you already are a silver level troop.

Well, that's good, because we- just we are troop is Hugely grown. We have 70 scouts- Holy moly, I know it's what the heck Where they come?

Who's making these kids? That's a pretty intense troop meeting there. You, you've hit. You've got the gold level by default then, Walter, because the gold level you have at least 35 members, With an increase over last year. The next criteria was training, and this is adult leader training.

That raised some eyebrows, I think, last year. Zoris, there's got to be a Yiddish word for this, a Yiddish word for commotion. It caused a lot of Spilkes.

Isn't this the part where they were Insisting that every assistant Scoutmasters be trained, Not just youth protection, but up to some some level? If you look at the Standards between last year and this year as far as training goes, they've been loosened up a little bit.

Last year you had to have for the Gold level you had to have Scoutmaster and assistant Scoutmasters have completed an introduction- outdoor leadership skills- and Then you had to have all committee members completed the troop committee challenge. This year, Scoutmaster and 60 percent of Assistants have completed leader specific training. Two-thirds of active committee members must have completed the troop committee challenge.

So they've loosened that up a little bit this time. And that was a real sticking point for us because we we did not have a high level of training, But it's really excited a lot of interest in getting people trained and troops.

So whoever invented the journey to excellence out there, good on you, it helped. Yeah, well, you know there are- you know interesting things- my, my son's, 18. He's off to college. He's registered as an ASM.

So, hey, you know how does he get trained. You know he could do with yp.

Well, I may like. Didn't you put out a thing? There was a college bound Code, that's true. Yeah, there is apparently a new college bound code For people who want to maintain registration with the troop but they're not registered as leaders.

I know that when we got to reach harder time in 2011, when we first looked at the journey to excellence and we saw the training requirement, I think we had about somewhere between 40 and 60 adults on the charter. The vast majority of them were kind of legacy Members who had been involved either with their sons in the troop, or it was boys who had been involved in the troop Who are now adults and just maintain their registration that way. But we had to change that because that was going to mess with our training numbers.

Well, we've- we've got a few of those too, that the parents and the, the youth are their adults. Now They're maintaining their registration and every two years the, the recharter pops up. They need youth protection. We let them know, they, they bring it to us, We send it in and everything's fine. But yeah, it's they. They have not stepped foot.

They only stepped foot in there every two years, or to give the money. But they want to be registered, They want to be Counted on the Boy Scout role.

Well, I think it's. I think what they're trying to figure out right now is the difficulty of being able to assure everyone that All registered adults in scouting have youth protection training and be able to maintain some of these legacy members Who maybe are not direct contact with youth. Right, Criterion four and five or five and six are short-term and long-term camping and those haven't changed over this past year. Gotta go camping man, Gotta get out. Yeah, Silver level is for overnight campouts, Or bronze levels. For overnight campouts, silver is seven, gold is nine for long-term camp, Bronze is participate in one, silver is 60% of the scouts in the troop attended a long-term camp and Gold is 70%.

And you know, and the long term means if you send people to film on, yes counts, right, Yes, Yes, So any long-term. You know you've got high adventure, That's in your 70%.

So I think there's a five-day. I Think it's a five-day thing.

I think there's a number attached to the long-term. Short-term. It says in the explanation. It says Boy Scouts attend any in-council or out-of-council long-term summer camp of at least three days and nights. High-adventure experience, jamboree or serving on camp staff within the past year also counts. Oh, camp staff, That's great, It's a smart calculation.

That's a leading indicator that it's a successful program and boys stay with those kinds of programs. So they've included every iteration of it that they possibly can.

Yeah, well, and when your older guys go and are their staff or they're on high adventure, those are jamboree, Mm-hmm. So that's, that's your sales team. Those are the people who are saying, wow, you got to do this. Number seven on the form is: the patrol method hasn't changed over the past year and the thing that I like about this: It's hard to assess that a troop is using the patrol method. That's kind of a difficult one to put into numbers and the way that they've done it is they've identified the fact that There's a senior patrol leader if there's more than one patrol, and that there's a patrol leaders Council meets regularly and that's a pretty good indicator that there's a halfway decent patrol method being exercised. And this, the bronze level, is the Patrol leaders council has meets four times a year and has troop leader training.

