Scoutmaster Podcast 184

And now it's the old Scoutmaster. You know I have some special skills that I use when we're out camping. For instance, I can cut a piece of firewood in half just by looking at it. It really is true, I saw it with my own eyes. Oh my,

Hey, this is podcast number 184.. Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's see, Let's catch up with the mailbag here.

When Davis wrote in to say I wanted to let you know I really enjoyed your rebroadcast podcast on Bill Hillcourt- I guess that was a couple back. Incidentally, I have one of the two for signatures also, as it was before he Americanized his name.

So, hey, you know Bill Hillcourt scouting hero. Make sure you go back and listen to the story of the boy from our hoose.

And when? Davis, by the way, is the author of a great scouting history book you should check out, called Men of Schiff, And Schiff was a scout camp and training center in New Jersey. It's not there anymore but it's got a great history attached to it. Make sure you check out wins book. Ray Britton is the Scoutmaster for Troop 42 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Between work and vacation, I had five consecutive weeks that I was out of town this summer.

I didn't want any of our scouts to be held up on advancement, waiting for a Scoutmaster conference. I did a number of conferences at summer camp And, just to be sure, I confirmed that the Scoutmaster conference doesn't have to be the last step before the border review. And yes, Ray is right, Check a guide to advancement and you'll see that that is true. While I was out of town I had some requests for a conference and I did my first Scoutmaster conference remotely, via FaceTime, You know.

I think it worked well and I didn't see any reason why it shouldn't be an option when meaning face to face is difficult or impossible. The conversation we had was no less engaging than those I've had with a scout sitting right in front of me And, by the way, I made sure that the scout's parents aware that he and I were having this discussion. Thanks again for all you do for scouting. I may not have thought of this as an option if it weren't for your persistent encouragement to understand what real requirements are and not to be stuck on how things have always been done. Keep up the great work.

Well thanks, Ray. That's a really great idea.

It may raise the hackles of a few of us old traditionalists, but you know what A conference is a conference If it's being held virtually or if it's being held face to face. And I want to back up what Ray mentioned in his message there, which is he made sure that the scouts parents were aware they were in the background, but he made sure the scouts parents were aware that he was talking to the scout electronically.

Another little piece of youth protection that in our modern age we need to make sure we apply: that no one-on-one contact is no one-on-one contact, whether it be through email or teleconferencing or anything like that. Good on you, Ray. Thanks for the idea. Last week I asked you to share your high adventure trips with me, And boy we got some great responses Over on Facebook. Michael reported they biked 200 miles of the CNO canal. Dave Clark from Troop 151 in Georgetown, Texas, went to Northern Tier for a 78-mile trek.

Ken Davis reported that their troop took 50, 50 scouts and adults to the Boundary Waters canoe area up there in Minnesota. Kelly Deathridge, who is an assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 190, said this summer I led a seven-day high adventure trek in mid-July to the Northern Tier base near Elley, Minnesota.

Except for one adult, we were all first timers regarding canoe tracking. We trained and practiced leading up to the trek and did 55 miles in six days. It fit our collective canoeing abilities, experiences and expectations.

We did 21 portages in all totaling 5.8 miles. One word to describe it: epic. We saw lots of bald eagles. What a great adventure that is. Mike Manser is from Troop 469 in Canton, Georgia, And they partnered with Troops 4900 and 465. And they took seven boys and four adults to film on.

He said that the crew was affected a little bit by the fires that were in the area in June, but they still had a great time And they sent two crews to sea base on the Coral Reef adventure this year too. Jack Thornton is in Boise, Idaho, with Troop 97.. He said every few years we make it to Fillmont Scout Ranch. This year was the first time we've taken two crews made up of 11 youth and five advisors. We hiked through rain and pain and other great obstacles, But every member of both crews persevered, grew and experienced a great time. David Legge said six scouts and two adults from Troop 35 in Dumfries, Virginia, just got back from Northern Tier High Adventure Base.

We had a great time exploring the Quedico Provincial Park. This was our first canoeing trek and we all learned a lot. We covered 112 and a half miles in eight days, Did some fishing watch ball. The eagles soared overhead and just absorbed the beautiful scenery. Folks at Northern Tier, including our guide, were great and the scouts had the adventure of a lifetime. Bill McMahon reported that Troop 6 in Glen Falls, New York, spent a week paddling the St Regis canoe area.

