Scoutmaster Podcast 195

And now it's the old Scoutmaster. Hey, we were off to our camping trip and I was driving along and I noticed that the horn on my van wasn't working.

So I pulled over and I popped the hood and of course the scouts got out and they were looking around and checking it out and things like that. I found a loose wire on the horn and we hooked it back up, got in and the scouts you know said, well, did you get the horn fixed? And I said, yes, Beep repaired, Beep repaired.

Oh yeah, If you know a better joke, send it in, would you please? I could obviously use some help.

Hey, this is podcast number 195.. Hey, Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look in the mailbag and once again, pretty full again this week. Matthew Malendick is from Canal Fulton, Ohio, with Troop 915 and he wrote in to say this. I just listened to podcast 194 regarding Eagle Scouts.

As always, your view and opinion sheds light on topics that I am wrestling with. We have a group of scouts that are progressing quickly through their advancement.

Several of these scouts, I believe, will reach Eagle. Each year our scouts plan the activities calendar for the upcoming year and I'm trying very hard to guide the boys through the process of making their decisions.

So we are scouting and, quoting Babin Powell, I try to remember: the Scoutmaster must be alert to check badge hunting as compared to badge earning. Your description of advancement and the requirements for Eagle has helped clear my mind and allowed me to remember. If there are any questions by the time a scout reaches Eagle, it's really not the fault of the scout, but the questions should fall on the adult leaders. Thanks for all you do and I look forward to the podcast each week.

Well, thank you, Matt. Thanks for being in touch. Thanks for your encouraging words. I'm glad this is making sense. Mike Marty wrote in again this week. We heard from him last week.

He said thanks for the reply and for reading my email on the last podcast. Mainly, thank you for making me a better scouter. Last night at the committee meeting I was asked to give an update on the Troop. I had just listened to your podcast on Eagle Scouts and shared it with the committee. It went over very well.

We have three Scouts working on their Eagle projects. Two of the boys are special need Scouts who were told in another crew they would never be allowed to advance to Eagle. Oh my, isn't that a shame. It was nice to have your thoughts to reinforce the direction we're going with our Troop. If there's anything I can do to help repay all that you've done for me and my Scouts, please ask and the answer will be yes.

First of all, thanks so much. I'm glad that we're able to be of assistance to you and good on you for working with those Scouts who may have been misunderstood and turned down in another unit. That's really a shame.

And to answer your question, is there anything you can do to help? Well, keep listening. Mark and San Diego, a good old friend of the podcast, wrote in to say first, good song in the middle of the podcast.

It will work well for an upcoming slideshow And he's talking about Born to Be a Scout by Alex Boyer. That was in podcast 194.. I get questions about the music I use on a regular basis And if you'll go to the archive page at scoutmastercgcom, there you will find a little Amazon widget that contains a lot of the different, where you'll be able to get the full length version of some of the music clips that I use. Mark went on to say as the father of one of those 50% Eagles that people could state an issue with. I obviously agree with your point of view expressed in podcast 194. My son was far from the most organized scout.

I recall how haphazardly he had his backpack packed when we went to Fillmont two summers ago. However, today he is the one in his own apartment who knows how to cook And he is the one taking leadership in organizing and coordinating study groups at his college, Texas A&M. I know many other Scouts from our troop that come closer to that idealized Eagle than my son. However, I know the process he went through in seven years of scouting, including intaining Eagle status, And that helped him immeasurably to get where he is today.

So far Am I a proud dad, You bet, And I am an appreciative dad as well. Mark, first of all, thanks for getting back in touch And thanks for the update, And I think every father feels a little bit like you do.

Of course we're proud of our sons, Of course we're proud of what they do and we want to be supportive. But we know, we know, don't we?

But you know, if a boy goes through the process of scouting, if he goes through that scouting journey, there are things that start to pay dividends right away And there are some things that aren't going to We're not going to see the result of until they're off on their own And you'll be able to draw a direct line back to some of the things that they did in scouting and you'll go, wow, you know, I'm so pleased that we took the time and we made sure that that was part of our lives. Mike Scaiuta is the Scoutmaster of Troop 706 in the Great Rivers Council in Columbia, Missouri, And he wrote in to say first I want to thank you for the encouragement and ideas you share. I took over a Scoutmaster this fall and have implemented a lot of changes around the patrol method and scout led adult coached leadership. I even stole one of your ideas for our Weebelow's open house and pulled a couple of scouts without much warning into the meaning to answer questions from Weebelow's parents. The feedback was awesome. As for last week's podcast, I was really interested about the letter from the scouter who was asked to put together a tender foot to first class program for their district.

