Scoutmaster Podcast 165

This edition of Scout National Podcast is brought to you by the folks at 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. That's C-O-N-O-H-O-Creakcom.

And now to your Scoutmaster. We interrupt this podcast to bring you this announcement from the Scoutmaster: CG Marriott Badge News Desk. The requirement to cooking Marriott Badge 1C has been revised. To read: Wild Game will be used in this requirement, Caught using methods shown in the updated version of the Wilderness Survival Marriott Badge, Or maybe picked up off the road in accordance with local laws. Note that in Tennessee this requirement must be completed in accordance with the 1999 Roadkill Bill. In Pennsylvania, scouts must prepare the meal using Groundhog.

Now back to your regularly scheduled podcast. Happy April 1st everyone. Hey, this is podcast number 165.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clark Greene.

Hey, let's take a look in the mailbag here, shall we?

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clark Greene.

Hey, let's take a look in the mailbag here, shall we? We heard from Rockwell, Texas, from one of the adult volunteers with PAC 1062. And they wrote in to say I enjoyed the article you posted last week titled What I Wish Every Scout Parent Understood. A couple of years back I read a quote from Baden Powell on the cover of an Eagle Court of Honor program.

That stuck with me And I think it hit on what you're talking about. I had never seen it before but it hit me hard because I've always found it a challenge to get boys to do scouting stuff on their own initiative. Baden Powell said in scouting, a boy is encouraged to educate himself instead of being instructed. Thanks for all you're doing and keep up the good work.

Well, thanks for being in touch and really do appreciate it. In last week's podcast we had an email response and that turned into a post and that post has been very popular And it is titled What I Wish Every Scout Parent Understood. Do go take a look at it over on scoutmastercgcom if you haven't already seen it. Marcy from Vancouver, Washington, Troop 545.. Hello, Vancouver Said. I recently found your blog and I found it very helpful and useful.

Do you allow your articles to be reprinted, with credit given to you as the author? Certainly do, Marcy, And I appreciate you being in touch and I appreciate asking permission, But anyone can reprint any of the articles or any of the materials they find on scoutmastercgcom. Use them as you see fit to promote the, to promote the mission of scouts. And, yes, if you can attribute it to me, I would really really appreciate it. Dutch wrote in to say I'm really using the stuff at scoutmastercgcom And I have provided the link to it to everyone in my district. Keep up the great informative work.

I attended the advancement coordinator training at Seabase in January. We saw the advancement videos that you did. We really appreciated them. Hope you have a great Easter. Thank you for all you do for scouting.

Well, thank you, Dutch. Thanks for being in touch. I'm glad you enjoyed the advancement videos. They're on the website and I'll link to them in the post that contains this podcast In San Diego, California, PAC 650,. Glenn wrote in to say: Wow, mostly I have time to download your podcast for a wonderful trip to work, but not a lot of time to produce websites. Scoutmastercgcom is excellent.

Thank you for your hard work. By the way, Conahoe Creek has great customer service and very good products.

Well, thanks so much, Glenn. I'm glad you got in touch and I'm glad you're finding the website useful. And, yeah, our pals at Conahoe Creek, our sponsors, the sponsors of the podcast. They do really have great customer service.

And there you go, an unsolicited endorsement Heard from Chris Dawart. He said: Hey, Scoutmaster Clark, just saw you on LinkedIn, Really enjoy the podcast and you've really helped me to reboot our troop- against what the naysayers told me in my third year now of the journey and just about able to sit back at troop meetings and watch the scouts now.

Well, you know, Curtis, keep it up, Keep it up, It's going to work. So, coming up in a couple of weeks we have the next scout circle, and scout circle is a live web presentation. It'll happen on April 14th between the hours of nine and 10 pm Eastern daylight time, And our guest this time is going to be Kevin Callan, and Kevin is a canoe guide and author up in Canada And he's been on the podcast before and it'll be great fun.

So come and listen to Kevin and you'll be able to ask questions right there live as part of the scout circle presentation. Go to scoutcircleorg to check it out, Get the details and remember to put it on your calendar. April 14th, nine to 10 pm Eastern daylight time.

