Scoutmaster Podcast 191

And now it's the old Scoutmaster. Some scouts were canoeing up in Canada And one of the scouts was very excited. He ran back to the campsite And he told everybody that he just saw a moose. And the Scoutmaster asked him.

He said: well, was it a cow or a bull? And the scout said no, no, no, It was a moose.

Hey, this is podcast number 191.. Hey Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look in the mailbag. Wow, lots in the mailbag this week. Dan Newsvick got in touch to say just discovered the podcast tonight.

I love it, Thank you Well. Thank you, Dan. Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast. Ed Bruce got in touch to say: excellent podcast, Clark. I listened to it on my way to our monthly round table.

Great information. I'm going to use your 15-minute patrol leader training. Thank you Thanks for listening, Ed. I sure appreciate it. Ben Moon is a cup master with PAC 19 and an advancement trailer with troop team and crew 19 in Carthage, Missouri And he wrote in to say: I have recently learned of your blog and I've enjoyed it. I've been sharing your podcast and email post with some of our newer scouts, encouraging them to subscribe.

Also, Thanks for spreading the word, Ben. Richard Putnam is a scout leader with the first Kirkfield scout troop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, And Richard wrote to say: first off, I very much appreciate your emails and informative discussions.

As for the pioneering challenge that you recently posted, did you guys, did you guys see that It was on the blog last week? I suggest to you that MC Escher must have drawn the diagram because it looks very similar to his staircase images. Richard, how very perceptible of you, And, I must say, many others who did figure out that, hey, that's an Escher-esque pioneering project. Richard goes on to say the diagram as such is physically impossible to build. Yes, yes, it is. It would not be possible to actually build that tower.

Keep up the great work. I'm hoping that that was just a little joke for those who fail to look wide enough. Yes, it was, Richard.

Just a little bit of pioneering humor, right? Bill Kassler is a unit commissioner in the Bear Paw Council up in Alaska And he read a post that we had a week or so ago called Look for Red Lantern Moments. The Red Lantern is an award given to the last person to finish the annual. I Did A Rod dog sled race, And Bill said this. First let me tell you how much I enjoy your blog.

I share a lot of what you published in a weekly newsletter and everyone loves your material, so keep it coming. I had to smile when you posted about the I Did A Rod. One of Great Alaska Council's old district executives, Justin Savitas, ran the I Did A Rod race. For the last several years Justin's dogs wear scout neckerchiefs, The lead dogs are wearing eagle neckerchiefs and they work their way down to tiger cub neckerchiefs on the dogs in front of the sled. I can't even imagine that there would be mushers out there running the I Did A Rod. That had something to do with scouting, right, I mean, it's just a natural.

Thanks for that, Bill. Keep warm up there, okay? Warren Cofield is a Scoutmaster with Troop 93 in Santa Maria, California, And in reference to our scout circle which we had last night- and more about that in a moment- Warren said: when my son joined scouts, we didn't even own a backpack.

Now our garage is full of outdoor gear. When you tell the scouts and his troop, the more you go, the more you know. Things don't have to be expensive, just smart. This last June I was lucky enough to spend seven nights in the Yosemite High Sierras with my son. We had a fantastic trip.

One morning at 6 am, it was 30 degrees outside of our tent and my son peeked out of his sleeping bag to say: you know, this is awesome. And I felt like a dad watching his boy hit a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth. I didn't get any better.

Well, a cup of coffee might have helped a little. There's a lot of great activities in scouting, but backpacking and the trail is where a scout can just be a scout, hopefully with a light pack. Thanks, Warren, It's a great story. Burke Huffnagle wrote in to say I greatly appreciate your site. Last May my friend told me about it and I finished listening to all the archive podcasts in late September. Thank you for taking the time to share your wisdom with us.

Well, thank you, Burke, for getting in touch. Thank you, Burke, for the kind words and for getting in touch. I really do appreciate it when folks get in touch and you can email me at Clark C-L-A-R-K-E at scoutmastercgcom.

Now, as I said, we just did our October scout circle last night And as our guest we had Joe Jacaruso, very experienced backpacker. Amongst other things. Joe is also a through hiker of the 2000 plus mile Appalachian trail And he joined us for an hour of talking about scouts and backpacking and the essential skills that any adult who's going to lead scouts on a backpacking trip needs to know.

So make sure you check that out. You can go to scoutscircleorg to see the presentation and I'll have it posted to scoutmastercgcom before the end of the week.

