Scoutmaster Podcast 160

This edition of Scoutmaster Podcast is brought to you by the folks of Conahoe Creek Outfitters. They know camping and they know scouts. They are scouts And they know how to get you great gear and great prices for all your camping adventures.

So go visit them at conahoecreakcom, at conohocreakcom. And now to your Scoutmaster.

We should go back and look at what the real official list of duties is for a Scoutmaster, And this is actually hidden in the committee materials. They don't put that in the Scoutmaster handbook Because I don't think anybody would ever do the job.

It's like you know who's going to volunteer to jump in the volcano, But the crops will be great, But you're going to not be coming back. Yeah, we'll be the same afterwards, As people could tell who listened to us. Hey, some of us jump into the volcano and some of us get thrown in.

Oh well, this is podcast number 160.. Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green.

Let's take a look in the mailbag this week And here we have a message from John Mitchell, who is the committee chair of troop one in Orange County Council. He said: I love the article you referenced over on Bob White's Blather about helicopter scouters. I even put it in our weekly parents newsletter. I observed some helicopter scouters this weekend and I thought I'd share. There was another large troop camping next to us and they had an awful lot of parents with them. Their camp kitchen was in close proximity to us and I watched them over the weekend.

I never saw a single scout enter the kitchen to light a stove or heat some water or clean a dish. The parents and the Scoutmaster did everything. Our boys kind of hunkered down over their backpack stoves and heated cup of noodles or toasted, a pop tart.

It's the same everywhere, isn't it? That's the same menu: cup of noodles and pop tarts.

I'm sure our Scouts would have loved to have been all fat and happy while we did all the work, but instead they took care of their own needs a hundred percent. Near the end of the weekend our Scoutmaster and I struck up a conversation with a couple of the other troops leaders.

We told them how we did a lot of backpacking. Their leaders said that they had a hard time getting their boys interested in that type of activity and they really did wish that they could do more.

As I thought about it later, I was struck by the fact that their boys aren't interested in that type of activity because it'd be so different for them. They would have to carry their own gear and feed and take care of themselves. I was actually not surprised about their Scouts attitude. That sort of independence is a culture that needs to be deliberately woven into the personality of the truth. Lord Baden Powell was right when he said when you want a thing done, don't do it yourself is a good motto for Scoutmasters. Thanks, Clark, for the website and the podcast and everything you do for Scouting.

You're a great resource. Well, thank you, John. Thanks for the kind words and the story.

I think you know we've all encountered that type of thing before and it's interesting to see the contrast between the way troops are run. And I think you know boys get a lot out of Scouting no matter how the troop is run. They can get more when you run it the way the program goes. But it's always interesting to see those contrasts. Larry Green was in touch and Larry Green is in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with troop 888. And he said: I love what you say about pioneering legend John Thurman.

My mentor, the late Adolf Peschke, also extolled the virtues of the Japanese Mark II square lashing. Hey, if you haven't been to the blog in a while. Go take a look at the Japanese Mark II square lashing.

I mean, you know it's a pretty great lashing And if you're a not geek like me, you know it's something that you got to know. Larry Green- and no relation there, strangely enough- has a blog at scoutpioneeringatscrrcom- Scoutpioneeringatscrrcom, And you need to get over and take a look at his great pioneering resource. And thanks, Larry. Thanks for being in touch. Dave is in Santa Rosa, California, with troop 55 and pack 134.. He said this: I'm an Eagle Scout that wears many scouting hats, including district chair, camp director, assistant Scoutmaster, cub master and assistant, then leader.

I only discovered your podcast about a month ago and have listened my way through the archive up to number 140.. I find that I'm able to apply so much of what I learned by listening to your podcast. To each of the varied positions. I noticed how the changes you made to the site. It's a much cleaner look and I like it. Keep up the good work.

Well, thanks, Dave. Thanks for being in touch and thanks for the kind words. Scoutmastercgcom went through a redesign. Go over, check it out, Tell me what you think.

