Scoutmaster Podcast 142

And now it's the old Scoutmaster.

Here's this week's camping gear tip: You need to be at least 10% smarter than the tent you're trying to set up. How about that? We've all been there. Sometimes the tent is smarter than we are. Oh, wow, Hey, this is podcast number 142.

Music. Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green, And let's take a look in the mailbag- Pretty full mailbag again this week. Let's see here. Transcendent values and equality issues have been a subject on the blog this past week And when we received this from Steve Boone, who said: Thank you for all the work that you do. I've enjoyed your podcast and learned a great deal about scouting. in the process, I've encouraged our other troop leaders to subscribe and listen And I've sent you emails before with questions or comments that you mentioned and answered on the podcast. In the great majority of topics that you've covered, I've been on board or somewhat come around to your point of view, But I will respectfully disagree with this area of membership policy And Steve. I edited the message down because Steve goes into some details and we have it and has a discussion about exactly why- And I'm not including it here, not because I don't think it's valid, but because I want to get to the point that we will respectfully disagree about this area of membership policy And that's just fine. That's fine. And what my aim is- is it even bringing these things up and discussing- because, as I said last week, you know, once we go into that land, that's where we're going to spend all our time- is how do we forge a useful alternative to where we are now, where we're divided, and how do we get unified over the whole subject. I don't have the answers yet, but we're working on them. Al Best, who is in the heart of Virginia Council, wrote in about the same set of posts Right on. you phrased my viewpoint much better than I have. These perspectives are much more in line with the scouting I know and love. Moving ahead on these divisive issues will require courage. That's right. It is And it's going to require some dedication on our part. And, like I said, this is a momentary distraction from the broader mission. right, We're serving our scouts and working with them. I also heard on the same subject from Jason Pettis. He says thanks for your continued advice and information through the blog. I've enjoyed reading and listening and occasionally contributing for many years. I'm writing. in regards to the transcendent values post, I was a scout in the 1980s and I returned to scouting 10 years ago when my son expressed an interest in joining Tiger Cubs. Since then, I've been a den leader, cub master, assistant Scoutmaster and now currently Scoutmaster of a troop in Golden, Colorado. I've completed all the basic training- staffed adult training, staffed round table, attended wood badge and staffed wood badges, staffed NYLT courses and I've helped lead the troop to the 2010 Jamboree, And I've seen how scouting can make a difference in young people's lives, giving them a foundation based on the principles of the scout oath and law. Thanks for being a voice of reason and a source of advice to the scouting community. I, for one, greatly appreciate it. Well, thank you, Jason. Jason's a familiar contributor and listener and reader And I really appreciate. I appreciate your support and your point of view and the work you're doing for your scouts. Phil Pack wrote in and he said I wanted to share my admiration and thanks for the great work you continue to do on behalf of the scouting movement. I listened to podcast 141 earlier this week on my drive home from work and was moved by the statement you made regarding these divisive times. we live in. Those thoughts came back to me today as I read some of the comments posted on news sites regarding the release of the BSAs in eligible volunteer files. What struck me wasn't the fact that I agreed or disagreed with many of the comments, or that one person was right or not, but how hurtful the words were and how intolerant many of the people were to another person's opinion. Our council recently went through some rough times around a proposal to sell and relocate our most popular Boy Scout summer camp. During that process, our scouting community became greatly divided. There were friendships broken, trust was lost and, in all, scouting suffered. During the process of evaluation and making a decision on moving the camp, what bothered me most was that we lost focus on why we're involved in scouting. We became so entangled