Silver level is that the patrol leaders council meets at least six times a year, including an annual planning meeting. And the gold level is The patrol leaders council meets ten times a year, including an annual planning meeting, and one scout attends national youth leader training. I'm a little bit reticent about the national youth leader training requirement but I can understand it. Yeah, he is good stuff, you know.

You know, If you look at the comments on the wood badge post, you know that's the, that's the $10,000 training and it's exactly the same thing For the youth leaders. Yeah, so that really, that really counts. I mean, that's a gold thing, I just.

But I think if you're at bronze or if you're not at bronze, That's a, that's a red flag, That's one to really work out. Tell me about the service project part.

Do you guys recall what where you scored on that last time? Well, now that Eagle projects are unit projects, We should be in good shape. It really inspired our committee and our adult volunteers to think a lot more about being more intentional with service projects and Making.

Making it a little bit more intentional and tying it to the way the troop is evaluated I think is a good idea. Number ten is the budget, which I know very little about in our troop. That's wonderful.

Yeah, that's wonderful that you know very little, because I don't do. I don't do papers.

Well, it's a committee chair thing. We've been working back and with different approaches to to budgeting for food and Gas and all that kind of stuff on outings, and our current thing is that we say: this is how much you get Patrol.

Everybody signs up and here's your money and you get the money. The troop meeting on Tuesday And you buy the food with that money Right in the silver does have the scout, a scout whatever, Participate in in the troop budget but not not really in the patrol budgets.

Well, that's that's something we do, we. You know, if the quartermaster needs stuff, quartermaster talks to the treasurer. What talks to the troop committee.

You know, and it's a, it's a part of let's do rock climbing. Well, you got to pay people for rock.

Well, unfortunately, It takes money to do most of the stuff that we do. Fortunately, or, unfortunately, Somebody's got to manage it. And having a budget is a good thing. It's a life skill that they they're gonna need. It really spists talks about involving them in the process, having the, having the boys included in that and Understanding the way that that works.

I think that's another. Another good stroke in the whole journey to excellence thing. There's an objective about courts of honor and parents meetings.

This was one of the things that gave us some pause in our troop because we were used to having maybe one or two Courts of honor every year and we've we've amped that up now And included more parents meetings and courts of honor on our schedule. We fall in the silver. We do three a year and it's a covered dish dinner.

So after courts of honor and parents meetings, objective number 12 talks about fitness And we're gonna expand on that in a moment. So we're gonna skip over that. And objective number 13 is kind of an administrative one and that is get your charter in on time. Yeah, and that's always, Apparently, that is a big problem. It's one of those Administrative drag items, the logistical drag of doing things. I don't know.

We we have a really good Group of people that when when they're told they need to put $16 down there. That there it is. Scout is timely. Curtis, I guess we'll call that courteous. Courteous is good.

I think I hadn't made that connection before, but I'm sure every council registrar that it would agree that Getting your charter in on time makes their life a little less unpleasant around that time of year. You're helping out, You're just when you, when you do these things, you know.

So the ones that are, You know they're there again. There's kind of the ones that look down Downwards like let's have a court of honor, Let's recognize these guys, Let's, like you know, pin that medal on them.

And then there's the ones that say let's, let's just give some numbers to the wonderful volunteers at the district level. Yeah, and the district has awards that they can get for people, for for being a quality district.

And then there's the quality council awards, and so it all adds up to. Everybody needed to do their part. It'd be a good time to mention that there are. This journey to excellence is not only on a unit level, But it is a district council setting objectives and meeting them. Closely defined way is That stuff is all in line. You can read what, the what, what makes a good district.