There's more to come and you know I'll be tweaking it and working on it probably forever, but it's in one iteration now that I'm pretty happy with. And thanks again, Dave. Chris Beaver wrote in to say I can hardly believe it's been close to a year and a half since I was chosen to be the Scoutmaster of my troop here in Madison, Wisconsin. The biggest reward has been working with a few particular boys who don't really have a father figure at home. It's been interesting to see them mature in just a short span of time. In fact, one of those boys was elected to senior patrol leader.

We have four new scouts who just crossed over from Webelos and they're an absolute joy to have at meetings. They're so enthusiastic. It's a nice change from the older kind of jaded boys who've been with the troop for several years. Even though I was a teenager, I still have a lot to learn about working with those guys, as do we all. Chris, The next stage of my wood batch ticket is to carry it out in an open house for our troop next month. I'm hoping we get to spread the word to the community about what our troop does and perhaps at the same time recruit some new scouts.

Well, keep carrying on. I always enjoy the posts and the podcasts.

Thanks so much, Chris, and thanks for being in touch. Now let's listen to this. What's time again to talk to our friends at ConahoeCreekcom.

How are you doing, Bill? Doing great, Clark. That's Bill Fleming on the phone with me there. We've been talking about the knife sale at ConahoeCreekcom. Every day this month there's a new knife on sale.

It will be featured at 10% off and then it will be on sale for the remainder of the month. Plus, you can add a special coupon code just for listeners to scoutmastercgcom. CG113 is the coupon code That gives you an additional 5% off for 15% off on some really great knives.

The one I'm looking at right now, Bill, is from Victorinox. I think everybody knows Victorinox, but tell us a little bit about that brand.

Well, that is the Swiss Army brand and that ought to ring a bell with everyone. This particular knife that you're talking about is the Huntsman, and they have a Boy Scout model. It has a variety of tools that come in such a nice little package. This one is the one that I carry.

You know, one of my favorite features on this is that saw. That saw will cut things that you would not think you would be able to cut with a knife saw like that. It's unbelievable what those little saws will do and they never seem to get dull. No, mine's been around for years and still works great. This one has the saw of the scissors, wire stripper, the small and large blades, the can opener, a hook. It's got the tweezers, It's got the toothpick.

It's kind of the full boat on a Swiss Army knife, without getting too ridiculous. This one's got the red handles. It has the Boy Scout emblem. You've got another one on there called the Boy Scout Climber II and it's got yellow handles.

You know what I would do with this? If your scout has lost more than one knife, this is the one to have, because he's going to have a hard time misplacing this one. Yeah, those bright yellow handles stand out.

So if you drop the knife, it's easy to find and certainly has all the tools that you need as well. The deal on these is that for the month of February at ConahoeCreekcom there'll be a new knife that will go on sale every day. It will be reduced by 10% Once it goes on sale. It'll stay on sale all the way through the month of February and you can use your coupon code for listeners to the Scoutmaster Podcast CG113, and that gets you an extra 5%.

So you'll get 15% off on any knife. That's part of the sale this month at ConahoeCreekcom. Thanks Bill, Thank you Clark, and we'll see you at the creek.

Here's a reminder that the next Scout Circle- you can find out all about it at scoutsercleorg- is going to be Sunday, March 10th, from 9 to 10 pm Eastern Standard Time. Our guest will be long-serving troop committee chair Frank Maynard, who's blogs at Bob White Blather. He'll be there to talk to us about troop committee issues.

So that is something that you'll definitely want to tune in to see. Once again, scoutsercleorg. That'll be Sunday, March 10th, between 9 and 10 pm Eastern Standard Time.

In this podcast we have our February Scoutmaster Panel discussion. So, without further ado, let's get started, shall we?