in our own opinions and arguing our case with others that we lost focus on what we were trying to do in the first place. The scouting movement, as you state, is bigger than a political, religious or moral dogma. Scouting is a simple expression of values common to every enlightened society throughout human history. We need to remind ourselves of this fact, Regardless of our personal opinion. every scouter that's involved with scouting has committed to delivering the promise of scouting to our young people. We need to focus on that first and be willing to openly share and accept ideas that will allow us to better deliver that promise. I want to thank you for your service and your words of wisdom. I hope your words of struck accord with many others as it did with me. Well, thank you, Phil. That is very succinctly put. Let me just reread part of what Phil had to say. there We need to remind ourselves that, regardless of our personal opinion, every scouter is committed to delivering the promise of scouting to our young people. We need to focus on that first and be willing to openly share and accept ideas that will allow us to better deliver on that promise. Thank you Once again, Phil. that is excellently put and I share it here in the hopes that it's something that we'll all be able to take to heart. This from Tom Brewer, way up in the Great White North of Canada for the Third Orleans Scout Group. Tom is a beaver scout leader. I just listened to podcast number 39. Well, you know, it strikes me that it takes a long time for the podcast to get that far north. This is podcast 142, and so 39 has finally gone past the parallel there and is working its way north. I guess In that podcast you mentioned sitting in the chair at camp and letting the scouts do and learn. Funny that you mentioned that I'm a beaver scout leader. as I said, in Canada Our beaver scouts are aged five through seven years and at our leader planning meeting we agreed on our mantra for the year would be to be lazy. We won't do anything that the scouts should be doing and so far it's been great. At camp they get to build the fire. We don't put a single log in. We talked about the triangle of fire and watched as they built it and just asked questions. Again at camp they made the meals and we helped them when it came to using fire and stubs, but they prepared most of their own food. On Apple Day- this sounds like an interesting idea. This is apparently a Canadian scouting tradition is to stand outside of stores and give away apples and hopefully people will give the scouts a little support in return- Apple Day- I like it. Our beaver scouts spoke to shoppers on Apple Day and the leaders kind of held back. We gave the beaver scouts some training and practice beforehand, but they did 95% of the talking. I know this isn't as hands-off as you are. after all, There's a 10-year age difference here. but you're right about sitting in the chair. It can start young. So my message is, leaders, be as lazy as you can be. Let the scouts learn by doing. It even works for our five and seven-year-old. Once again, thanks for the podcast. Well, thank you, Tom. It's always good to hear from our brother scouts up there in Canada and know things are going well. And about Apple Day: Apple Day, That's a great idea. Finally, we have this message from Glenn. He says: Clark, I just wanted to thank you for your efforts. I wish I had found your site earlier. A few years ago I decided to take the bull by the horns and improve our troop. It took a while to figure out that having a spit and polished troop wasn't the end goal. Now we've turned the horns over to the boys. No one that walked in on our troop meetings would confuse us for a well-oiled machine, But if you look closely you can see the system working. Boy-led and the patrol method are powerful tools. It's probably harder to teach the adults not to interfere than it is to teach the boys how to lead. Keep up the good work And thank you, Glenn. Thanks for being in touch. I'm glad you're finding this information useful And I like the picture that you form in there. you know Well, we better grab this thing by the horns and then discover maybe, if you let go and let the boys do that, that well, things will go better, won't they? So in this podcast and Scoutmaster's ship, in seven minutes or less, the first of three installments about youth leader development, And this follows a series of posts on the blog that we did last month. Then we have some email questions to answer, And that should be enough for this podcast. So let's get started.