Hey, in the rest of this podcast we have what I hope will become a new monthly feature, as long as I can keep it in my mind and keep scheduled with my buddy out there in Colorado, Arlen Ward. Arlen was our guest at a Scoutmaster panel discussion a few months ago. His question to the Scoutmaster panel was advice about starting a scout troop, and we couldn't talk him out of it, apparently, because he went ahead and did it.

So I thought it would be very interesting just to follow the progress of a brand new scout troop all the way from the idea through the implementation, and we'll see what happens within the first few months, And I've dubbed it the Colorado experiment. So we're going to talk to Arlen here in a minute and that's going to take up the rest of the podcast.

So let's get started, shall we? And now our next episode of the Colorado experiment.

Joining me is Arlen Ward, and Arlen is a brand new Scoutmaster. How you doing, Arlen? I'm doing great. And Arlen, you're out in Thornton, Colorado.

Did I get that right? Yes, Yeah, The northern side of Denver were about 20 minutes north of downtown Denver, And we're talking today because we're going to do our best to get together once a month and track a project that you've got going.

That, I think, will be of interest to everybody listening, because Arlen has decided that he's going to jump into the volcano, so to speak. Yes, And become a Scoutmaster. And not only that, he is starting a new troop.

So tell me a little bit about the genesis of this. What got you to this point?

You know we didn't set out to start a troop. There's a number of us that have been working with the Cub Scout pack that have scouts all the same age and as they started their weeblows journey, we started visiting other troops and whatnot. And the more we visited other places, the more it became evident that our area was kind of right for another option. Not that all the troops in our area are bad or anything like that, that, just you know.

Some of them are quite large troops, Some of them, you know they all have a very distinct personality, but there was definitely a need for something different, another option. So you say a number of people. Give me an idea of how many people we're talking about. Out of my son's weeblows, den, and the other weeblows den- because there's two at that same age, there were four or five parents that had been Cub Scout leaders and either den leaders or Cub masters or assistant Cub masters.

So that's kind of where it started was a conversation amongst the four or five of us. What were your first steps?

How do you even begin here? The first thing I did was start pulling up information on the internet to see what you know other people's experience had been with this and reading a bunch of things.

You know different blogs that people had started. You know, looking at what the BSA says about starting a troop, you know they have they have like a flowchart list of the way officially to go about it.

So there was a lot of learning involved there and I was really curious, you know, both in listening to your podcast and the other people I know on the internet through Google Plus, and some of them had started troops and whatnot. So one of the first things I did was have a Google Hangout where I just posed the question: if you're going to start a troop from scratch- those of you that have done it- what would you do differently?

What did you do right? And then, of course, I talked to you guys in your Scoutmaster panel a few months back and got: We couldn't talk you out of it, I guess.

No, no, actually, you know, the funny thing is, the longer I talk to you guys, the more exciting it sounded, you know, because it really is something that you can turn to the boys and say: look, this is your troop, something that's truly yours, as opposed to conforming to something that had already existed. So here's your chance to really set the tone. You had a group of interested people. It looked like you had a pretty good shot at having kind of that critical mass of interest from both adults who were interested and scouts.

What's the next step? Well then I started talking to our charter organization that chartered the Cub Scout pack.

Who's the institutional head for that? His son had actually dropped out of Scouting about a year and a half ago. It crossed over to Boy Scouts. It had been in about a year, maybe a year and a half, and it had just kind of fallen to the wayside.

He wasn't really engaged, He wasn't that interested in it, And so I was talking to him and said: you know I had the possibility we could do this. Would you want to start up a Boy Scout troop?

And the more we talked about it, the more he was interested, and then he asked me to go talk to his son about it. For Scouts- we actually talked about this to other than the group of Webelos was boys that had dropped out of Scouting- Kind of a really great response from them as well.

When did you start talking to your district or council folks? You know I mentioned it in passing to our district director one day and then, like two days later, people were talking to me like it was a done deal. My district executive's been extremely helpful in the whole process.

Anything that we've needed to get this off the ground they've been willing to do So did you sense at any time that you were going to them to ask permission to do this? Or you know that there was going to be any kind of limitations put on you? No, not at all.

I think when we first started talking to the district executive about it from the very beginning it was more of. You know how do we help you get this started.