It's time for another Scoutmaster Panel discussion. Well, it's time for another Scoutmaster Panel discussion, and joining us are the usual suspects. Larry Geiger is down in Vera, Florida.

How are you doing, Larry Hey Clark? Good. And Tom Gillard is in Tolahoma, Tennessee.

Hey, Tom Hey Clark, How are you? And Walter Underwood is out there in Palo Alto, California. Good evening, Walter Howdy.

We have snow on the mountains and it's pleasant here in the valley. You need that snow. Yeah, Larry, how much snow down there. It was 27 this past weekend.

So our guys- seven guys- are going to get Polar Bear Awards. Our definition is below 32.. Until a snow camping trip- recent snow camping trip- the coldest night I ever spent camping was actually my Weeblows night with Troop 26 in Baton Rouge, and it got down to 18 degrees. We've been out on a winter campery trip and it was down to minus five. I got it beat Minus 10.. Ah, That is cold.

That is cold. I've only been down to zero, but that was cold enough. You've got to be ready for those.

So Larry's definition of Polar Bear is 32.. Yeah, It's 32 outside my window right now. I'd get a Polar Bear patch every time I walked outside the past week or two- Me too, I know.

So you got to sleep in it, Clark. Oh well, I keep the window open. 32 is where it's, just getting comfortable for my sleep, Right. Yeah, We're going to answer a couple of email questions tonight, And the first one is from a parent whose son has just been elected to be a patrol leader, and this is what he had to say: fellas, My son has started attending patrol leader councils and I've been trying to educate myself on the patrol method since I noticed that the patrol leader council meetings were pretty poorly attended. The true path is about 46 boys. Whenever one becomes first class, he becomes eligible to run for senior patrol leader.

If he's elected senior patrol leader, he's moved to our senior patrol, consisting of five older boys. All the boys in our senior patrol have positions of leadership that they maintain across elections, including the assistant senior patrol leader.

Now, after reading your articles, I asked our Scoutmaster about this and told him that this did not seem to be the right arrangement. He answered that that's how everybody does it and that these boys need these positions for rank advancement and if they didn't have these positions they would quit.

And his question is: is this really common? Well, the first thing: I mean it stands out If every six months he's got a new senior patrol leader and he's got 46 scouts and there's only five older guys, I'm still curious. Anyway, the numbers don't sound right to me.

The second thing is that clearly he's running things. He's just assigning them positions and then the positions of leadership that they maintain across elections. Elections don't have anything to do with leadership positions. They're appointed.

So every time a new SPL comes in he's appointing the same guys to the same position. Whose idea was that? I mean, that's not the boys' idea, because that's not how they would do it. We had some disagreement back and forth about senior patrol and whether the SPL and SPL is in a patrol, and I finally actually found in the senior patrol leader's handbook, which again is a wonderful book, that the SPL and the SPL are not in a patrol. Everybody else is in a patrol. But once you're not an ASPL or not an SPL, then hey, you're in a patrol.

Yeah Well, the way I've done that in the past is that the senior patrol leader is not really in a patrol, though he eats with a patrol, but the ASPL is the patrol leader. He's the ASPL but he's also the patrol leader for the guys that are officers in the troop and that's usually a kind of a senior patrol thing.

Senior patrol leader: he may be directing what's going on, but the fallback position is he's going to eat with his old patrol, the patrol that he came out of most of the time, Because, like you said, in theory there's only two or three scouts that are in the senior patrol, so that doesn't really make a good number. So they just fall back to doing whatever.

You know pretty much whoever they want to eat with. Usually it's their old patrol.

When I had 80 scouts and we were camping 50 to 60 every month, I had a full patrol. I had three or four or five instructors, quartermaster scribe, one or two other chaplains, aid, So those guys were all in a patrol and they were eight, nine, ten guys out of 55. They weren't the senior patrol. We didn't call it that. They were a patrol and usually they're the guys that wanted to hang out together. Anyway, Most of them were 14 and above and the other patrols were younger and we let the guys form their own patrols with whoever they wanted to.