Scoutmaster's ship in seven minutes or less.

I often hear from Scoutmasters who say something like: you know, we train these boys, or we sent them to training and they still just don't seem to get the leadership thing. And at this point a lot of us may grow disenchanted and conclude that a youth led troop is just impossible or just too much trouble. So scout youth leader training is very important. We do a lot of training and we've got all kinds of initials for it. We have NYLT and JLT and IOLST and all kinds of things. Some approaches just work better than others, in my experience at least, And here's what I've found- Scout youth leaders who take part in event-based training don't automatically become leaders, any more than anyone who spends a weekend in their garage becomes a car. They may get some good out of it, but it's only the beginning of an ongoing process. Now, what am I calling event-based training? That's where we set aside a weekend or we send them off to a course of some kind, and you know it lasts for two days or three days or two weekends or whatever, And at the end of that we hand them the patch that says trained right, Or we stamp them trained and we think, okay, that's it, We've got them trained. But I want to introduce the idea of development versus training. Now, it may seem insignificant that I've swapped the term development for training, but youth leader development seems to be a more fitting term than youth leader training in my book. Training is something that has kind of a beginning, a middle and an end. It's an event And, like I said, we have a patch for it, or we did at least some time in the past And everybody who participated in an event got to wear the trained patch. I'd rather call training orientation, And orientation is important, but it's only the beginning of this development process. Development is ongoing, It's perpetually unfinished, It moves from stage to stage and there's really no conclusion to the progression. Development is a journey And, like I said, it's a process. Let's get started off on the right foot. Scouts need an orientation to their leadership position, but then they need to develop And to get started on the right foot. we need to have a good attitude of what the relationship is between adults who are volunteering with their troop and scouts who have the responsibility to lead the troop. Scouts are not employees. Now it's natural for adult leaders to take the familiar terms and practices of our professional lives into scouting, Because the relationships of the business world and the relationships of scouting are fundamentally different. these kind of businesses or human resources practices are not going to improve the experience for us or our scouts. Scoutmasters are not employers. Scouts are not employees. Their leadership position is not a job. We're all voluntary participants in something much more interesting and complex. Applications and contracts and job descriptions and quarterly reviews and various other human resources trappings have very limited usefulness in scouting. Leaders develop by leading, not by studying leadership. The way we train often gets in the way of how leaders develop. We tend to over explain and over instruct and that's just plain frustrating to boys. The most effective way to learn to tie a square knot is how, By holding the rope and giving it a try, The most effective way to develop as a leader is by leading. Leadership development, then, is not preparation for leadership, but something that happens as you lead. Leadership development is not a preparation for leadership. It's not what we do ahead of time. That let's call orientation, That few minutes where we sit down and we say: do you understand the responsibilities that you've taken on with this position And have you looked them up? Have you read in your scout handbook or the senior patrol leader's handbook about this? So development is the ongoing process that happens after they've been oriented and now they're leading. Development is something that happens as they're leading. Are the scouts in a completely boy-led troop more talented or effective? Are they more energized than any other scouts? Not really. Some in my experience have been. Some are very talented, very effective, very energized, But for the most part they're pretty much boys like your scouts are In a scout-led troop. are the boys who are participating in that troop somehow fundamentally different from other scouts? No, They're just boys, just the same way that your boys are. The difference between scouts in a youth-led troop and scouts where adults are doing most of the leadership is simple. The scouts in the youth-led troop are allowed to actually lead And their development is seen as a process that happens over time And we're going to talk in the next installment in this series about how to apply the idea of leadership development effectively.

You are always on the beat boy, beat boy. You are always on the beat boy, beat boy. I'll hang it in the street boy, street boy. We will dance into the beat boy, beat boy. This is Cliff Jacobson and you're listening to the Scoutmaster Podcast with Clarke Green. Find me a letter, send it by name Email. that is folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails.