I agreed with his assessment and yours, but it got me wondering about the ubiquitous Brown Sea type trail to first class summer camp programs at which so many first year scouts get many of their requirements signed off. On the plus side, those programs are typically staffed by older Scout staffers, but it still avoids using the patrol method, Does it not? I have a similar reaction to some of the things like merit badge colleges that are growing increasingly common these days.

I think it may take away from the learning experience a scout has of contacting a merit badge instructor and arranging schedules and working through the material with a small group or individually. First of all, thanks for the encouraging words and I'm glad you listened last week and you found what we had to say useful.

You know, I think it's really important to keep emphasizing that advancement happens naturally within a troop that uses the patrol method. Patrols should be doing everything together.

Now, boys that go to summer camp for their first year and they go to the kind of Brown Sea Island kind of program- Ours is called the trailblazer program- where they do a heavy concentration on skills up to first class. I think those programs are great. I don't know that the requirements should be signed off in them.

I know that that does not happen where we go to camp, but the scouts are exposed to the skills that they're going to need throughout the year with the troop and they have a chance to refine them a little bit And then when they're back with us and in the context of their patrol they can demonstrate those skills and get them signed off. So you know that works for me. It's not too hard to find people who will debate with you about merit badge colleges and those other kind of mass events where merit badges are offered to large groups by a single counselor. I'm not the counselor there. I wouldn't necessarily have the time or inclination to be a counselor at one of those big events myself. But if people are doing that and scouts are earning merit badges and it's all above board and everything's everybody's happy and things are being learned.

And you know I have a hard time arguing with the experience. I know my scouts go to museums and different merit badge opportunities And, like you said, they seem to be getting more and more prevalent and I think it's great. My job is just to make sure that they're working with a trained counselor and to keep a half eye open to make sure that that counselor is following their training.

But you know, over the past several years, as we have had more and more of our scouts do that. I haven't really seen a problem. I've been a little skeptical, like you, but I've never really seen a problem with those events. And finally, we heard this week from Robert Glazier. He said: I have just made a token contribution towards your expenses in producing the blog and the podcast. Scoutmasterscgcom is a tremendous resource and I sincerely appreciate the effort you put into it.

Very best regards. And Rob is the Scoutmaster of Troop 18 in Muskego, Wisconsin.

Well, Rob, thank you so much. I can't tell you what it means to me when people go out of their way to contribute to making the podcast and the blog and all the other stuff possible.

And I want to take a few moments to talk about that, because today I am launching a couple of different things. I have three things to talk to you about. First of all, over the past several podcasts I've been promising and promising that my new book, The Scouting Journey, would soon be ready for publication And I am happy to tell you we're ready to accept pre-publication orders for that book through our backer program. Let me tell you a little bit about the backer program.

I started the blog about eight years ago in the podcast a couple of years later, And what was kind of a fun sideline, you know kind of a hobby has- has turned into something more like a full-time occupation. If you go to the backer page at scottmastercgcom- and I'll make sure to link it to the post that contains this podcast- you'll get an idea of the time that I spend and the costs that are involved and how you can help. Very simply, what I have done is I've created a number of premiums for different backer payments that will go to help defray the annual costs of presenting the blog and the podcast and all the other resources that we work with, the videos and all that type of thing. Our audience is growing every single week and that's a wonderful thing. As the audience grows, the costs of server space and getting these things out to people, that grows too.

I won't go into all the details but let me just repeat: We have a backer program through the backer program for a contribution towards defraying those expenses. I've got several premiums for you and one of them is an autographed copy of my new book, The Scouting Journey, And I got to tell you I'm pretty excited about the book. I am really happy with the way that it came out and I hope you'll go take a look.

There's a synopsis of the book that I published just today on the scottmastercgcom, So do go and make sure to get a look at it. If the backer program doesn't appeal to you, the book will be available for purchase on amazoncom on November 30th, So that's just a couple of weeks away. If you're interested in helping support the blog and the podcast, consider becoming a backer. Go to scottmastercgcom to find out how.

So, first of all, the backer program. Second of all, the release of my new book, The Scouting Journey. And third, I have a little bit of a stealth announcement that I'm only making here on the podcast.