As I've said in the past one year, they were the ten patrol and their flag was a stick with a number 10 can upside down stapled to it. They never would tell me if it was the 10 T-E-N or the T-I-N, The 10..

So was it a number 10 patrol or a T-I-N? 10 can't? Patrol Works both ways. We ain't telling you, Mr Geiger, Works both ways. If we look at the book- either the Scoutmasters Handbook or the Senior Patrol Leaders Handbook- everybody in the troop is in patrols. They elect a patrol leader for each patrol.

Everybody in the troop elects a senior patrol leader. The senior patrol leader appoints the other officers that he needs to get the job done. That may be an assistant senior patrol leader if it's merited, A quartermaster, a scribe, a librarian, a historian, whatever. And the practice of putting all of those officers into one patrol is not what you would call strictly wrong, and some people do that and they get along just fine. And Larry described the situation where that works. Reserving leadership positions for older boys- that's another part of this question- is if reserving the leadership positions only for those older boys, because if they didn't have them they wouldn't be able to advance or they might quit- I just don't see that as being cricket.

Yeah, I totally agree that anybody that's first class is eligible to be to be one of those positions, and the SPL should take that into account. Nobody has a permanent position. The first class requirement is not a BSA requirement. That can be one that the troop adopts, but any boy of any rank can actually have any one of those positions. Yes, that's true, but usually the scouts that are asking for positions are the ones that have acquired first class, unless you just have a bunch of guys below first class. They're the ones Usually you're working on Star Life.

You want a position? You go tell the SPL: I want to be scribe or something, and it's kind of usually in a troop that's fairly large and has a bunch of guys. Usually a tenor foot scout's not asking to be ASPL usually, but there's nothing wrong with that. A second class scout can be scribe or whatever. You could have somebody joined when they're 13 and they're coming up through the ranks and they're plenty. They're the best person for that job.

I've had that Right. And then the younger scouts can be some of these positions within the patrol so they can start getting experience. For when they do turn first class and actually need to step out to the troop side of things, Yeah, usually they're quarter master, assistant, patrol leader or patrol leader in the patrol. That's where you commonly find like a second class scout might be a patrol leader or system patroller.

I think a lot of you know. As we can see, there's a lot of variation in this whole senior patrol and whatever There's.

You know there's plenty of ways to do it and I don't think it's a huge deal. But there should not be some permanent leadership group. There's a lot of things that indicate that maybe the Scoutmaster is running the troop a little bit more than he ought to be If the patrol leaders council meetings aren't being, if they're poorly attended. Boys don't normally want to spend a whole lot of time doing something that they don't either like or that actually produces no results.

I've seen this pretty often: the idea of kind of preserving those leadership positions for, you know, a specific group of older guys. I think a lot of times adults don't think that boys can make these decisions and that if they were to allow them to do so, the things would start to fall apart. But I know that within our experience we're pretty sure that that's not true.

And another thing you emphasize, Clark, is that advancement doesn't drive the program. The program drives advance.

You know, we're not here to advance, We're here to do the program and advancement really flows from doing that. And so you do the program and if they get positions and they advance, then that's part of their doing the program as it should be done.

We tend to turn those things on their head and we think that we need to adjust things so that advancement happens, rather than just doing scouting and letting advancement happen that way. Well, it's a cart before the horse thing, right? It's definitely a method towards character, citizenship and fitness.

So here you are. You've gotten involved with the troop and you've come up against something that like this situation where you find that you know it's not really in line with what your understanding of the program is.

You study it a little bit and you find that, wow, I think we're kind of out of whack here and that the troop has gotten off course. How do we get it back on course?

If I'm the parent of a scout or an assistant Scoutmaster and I see that there are problems like this, what actions do I take to help the troop get back on course? I guess it just depends on the intimacy of the person.