You know it wasn't like they were trying to take it over and direct how things were going to happen. You know it was more answering questions for us around.

You know what things do we need to get done in order to have a troop other than the charter? How do we find a location?

How do we do this? Most district executives have had some experience with getting units off the ground at some level.

Sure, Have you gotten any kind of feedback from any other scouts in the community or the other troops or anything? The response has been mixed.

You know some people that are in units that aren't in our district or further away have been extremely helpful. Scoutmaster, he says, come down and see our program. He says I'm really rather proud of it.

I think it's a well-run, boy-led program. You know we've got 60 to 70 scouts. Come down to a troop meeting and come check it out and we'll talk you through, kind of, how we do things and you can incorporate what you'd like out of that, which was great. We've got a ton of information out of that. Closer to home, there's been a little bit more skepticism.

I guess Why do you want to start a troop? That seems an awful lot of work, you know, kind of. I don't know if that's more perceiving it as more competition or whatnot, but it's not like we're building one next door to an existing troop.

I mean, nobody was outright hostile or anything like that, You know, it was just more. Are you sure you want to do that kind of question.

Well, the reason I asked the question- supposing that somebody is listening- who's had this thought- and they've wondered if they're going to encounter a whole lot of drag, either from officialdom in the district and the council, or whether they're going to get resistance from other units who would see it as competitive with them. Those concerns really didn't play out in your case. No, not really. I can't really speak to what's being said behind the scenes.

I guess From the professional standpoint I don't think they could be any more excited about starting a new unit, you know, because it really is what helps grow scouting in our area, for sure, And the other units I think will. When they realize that this is just another option, not really a replacement for what they've got going on, I think they'll be all right. Securing a chartering organization is always a bit of a trick and it's one of the hurdles that everybody needs to go through when they're starting a new unit. Talk a little bit about that process. You said that you went to the chartered organization head and they were interested.

First of all, what is your chartering organization? Well, we had to find a charter organization for the PAC within the last year, and so we started a look around for a charter organization and the Cubmaster previous to me had offered his company.

So instead of being a civic organization or a church or anything like that, our PAC is actually chartered by a private company and he was looking for a way to get back involved. He said: you know, you can be the charter organization rep for the PAC and all of that, and a couple months into it we started the conversation about the troop and he was really enamored with the idea of being able to get his son back involved. I don't know if people understand that it's actually charter a unit through any kind of corporation or you know. It can be a business, it can be a community corporation, it can be a religious institution.

That's an interesting aspect to the conversation, You know- and that was conversations we had when we were chasing them down for the PAC with our professional staff- was: well, what kind of who can be a charter organization? And the answer really was: I mean, any business, any public organization.

This private company worked out really well as far as a charter. Do you get a meeting place from them? We don't, actually, And that was kind of the next step. After that was okay.

Well, now we have a charter organization and we have kind of critical mass for adults and interested scouts. Where are we going to meet, As the stars have aligned in a lot of these different things that we've done. There's a church in our area that is building a brand-new building, and the other was that they wanted to become more connected with the community. It also happens to be the church of the charter organization institutional head.

He's kind of got both roles in all of this, So he had approached them about locating our meetings at their church. We just happened to be the very first group of anybody that had asked to use their building because it wasn't done yet, And so they didn't have any policies or approval processes in place, And so we're kind of helping them explore how that works.

Right, Well, that's like everything is new. That's pretty Everything.

Yeah, We're making it up as we go, really. And so do you have a unit number?

Now We do have a unit number. And what is it? We are a troop 17..

17?, 17,, yeah, Now, why 17?? Well, Yeah, it's funny.

We had probably more discussions about anything else amongst the adults of what we were trying to do, because they don't have a set numbering scheme in our council. Some places they do. Different districts have a certain suffix or something, a prefix. Sometimes the units that are Boy Scout units end in zero, Cub Scout units end in five or something. And all of these things I found out from other people asking around about how to.

How do you number a Boy Scout troop? But in our council it's an Excel spreadsheet of numbers that are assigned, numbers that are still available, And I had emailed our district executive and said: here's our top three numbers that we would be interested in. And they were numbers that I couldn't find any reference to in our council Doing Google searches for troop numbers and stuff like that. But it turned out that all of them were already taken.