So this email comes from Doug Marks, who asked this question. He says: you mentioned before a special designation for scouts who are over 18 and going to college. You exempted them from certain training, not youth protection training. Thanks for your great site. Well, Doug, thanks for being in touch and asking the question. The designation you're looking for is a membership code. Now, everybody who registers as an adult leader in scouting is identified through a membership code, and there's just plenty of them. But the one that we're concerned with here is called the Unit College Scouter Reserve. So this is a scout who's turned 18.. He's away at college or on a mission or in the service And he wants to stay registered with the unit. So when that situation occurs- and it occurs quite often- the choices were either to register them as an assistant scoutmaster or to register them with the council or to drop them. Each of these choices had potential problems. Assistant scoutmasters need to be trained and that could be difficult at school or overseas, And the College Scouter Reserve meant that they were not registered with the unit. So dropping them from the charter often resulted in just plain losing contact with them. To keep these young men involved in scouting, a new registration code was introduced And the code, if you need to know it, is 9-2-U, And that is the Unit College Scouter Reserve. Of course, youth protection training is required for somebody who is registered through the Unit College Scouter Reserve designation, but that is the only required course for the position. All of the registration application criteria and fees that apply to other leaders apply to the Unit College Scouter Reserve. I'll have a link in the post that contains this podcast to this information on scoutingorg. So, Doug, I hope that answers your question, and it's a fairly frequent one. but that's what it is. It's the Unit College Scouter Reserve, The code is 9-2-U And if you're confused about this or you need to answer questions, get on the phone with your council registrar and I'm sure they'll be able to help you figure everything out. This next question- I'm going to withhold the name and the location and things like this because, well, you'll see, alright, And it says this: the reason I'm writing you is: one, I respect your views after many years of reading your blog, and two, many times you make a point that I just wouldn't have considered. We just had a great weekend camping with the troop, but I have a scout who's been very disrespectful to me over the last several outings. I've taken the high road, as I feel a Scoutmaster should, And I've discussed this with the boys' father and the scout on how this is unacceptable and try to get at the root of why it's happening. The last incident happened in front of the whole troop. I tried once again to talk to the scout and he told me that he quit, and he didn't do it very elegantly and he swore in the process and it was very upsetting. So I tried to do everything right. but why is this bothering me so much? Am I looking to you, for you did the right thing? Well, maybe, but what I'm really looking for is one of those Clark points I never considered. if there is one. Well, I'm sorry to hear that this happened, and usually when we have problems or troubles in scouting, we can be pretty sure that a number of other people are having the same problems or troubles. You know, we only know. a lot of times, all as we know is what's happening in our troop or what's happening with a specific scout, and it seems to be a very big thing, And you know it is because it's our guys. but a lot of people are going to run into this type of problem. If you're a scoutmaster, you put yourself in the position where you're going to run into these types of problems, And I think the reason that this bothers you so much is because you're basically a good guy. You try hard. In this particular case you just could not win, And there's a hard fact behind that. We won't win with every scout. We won't keep every scout involved. Sometimes we are going to lose. Sometimes parents lose this battle with their own children too. I've had a similar incident where a scout left throwing an invective over his shoulder at me and it really hurt And it still hurts. He hasn't come back. He probably won't. I tried to talk with him but he's not interested. I've talked with his dad, Tried to smooth everything out, but I think that we lost this scout. You've really got no idea what's happening to a boy outside of what you can see in the context of scouting. I mean, really who knows what he's dealing with? The boy that walked away from my troop was having some difficulties at home and he had been for a year or two And he had other things going on in his life. I became the target of his anger and frustration. I gave him some pretty good reasons to do that. frankly, I just happened to be there at that time and he decided that I wasn't going to be a problem for him anymore. That was his decision And he's old enough to make that decision Now. maybe he'll regret it someday, maybe not, but it hurt me at the time and you know, frankly, it still bothers me. So did you do the right thing? We may never know, We don't always do the right thing. We just do what we do and we try really, really hard to get it right. We have to face that sometimes we will not get it right, and then we have to learn from it and move on. Now, the thing that you might be missing here- the secret Clark point that you're looking for- is the fact that this is bothering you. paradoxically, is the best thing about the situation. If you were just a soulless, hard-nosed kind of a man that justified every action you took and slept easily when this sort of thing happened, I'd tell you that you needed to do something other than being a scoutmaster, like, maybe, being a drill sergeant or something like that. But you aren't that guy. You care and you truly want to help. You have a soft heart and it can be hurt, and this is good. It points to things in your character that indicate you're the kind of a man we want to have as a scoutmaster. You can't win them all. when you don't, The antidote is to look at all the other scouts that are still there and to do your best to help them. So I hope that helps. We've all found ourselves in difficult situations. If you haven't found yourself in that kind of a difficult situation with a scout, you will someday, If you hang in there long enough, I guarantee it. And remember: the most important thing for us to do is to keep developing as good people and to try and get things right, And when we don't, we have to be just as patient as ourselves, as we are with the boys who don't get things right, sometimes. Music,