Up in New York, Loons and eagles cavorting in an unusual absence of the typical mid-summer hordes of mosquitoes and black flies made for one of the best weeks of camping we've ever shared. John Wipke is Scoutmaster of Troop 358 in Zionsville, Indiana, And he said: how interesting you are in Algonquin.

We were just there checking it out to take my troop next summer. Oh, make sure you do, John, It's a great place to go. Threadhead22 said this. Here in Arizona summers are spent at the pool, But just before the heat set in, Troop 603 made an amazing trip to West Clear Creek. Lots of rock hopping and swimming through cold water. I may have left my spleen on the side of the road.

He said the best quote from the trip was: my vacations are your worst nightmare. It sounds challenging but fun. He also connected us to some great pictures of that Luann Cooley said. This summer, six scouts and four adults from Troop 56 in Mansfield, Connecticut, went to Virginia and paddled 61 miles on the Upper James River. We spent four nights camping and five paddling. We wanted a trip that would be fun and challenging to all of the ability levels of our group and offer chances to learn and improve skills.

The Upper James is very scenic. We saw egrets and herons and bald eagles and deer and muskrats. On the way down and back we had two camping nights, one in the Jefferson National Forest and one in Shenandoah National Park. It was a perfect trip for a small troop that wanted an introduction to backcountry canoeing.

Luann, I know that part of Virginia very well And it's beautiful and a great place for a good high adventure trip. So listen, folks, There's a sampling of the high adventure trips that people did this year. As you heard, some people went up to the boundary waters, Some went to Fillmont, Some went to the sea base and some made up their own thing. Right, They went closer by. They probably spent a little bit less money. They tailored a trip to meet their needs And that's what you ought to be doing.

Figure out what your high adventure trip is for next summer. Start planning for it now. There's lots of resources at ScoutMasterCGcom to help you make it possible. It doesn't have to be big, It doesn't have to be expensive, It doesn't have to be on the other side of the world. It needs to be something that your Scouts will actually get to do.

That's what's really really important, isn't it? In this edition of the ScoutMaster podcast and Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less, we're going to talk a little bit about the new guide to advancement, And that's really going to take up the rest of the podcast.

So let's get started, shall we

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. Now here's something I want you to remember.

Here's a little phrase I want you to remember: Run to the resource, Run, Don't walk. Run to the resource. Keep that in the forefront of your mind And when questions come up about scouting policy or procedure or something like that, don't guess, Don't make up an answer- Run to the resource, And we're going to be talking about a very important scouting resource in today's podcast.

The other thing I need to tell you before we start is: don't believe a word. I say Really, Really, No, Don't believe a word I say. It would be a tremendous mistake if you accepted my advice or treated what I say on the blog or the podcast without checking out the resources provided by your scouting organization, whether it's the BSA or Scouts UK or Scouts Canada or Scouts Australia. Any one of the scouting organizations that administers the scouting movement, wherever you are, has resources, And these are people and these are writings and this is information you need to know how to find. You don't need to have encyclopedic memory. You don't need to have all of the facts and figures right at your fingertips.

You need to have the resources. Run to the resource, To my fellow Scouts in the BSA, we have a tremendous resource to consult that is going to answer 99% of your questions concerning advancement, And I'm going to tell you how to answer the remaining 1%, but bear with me for a moment. The first stop for answering any advancement question is a document called the Guide to Advancement. It first appeared in 2011 and a revised edition was published for this year and just released in June of 2013..

I think it's important for us to talk about how resources like this are created. I'll tell you: I've been a member of the National Advancement Team for the past couple of years. I mentioned this just to say I've learned a great deal about how this sort of thing works. Not to offer my involvement as a member of the team is any special endorsement of my opinions or advice. Remember what I said: Don't believe a word. I say: Run to the resource.

Okay, When you hear the term National Advancement Team, you may imagine like there's this big modern office complex somewhere in Irving, Texas that looks like something out of a television show, with big screens and lots of computers and a dozen people busily working on the latest version of the Guide to Advancement. Well, you'd be wrong if you were imagining that The National Advancement Team is made up of dozens of scouts just like you and me, from all over the country working together to listen to and respond to what's going on in Cub Packs and Scout Troops and Venture Crews. The National Advancement Team offers all kinds of resources and materials. They offer training. They're just folks. They're just like us: Plain old laptops and desktops.