And so one day when I was down at the Scout office, we just kind of went through it and looked at it And I kind of like the idea of having a lower number, So we went with the last two-digit number that they had available in our council. Well, there you go.

So I was like you know what 17 works, It's fine. So, and you know, I think it's neat to have kind of a low number to it. As my district executive said he goes.

You know that's going to kind of imply that your troop's been around for a while And I said that's certainly not by mistake. What about finances and equipment and things like that?

Where are you standing on that right now? That's kind of where we're at. Is both of those things We've been looking at- necessary equipment versus stuff that the Scouts would have.

We just got through an informational meeting a week ago with interest at Scouts And this is kind of the interesting part of this is that originally this was to be set up as a Boy Scout troop about the time that our suns crossed over, which is actually next February, And then in talking to people they're like, yeah, you probably want to have that together and up and running by September. And I think that might have even come out of the Scoutmaster panel when I was talking with you guys.

And then it keeps moving earlier and earlier when we were going to kick off and actually start doing activities. Because the more families we talked to that had either left Scouting or had suns that were no longer interested in Scouting and explained what we wanted to do, the more we hit on something that seemed to really resonate with a lot of the Scouts. I mean their parents are obviously very excited. If you can talk their kids into continuous Scouting, they're 100% behind it. But it was sitting down with the Scouts where I really found that it resonates with them when you say, look, we're looking to start a troop where you guys run it and you guys set the culture and you set the tone of what we're going to be doing. We're not going to be bringing any extra baggage of the way things had been done in the past and we're really committed to you guys taking ownership of this and every one of them, from the 16-year-olds to even a couple of the 16-year-olds that we talked to, it really resonates with them.

I had parents that were shocked. That said, you know, I am shocked that my son is even entertaining this idea of helping you guys out. I mean especially have a 16-year-old life scout that has pretty much checked out of the program because dad's, like I, really would like him to finish a Siegel.

Let me ask you this: I know how you found one of these guys through your chartering organization. How'd you find the other ones?

Well, some of them are parents that I knew as the Cub Master as their sons had crossed over over the last three or four years. So I knew that they had moved on to Boy Scouts and we all lived kind of in the same neighborhood and whatnot.

And so some of them would talk to you and they said, yeah, our son isn't really into Scouts anymore, So would they be interested in helping start the new troop? What didn't find what they were looking for before? Maybe we could find something now. Some of them were involved in other troops and I explained to them- I'm not looking to poach people from an existing troop. If you're perfectly happy with where you're at, I'm just explaining what we've got going on and you can.

I didn't want them to feel like we were leaving people out along the way and we had a number of people saying that was great. The big view is, I'd rather that they would be in Scouting than they'd be in my troop, kind of thing.

So the more of these families we talked to on a one-on-one basis, the more we realized that there was a need now for something like this. The longer that we waited, the more that these guys weren't going to be in Scouting.

When you talk to these guys, was there any common thread about why they had kind of lost interest? This is my words and not theirs, but it boiled down to the fact that they were being tasked with running somebody else's program.

They were given a set of activities to execute and that was their role was to kind of execute somebody else's plan, And I mean I'm sure that you, as well as most everybody that listens to your podcast, knows that that kills motivation pretty quickly. What it sounds like, Arlan, is they were being handed a calendar and that they were just kind of going through the motions and it wasn't working for them. That's my impression. I have to put the caveat out there that I wasn't involved in this and this is all that I'm hearing from the boys perspective, But their impression was that they were given a calendar of activities that they were expected to make happen.

What's the difference between that and what you're interested in doing? What I kept repeating to them- that the BSA looks at why boys stick with scouting- is it completely boils down to: I like doing stuff with my friends.

The only restriction we have on the stuff is what the Guide to Safe Scouting says and the things that you guys are willing to put the work in to be prepared for. I said other than that we can do all sorts of stuff And I said the friends. Part of that is it makes sense to me that you guys would want to hang out with the people that you like to hang out with, and you guys, better than anybody else, can decide what those groups are. Some of the scouts that have been in scouting for a while.

I just looked at them and said, look, if it was up to you to pick patrols, how would you do it? If it was up to you to pick the leadership, how would you do it?