How unchanging is he going to be? This is a nice place if you've got a good commissioner to come in and say: you guys have a great troop.

Here's some things about the scouted program we can clean up. He comes in as somebody that knows about scouting but is not in the middle of any politics, hopefully.

Would anybody recommend that it's a good idea just to come in with a complete challenge and say: I think you're wrong and you need to change this. If the Scoutmaster is wrong, if he's not doing youth protection, if he's not too deep leadership, if he's not, whatever. Yet that's when you bring down the hammer. In this case, he's got 46 boys, he's got a PLC. That's a little out of whack.

The question is is how far a field is he? In a case like this, some subtlety is called for.

We would all agree, I think, that if it was an issue of youth protection or somehow there were other actions that were impinging on the safety of the scouts, Or he redefined first class rank or whatever, That would be something that you would challenge, Blighten problems. I don't think any of us would recommend that. It would be a good idea to show up and tell the Scoutmaster what he's doing wrong. I'd come in and say: here's another right way to do it. Whether it's wrong or not doesn't matter if you get it changed. Adjustments, improvements.

I talk to the boys. I wouldn't go around the Scoutmaster necessarily, but once we're talking about it I would say: here's how the troops do it.

Here's what it says in the book. What do you think? Let's say that you're in that situation. You've suggested some ideas in the way that Walter says it. You keep getting pushed back and you don't get a response.

Where do you go and what do you do? At that point? There may not be a lot you can do. You may have to just move to another troop, And that's a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

Yes, My advice to people usually if they have a very sharp disagreement with the way things are happening, is not to try by might or mean, you know, change things around to a way they want to see it, even if that is more consistent with the program as they read it, But to find somebody who gets the way that they want to see it and go and be part of that troop and also, maybe other stuff is working well in the troop, You know. So, yes, this seems a little off course, but do the kind of go across the eight methods, see what's going on.

If there's kind of it's kind of weak across the board, Well then there's a lot of stuff. The other email I receive that I thought would be interesting to talk about was this one: Our Scoutmaster of over 12 years has recently announced he plans to retire from the troop.

He's leaving a great legacy behind with a large and healthy troop and we have several great current active of all adults that I hope will step up and provide some choices for our new Scoutmaster. Do you know any good resources or do you have any ideas about the Scoutmaster selection process for an existing troop? Larry, you've been through that process several times.

Yeah well, it's basically up up to the head of the institution and the chartered organization rep to choose a Scoutmaster. They're in charge of leadership. It should be done in conjunction with the committee chairman. The best thing is to see who's interested and the committee chair and the COR sit down and talk to them and see if they can figure out a way to get a good guy.

But you know, I've always communicated with my committee chairman and my COR and I've usually had a pretty good one. When I'm coming and going. You guys are in charge. This is your thing, not my thing. There is a thing in scouting about. You can't go till you pick your successor.

I really think that the guy leaving should just go. The existing people and the leadership should then take up their responsibility and decide. I've felt that way too, not that I'm getting ready to go yet, but if the when the day comes that I do, don't pick, don't get into it, Don't pick your successor. That, like you said, that's the charter rep guy. That's their thing. We've been pretty lucky.

One of the things that we do is just people are in it for about three years or so. You know we don't have somebody stick around for a long time. Often the Scoutmaster is going on to be an ASM, working with the venture patrol and high-adventure stuff, because that's a nice progress, along with their son. What I'm hearing is is that if you have a Scoutmaster, especially someone who's served- this particular one served for about 12 years or over 12 years. The email says he's getting ready to retire. There are some possible candidates and the people who should be making that decision are the troop committee chairman and the chartered organization representative- They're the ones who are charged with that responsibility- And the head of the institution.

If that person is actively involved, I would say, because somebody's been doing it for quite a while, we should go back and look at what the real official list of duties is for a Scoutmaster, And this is actually hidden in the troop committee materials. Don't put that in the Scoutmaster handbook because I don't think anybody would ever do the job.