They use email and they work extraordinarily hard to help you and I get things right. If you've been around for a while, you'll remember the old Advancement Committee Practices and Procedures book. It was useful, but it was infrequently revised and sometimes left frontline scouts like us casting around for answers or, more often than not, making up answers for ourselves. There just wasn't a really great resource to try and sort these things out Now. When the Guide to Advancement first appeared in 2011,, it was a totally new document. It was accessible and thorough and it's a welcomed resource.

It actually answered questions. If you go back to podcast 97, you can hear an interview I conducted with a few members of the Advancement Team who worked on making the Guide to Advancement a reality. Two years later, the Guide's been revised and expanded and I'll tell you it's one of the most important resources anybody working with scouts in the BSA is going to read. You must have it and getting it is easy because it's a free PDF file. It's also available in print.

You can get it at your scout shop or scoutsstufforg and then read it from cover to cover. You're not going to read every single word. Go from page one to the end of the book. Look it over carefully. It's not just a recitation of rules and mechanics and policies and procedures. There's a lot about why Advancement is there and why we do the things that we do.

It's going to help you understand Advancement and applying it correctly so that you can better serve your scouts. Get it okay, Read it and have it readily accessible. It's going to be a big help. I have a PDF file right here on my laptop and I can get to it pretty quickly and I can copy and email sections of it to folks who have questions. I use it in my own troop all the time.

Now, scouts are an interesting lot. We have our heads into what we're doing locally and, alas, sometimes grow a little frustrated with the folks at quote national unquote.

You know I've heard all the gripes and complaints about how quote national unquote doesn't understand us. They don't share the concerns of a frontline scouter, and on and on and on. I got to tell you this is nothing new. That sort of griping and complaining has been around for the entire century that scouting has been around. It's not particular to the BSA.

I think it's probably endemic in every scouting organization and that kind of griping and complaining is something that I have participated in myself. But I want to tell you something: Our professionals at every level are no less dedicated to the interests of scouts than you or I are. You got to remember they're dealing with things on a massive scale. They're not looking at 35 or 40 families in a scout troop or a Cub Scout pack. They have to make policies that work for 3 million of us, not just you and I. The guide to advancement has been produced by volunteers- People who've been Scoutmasters and Cub Masters and Venture Crew advisors, and they do this with the help of a very few dedicated professionals.

I have had a chance to talk to the professionals who are involved and they really don't want to be in the limelight, and so I'm not mentioning names or anything like that. But I'll tell you something: They know their stuff. They're dedicated, involved and, I would say, kind of driven. They're on as much of a mission as any volunteer and they believe in what scouting is doing as much as any volunteer does, and they have produced a really great resource in the guide to advancement.

So remember this: don't believe anything I say. Don't take it at face value. Run to the resource, the guide to advancement 2013.. Read it, keep it close by, and you'll be able to answer 99% of the questions folks have about advancement.

Now, that leaves 1%. Well, and actually probably less than 1%, but let's just say 1% and that's going to mean maybe one out of 100 of your questions is not answered in the guide to advancement 2013..

So for those questions, start with your district or council advancement committee, because they need to know what's going on. They need to know if you don't understand something and if they don't know the answer, you can email the advancement team. That's right. Their email address is advancementteam at scoutingorg. And you'll get a reply, more than likely from a volunteer just like yourself. Listen, with a resource like this guide to advancement, there's no excuse for not getting things right.

And just by kind of the seat of the pants rule of thumb way of gauging the effect of the guide to advancement 2011 that came out two years ago, I get fewer emails about advancement policy and procedure because I believe people are able to find the answers much easier than then trying to look around the internet and find somebody who might know the answer. They know where to go now And I get a lot fewer of the kind of eagle emergency emails, If you don't know what I'm talking about.

I've gotten a number of emails and many fewer in the past couple of years from parents or scouts or scouts who are having some kind of a problem with the eagle process, And I really I haven't been seeing those so much. So I think the guide to advancement, besides just being a terrific resource, has had a real effect on the way that these things work.

We should be able to resolve any arguments or differences about advancement using the guide to advancement. It's really pretty simple. It's right there in black and white.

It's very well written and very well set up so that you'll be able to find your answers quickly And we can then do what we're all here to do in the first place, And that is, serve the interests of our scouts. But for one last time, remember this: Don't take my word for it. Find it out for yourself. Run to the resource, and that resource is the guide to advancement 2013.. You're gonna find links to the PDF version and how to get a copy of the print version, if that's what you'd like, on the post that contains this podcast at scoutmastercgcom.