I think that's what happened in a lot of these cases is just within that first year they get disinterested. They're not as engaged- It's not the promise of what we've kept telling in Weeblows- going to Boy Scouts, you get to do all this and you get to do this and when it's not materializing they lose interest.

And there's other things to take its place rather quickly when you're in middle school, I will say that there are certainly troops out there who provide a very youth-centered, youth-led experience. I think they're more the exception than the rule.

Everything is in place right now and you're looking at your first meeting soon, correct? We were talking kind of one-on-one with different families and whatnot and saying: hey, we're looking to get this started.

A few others heard about it from some other people and so they were calling with questions and whatnot. So we decided it would be best if we just had an informational meeting and not really a true troop meeting, just a chance to get together and explain what the vision for what we were trying to do was: get the boys in a room together, point them in the right direction and have the committee chair answer some questions for the parents.

So we had an informational meeting. It wasn't a lot of me or even the committee chair talking up front, it was about 5 minutes of hey, this is what we're trying to do. It's good to see you. I'm glad that you're here. If you're a parent, go over there, talk to the committee chair. He'll answer whatever questions you got.

And then I went and talked to the scouts and we kind of gathered around a table and said: look okay, what sort of things you want to do, boiled it down to doing stuff with your friends. You know, if you can look around here and say I've got some friends here, that's great.

If you don't, go talk to a couple and see if they want to help us out with this and I said in the second part of that is the doing stuff, and we got to figure out what stuff we want to do and when they were throwing out ideas, after about 3 or 4 minutes of this I went over and grabbed some paper and said: start writing some of these down. And I've got a fantastic list now that's 3 pages long, of things that these guys want to do, and looking through them, themes for different campouts, some of them are different activities and there isn't a single one of them on that list that I could look at and say we aren't allowed to do that. Every one of them is something that definitely falls inside the purview of scouting.

So it'll be fun, it's going to be a blast. It sounds that way.

So we're going to do our best to try and check back in with you periodically. We're going to aim at once a month.

So let me ask two questions that we'll try and repeat every time. So thus far, is there anything that you would have done differently? Not really. The biggest challenges that we've had up to this point are the fact that we're going to meet, as a troop isn't ready for us yet and probably won't be for another month.

So we're kind of scrambling around. We really want to get started with stuff with these guys and so right now, punting as far as location goes, we're just starting into the conversations around equipment wise, I mean looking at the kinds of things that these guys want to do.

But the biggest challenge we have right now is where do we get together to prepare for those outings? Out of the experience up to this point, what would you say to somebody who was considering this might be a good idea?

You know, when I started asking around about this things from the Scoutmaster CG site that I came across, you know you've got to start with a clear vision, and the clear vision is: we want something that the scouts can take ownership of and run with it, and we're enabling and we're working as mentors more than we are administrators or gatekeepers of any sort. If there's a group of you, you all kind of got to have that shared vision and understand together that this is what we want to do, because the boys, they understand that vision. You explain to them what you're trying to do. The words that's awesome came up more than they're pretty intuitive about awesomeness. The buy-in that I got from the beginning really was surprising to me, and it was purely out of explaining.

You know, I don't want to run this troop. I want you guys to run this troop.

You know, and in talking to the parents it was: I'm not in this to make the Norman Rockwell paintings. I'm in this to give these guys the benefits from scouting that I feel that I got, which was understanding how to work with a group of people, how to approach problems in a systematic manner. Those are the things that I got out of scouting that paid dividends later in life, and I just want that for not only my kids but the rest of them too. Scouting needs to be more than just I show up to an outdoor activity that somebody else planned. Yeah, that's a pretty succinct way of putting it. That's good advice.

So thanks, Arlen, I really appreciate it. We'll look forward to hearing from you again soon. Thanks, Clark.

I hope none of these turn out to be, you know, the dismal failure of this brand mantra. Well, if you're not failing every once in a while, you're not doing anything. Sure, There will be challenges along the way, and I'm sure there will be challenges, as I.

When I wrote about it the first time, it was, you know kind of the delusional beginning that we have this. You know we're often running and we're we're running headlong into the volcano and it won't be tell later that we realize the consequences of that, but it should be fun.