Now our next scout circle is Sunday November 10th and this happens between 9 and 10 pm Eastern Daylight Time and it happens on Google Plus and at scoutscircleorg And it's a live presentation. It lasts about an hour.

Folks who are watching are able to ask questions about it and in November we're going to be talking about the Webelos to scout transition, because you know we're getting to that point in the year where that moves to the top of the list for a lot of scout troops and a lot of Webelos stands as well. So if you have questions or advice about the Webelos to scout transition, get in touch with us and perhaps it'll be part of our next scout circle. Once again, Sunday November 10th, 9 to 10 pm Eastern Daylight Time at scoutscircleorg. I've been working hard over at the blog to get things. Set up for the launch of the new book, which is called The Scouting Journey, and keep your eyes open. I promise we're working on it.

It's going to be published in November. I'm going to share a little bit from the book with you later on in the podcast when we do our minute for Scoutmasters. But before we do that, in Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less, we're going to talk about Quartz of Honor and that's going to take up the rest of the podcast.

So let's get started, shall we?

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. So the final step in advancement is recognizing a scout by presenting them with the achievements that they've earned, and this is done at a ceremony called Quartz of Honor. In the Guide to Advancement 2013, it says this: when the Board of Review has approved his advancement, the scout deserves recognition as soon as possible. This should be done at a ceremony at the next unit meeting. The certificate for his new rank may be presented later during a formal Quartz of Honor.

While we know that we're headed towards a Quartz of Honor for a formal recognition of the scout's achievement, we want to get him the badge as soon as possible. Not only people will do that at the next troop meeting or crew meeting or whatever, and just with a quick recognition, maybe as a part of the announcements and things like that, just to make sure that the scout gets the badge right away.

And then the certificate, the little card that comes with the badge- you can hold on to that and give it to them at the Quartz of Honor. Now some people worry that if they don't hold on to the badges the scouts aren't going to attend the next Quartz of Honor, and I I guess that's a reasonable concern. But I'd be more concerned that there may be a couple of things wrong with the way that we're presenting Quartz of Honor that could be causing scouts to stay away from it, if that's a problem.

So what I want to do is give you kind of several rules of thumb here, Just running the Quartz of Honor Now, to my way of thinking, it should be the senior patrol leader or scouts in leadership positions should be running that Quartz of Honor, not the adults. At our last troop Quartz of Honor, one of our senior scouts was working on communications merit badge and he asked if he could emcee, and the senior patrol leader thought that that was a great idea.

So he emceed the Quartz of Honor and I think that's a great way to make things happen. If you're putting on a Quartz of Honor and the scouts are kind of meh about it, it might be that if it's the adults or the troop committee handing out badges and the scouts are just kind of watching, they're not going to be all that interested in attending right. Another rule of thumb that will help liven up a Quartz of Honor is the length of time that it takes.

How long is a Quartz of Honor supposed to be? Well, our troop has 35 to 40 scouts on average and we have a table full of things to present at most Quartz of Honor, and my rule of thumb is that we need that Quartz of Honor to last less than an hour. 30 to 45 minutes is about where you want to be. If it's less than that, it's less than that and that's not a problem.

If we have everybody there for two hours of long, formal, drawn out presentations, you know that's an awful lot to sit through. If we're presenting an Eagle Rank, which we do as a part of our regular Quartz of Honor, it may go just a bit longer, but brevity is good. And if we're going to ask families to be there with younger siblings and things like that.

We want to keep that program moving along. We don't want to skip anything.

We don't want to artificially shorten it so that we miss meaningful moments. Pay attention to how long that Quartz of Honor is taking. Next, I would suggest that the program be formal without being real, theatrically overblown.

You know, simple words spoken in honesty are almost always better, at least to my mind, than a lot of pageantry. Scouts want some formality and ceremony, but not at a point where it's so overblown that it makes them feel silly or reluctant to participate in it.

So if the program is formal and meaningful and well done and it's not way overblown and it doesn't have all kinds of crazy elements thrown into it, Scouts will enjoy it or at least endure it. Right, What else is happening at the Quartz of Honor? I know that most people usually combine the Quartz of Honor with some announcements or discussion with families.

Now we have a parent's business meeting for a few minutes before each Quartz of Honor And we have a Quartz of Honor on a quarterly basis. We talk to parents about the scheduling of camping trips or rechartering or any kind of business that needs to be taken care of. That part of the program needs to be quick.