It's like you know who's going to volunteer to jump in the volcano. The crops will be great, But you're going to not be coming back. Unfortunately, It won't be the same afterwards as people could tell who listened to us. But take a look at what. Which ones of the things on that list make sense for the people you have And you maybe shuffle on stuff around. Maybe this guy's been doing stuff and it's kind of settled into the Scoutmaster job, But really that should be an outings chair or should be somebody else.

Yes, Take a look at re-juggling things a little bit. You're right, Because when we first got started- and it was me and my wife and maybe one other person and we had the kids and we had a couple of adults, but we didn't have a full committee and yeah, I was doing some extra stuff. But boy, it felt good when we had somebody and said, oh, you can do money.

Well, how about being the treasurer And start handing this stuff off to people and never touch it again? Is what you try for? We don't have a treasurer right now.

Well, I'm not going to do it. I'm sorry, but I don't want the money.

So I think that's good advice from the both of you- that when you have somebody in that position who's been serving a long time, you might want to reset some expectations. A Scoutmaster that's been around for 10 or more years is going to have their way of doing things and while that might work, while they are there, they could leave a pretty big hole behind. It'll be an old shoe for somebody who walks into the job. Yeah, That shoe is not going to fit Head down to Tom McCann and get a new pair. Yep, Thank you, Somebody got Tom McCann. I figured it was a shoe store, but I don't know what it is.

Yeah, We had one of those down on government. Even Tom is not Okay.

So with both of these questions, I think what we've discovered is the importance of the different roles that are involved with having a troop. While whoever is the chartered organization representative may not be called on on a weekly basis or a monthly basis, they have a very important role in what the troop does and defining what that's going to be and in selecting leaders, as does the committee, and again, this isn't something that they're doing on a weekly or a monthly basis, so it may take a little catching up and a little bit of training, familiarizing yourself with the different resources, and I'll make sure to link to the ones that we've mentioned here in the post that contains this podcast.

Well, it's exactly the same as with the boys. If you run the troop meetings, if you take over, then eventually they're just going to get bored and wander off. But the same thing is true of the adults.

If you give them a position and then they never do anything, if they're ready to go, but somebody else is always just running around behind them, even something like COR that doesn't isn't as active. If they are engaged and they actually have the responsibility to work with the committee chair to make that decision, even though it's not every month, they're going to actually be more involved in their position if they're actually being responsible for something. It works the same with the committee as it does with the scouts. It's just the shared responsibility of running this whole thing that we've got going, the scouting program. That was my thought too, that the other aspect of this is that it's a team. You've got ASM, Scoutmaster Committee.

You've got a bunch of people- parents, people pick people for their strengths and put together a group that can do the job because it's fun doing stuff you're good at. So make sure that you've got at least come kind of match with what you like to do and are good at and the job Absolutely. I tell everybody- and I've said this before- but me, and when I'm Scout, Master, me and the committee chair do everything, we do everything in the troop.

We want to help, we want you to help where you want to help and if we've got everything covered except treasure, one of us will be the treasure. But we're not going to tell you not to be the advancement person because we need a chairman. If that's what you want to do, do that and everything will go much better. If you're doing that, even if we're doing treasure, then if we try to make you do something that you don't want to do, is after about a year, year and a half, you just got people all around you and over all kind of stuff. I've gone from committees of three or four to 15 in a room every month, 15 to 18, and everybody's got something they're doing. However big it gets, all the jobs get smaller.

Hard to say it better than that. Well, thanks once again, fellas for joining us. Larry, keep warm down there.

You know 32, man, that's got to be brutal. 75 thanks, Larry. Goodnight Clark. Tom, thanks very much for joining us again. It's been a pleasure. Clark and Walter, keep that snow coming down out there, would you- you bet the sun is set on the snow-covered mountains here- and stay out of the volcano.

Yeah