You want to know if your district is doing what they ought to, your council is doing what they ought to. It's you know, and that's that's one of the really good things about this, this program is that you know, here it is, Here's what it means to do. It.

There's first class And I, you know, I kind of wish they just called it first class district. You know, first class.

We did mention that objective number 12 was fitness and This is pretty interesting. I think it's worth looking at a little bit because this year There is a new Scout strong fitness program.

Have you guys had a chance to look at that? I glanced through it and it looks like like it's got a lot of neat stuff in it. I did take a look.

You know, our company did a very similar thing through Kaiser This summer. In general, it's the same idea. It's like let's do something every day and if you Walk the stairs instead of taking the elevator, that counts.

The whole Scout strong program is based on the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award, which was at one point called the Presidential Fitness Award, I think, and You're going to see the acronym Pala or a pala, and that's what that stands for: presidential active lifestyle award. It's a pretty simple program, like you were saying, Walter. It's not all that demanding to keep up with because it can be tracked online. There is an online activity tracker that you can choose to use, or you can use it You can just do it on paper. I like the simplicity of it.

I think that's one of the big selling points. It's not a very complex program to implement and I'll have a link to it in the post that contains this podcast. It's on the. It's on scoutingorg. Again, The program is called Scout strong. Basically, what it asks is: there's some healthy eating goals involved with it.

There's an act activity goal- How. How will this go along with one of the merit badges?

A personal fitness How? It's been a while since I've actually looked at personal fitness requirements, But I know that it requires you to keep an activity log for a period of time And I would imagine that this would be suitable for it.

So I like it. I'm gonna. I'm working with somebody in the troop to get this off the ground and To make it part of our program.

I think it's well. The great thing about the Scout strong is just: scouting is outing. Let's get outside, Let's walk around, Let's do something every day.

One of my wood batch tickets was doing the, The fitness part of the personal fitness merit badge, which is hard, Okay, That's why it's designed for boys under the age of 18. I I now respect every scout who's done that, But the thing is, as an adult leader, When you're doing things with the Scouts, you need some reserve, you To be able to think right when they're tired.

So it's, it's a, it's a safety thing, It's a leadership thing. Let's, let's, take a walk And let's be ready To, yeah, be there and be present and be ready to leave.

And then you were going to mention that This is jamboree on the air month. So tell us a little bit about that.

So jamboree on the air is the the largest scouting event: 700,000 scouts last year. Know, across the world Scouts get on the radio, get on the internet.

There's jamboree on the air and jamboree on the internet, so you can search for J OTA and J OTI and In the third weekend, October, that this is the 20th, 21st- you can check in. You can say: Is it raining where you are?

Where was your last camp out? We had a camp area one year on that weekend and we invited the local hams out and they set up Any. Any of the scouts that wanted to could, could do just what Walter said.

They may have talked to you- I don't know, Walter, but that's been a few years ago- But anyway, you know they could. They could talk to people all over the place.

And well, there's somebody who works is a in publications at in Irving, at national. You search for k5nd, You will find Jim. He is our national coordinator for jamboree on the air.

Or you look for J OTA And you can find it on through the official scouting website, when scout law It says a scout is a friend to all and a brother to every other scout, And so this is brotherhood through the ether. What form does the jamboree on the internet take?

Is it like I aming or is it? And you know I've?

I've really not dug into that, but I think it's. I am voice, It's whatever they can work out.

So, J OTI, There's a patch, It must be, it must be there. Oh, there's a patch.

So now, now we've really excited people about it. No, I, it's official. And yeah, we'll have a link to information about both jamboree on the internet And jamboree on the air and the link that contains this podcast.

So Thanks for joining me again, guys. Uh, I guess we miss larry a little bit. Larry, Larry, larry, Yeah, we missed him a little bit. Thanks, Tom, You're welcome clock tonight. And thank you, Walter. It's been fun A little more with feeling.

It's been fun Okay, but now not so disingenuously okay, It's been a pleasure talking with you, Clark. Oh, you guys put up with a lot.