It doesn't need to be a long, drawn out question and answer period or something like that, because everybody's going to be there once the program is concluded and we can talk about details and get into things with individuals after we've presented the program. Another rule of thumb is when you schedule a Quartz of Honor.

Now we schedule our Quartz of Honor in place of a regular troop meeting. That way it's on everyone's schedule already.

They already know that in our case, Monday nights is scout night, so they don't have to add another night to the calendar, and a family with a couple of active children is likely to have a pretty involved schedule of meetings and activities. I think it's important to make things easy for families to remember and easy for them to fit into their busy schedules.

Now, if you apply some of these ideas, some of these rules of thumb, you may find that parents and scouts are more interested in Quartz of Honor and they make a point out of attending. There's little chance you're going to get every single scout and every single family to any given Quartz of Honor.

So do what I do: Concentrate on the ones that show up and change things around so that more will show up if that's what's needed. Now, if you're putting on a Quartz of Honor and nobody's showing up or you feel that the attendance is way down, the first thing we ought to do is look at what we're doing and why we're doing it and understand that scouts and families vote with their feet on things like this.

If they aren't showing up, it's likely that we have something off base and we need to make adjustments. So just to run over that advice one more time: remember that right after a border review and a scout's been approved for his next rank or a merit badge has been filed, as soon as that's all been reported and you have the badges in hand, get them to the scouts. For a more formal Quartz of Honor, I suggest an hour is maximum and less is even better. That the program needs to be appropriately formal without being way dramatically overblown. That the scouts need to run their own Quartz of Honor.

That if we're going to combine the Quartz of Honor with a business meeting for parents or something like that, we need to keep that part of the program brief and meaningful. Busy families with lots on the schedule usually appreciated if you have a Quartz of Honor on your standard meeting night because that's already on their calendar. Holding regular Quartz of Honor every quarter is a good practice and it keeps everybody in touch with what's going on and it gives you a chance to recognize scouts in a timely manner at that formal Quartz of Honor. If the attendance at your Quartz of Honor is a little thin, it may not be the fault of the audience. It may be adjustments or fixes that you need to make to make it worthwhile and meaningful to attend. That's right.

It's time

For a Scoutmasters Minute. As I said earlier, my new book, The Scouting Journey, is going to be published towards the middle of next month. What it is is it's my attempt to take about 1600 blog posts and 191 podcasts and and boil it all down into one good, clear, distinct vision. That is something that a Scouter could pick up and hopefully understand something of the width and the breadth of what Scouting is supposed to do for our young people, and to give them solid ideas about helping them inform the work that they do as Scouters.

Let me share with you something out of the book that I think is important for all Scouters to understand, and that is the Scouter as a Guide. We're talking about giving them a general push in the right direction, a suggestion rather than a command, a question asked rather than an answer given, and then letting them find their own way, and I think that's what sets Scouting apart from so many other things that children do.

So imagine you're on a bus tour of some city- okay- and you're seated in an air-conditioned motor coach, listening to a guide drone on and on, the way the guide sometimes do, and the bus is rolling along and the guide is explaining each landmark that we pass in detail, so we're not going to miss anything. In fact, there's so much explaining that there's not a whole lot of time left for us to ask questions. And the guide is a great guide. They stick to the script. And we sit behind the tinted windows of our bus, dutifully turning our heads to the left and looking over at that building over there and to the right, and we see that building over there and after a while the tour is over.

Now contrast that bus tour with a hike that's guided by some knowledgeable outdoorsman. Our group takes the lead and finds the trail.

Now where the trail branches, our guide will let us know which way to go if we can't figure it out on our own, that he doesn't mind if we stop now and then to admire a flower or take in the view, and he'll happily tell us about anything we're looking at if we ask. Our outdoorsman is not going to volunteer a whole lot of information.

He'll drop a hint here and there. He'll ask questions. We may miss a couple of things along the way and we might pass by interesting things, but we'll probably get more out of what we discovered on the hike than the things that the tour guide told us on the bus.

So, like that outdoorsman, like the guide, scouters are more responsive than directive. So it's that spirit of the guide that I think is important for us to think about as scouters. Every individual scout is different and every group of scouts has different needs.

Now, when we're working with younger scouts, our style is still going to be the guide. It's going to be a little more directive and as they grow older, hopefully we've laid the basis for them to guide themselves and to find their own way and to discover what scouting is all about. And pretty soon we've kind of faded into the background and our role is the same as that outdoorsman, that guide who lets the group take the lead and find the trail and discover these things for themselves-