If you have a mobile device that uses Android, you can go to Google Play right now, search for ScoutmasterCG and you will find that I've created a new mobile app. This is one of the projects I've been working on for a couple of weeks. It's a free app and on the app you'll be able to access all the additions of the Scoutmaster podcast. You'll be able to read the blog and the Twitter feed and our Facebook feed and be able to contact us using the app. I'm looking at adding some other features to it, but making this announcement on the podcast is kind of a stealth announcement, because we're still kind of in that beta stage where we're trying to sort things out.

So if you have a mobile device that uses Android and an app that gives you access to all the podcasts and all the other things I've spoken about interest, you Go to Google Play, download the app, try it out for a while, Tell me what you think of it and you'll be one of my app beta testers. As soon as we go through this development phase, we will also release the app to iTunes. There's a little bit more involved with that and it's a little more costly to get the app on iTunes, but it'll be ready to go on iTunes as soon as we've gone through this beta testing phase.

Well, that's a lot of news for one week, isn't it? I'll tell you it's been a bit of a challenge setting all this up and getting things ready to go. I'm not a software person, You know. I don't have any formal training or anything like that. I have to kind of pick my way along.

So all of this, all of this stuff has been set up with, you know, bailing wire and a little bit of twine, and I struggled a lot putting the payment process together for the backer program. So I hope it works. The app was a little bit easier, but still a bit of a challenge to get that going.

So so that's what I've been busy with the past several weeks. Please take advantage of those resources and let me know what you think of them. This podcast is going to be probably on the brief side because we've been putting a lot of times into these other initiatives. We just recorded the scout circle for November last night, And when I say we, I mean me. It was a solo performance And we talked about the transition from Webelos to Boy Scouts, And you can go check that out at scout circle dot org. Unless you're tired of hearing me drone on and on and on.

You can see a picture of me. It's, it's a video.

So if that does anything for you, our monthly scout circle was last night. It's been recorded, It's up. I appreciate those of you who watched and who's sending questions.

Well, the remainder of this podcast is going to be taken up with a couple of email questions we received over the past week. If you send an email question in and you haven't gotten an answer yet or you haven't heard it on the podcast, don't. Don't despair, I'm working my way through a bit of a backlog right now.

I've got a couple that I think will interest you for this podcast, So let's get started. Shall we

Email? That is folks?

And here's an answer to one of your emails. Christina is a scout parent out in Pacifica, California, and she got in touch with me to ask this question. My son is new to Boy Scouts. He started going on more overnights and I would like to get him a good backpack. I read your article about packs and have a question. First, my son is 12 years old.

He's four foot nine and it weighs about 78 pounds. I did find a place to buy the Outdoor Products Dragonfly pack and I should take a moment here to explain that that has been one of my favorite packs. It's a external frame pack. It's a great pack for Scouts. It's relatively inexpensive and it was widely available up until this summer and I've had difficulty being able to find it. But apparently it's showing up again.

And Christina goes on to say: would you suggest going with that pack or with the other one I saw on your site, the Teton Sports Scout 3400 or the Scouts Explorer 4000.. Some of our Scouts swear by internal frame packs, but I know it depends on what they want. Thank you in advance for any guidance you can provide. One of the key pieces of gear any scout needs is a decent backpack. My favorite one for years and years was the Outdoor Products Dragonfly. It's an external frame pack.

It's very adjustable and this past year I discovered the Teton Sports internal frame packs. Now, neither of these packs are what you would call extraordinarily high end kind of packs, but they are both less than $100 a piece.

I think the Dragonfly comes in around $50 or $60 and the two Teton packs are in the range of $65 to $75.. That's a great deal.

Now, if you want to take a look at the Teton packs, go to scoutmastercgcom and look in the gear section for a video review of those two packs. Some of our Scouts bought them this year. They love them. They think they're great.

So, Christina, you're looking for advice or an answer about which to get. First of all, with a 12 year old who's 4 foot 9 and weighs 78 pounds, the most important thing is getting him a pack that will fit.

Both the Dragonfly and the Teton Sports Scout 3400 are adjustable enough to fit a very small frame, So they will work for you As far as which one to get boy, it's really a toss up. If your son is not like a typical 12 year old and he's a very organized packer and things like that, then the internal frame packs going to work great for him. He'll be able to use that for the next several years.

If he's not all that organized, then you might want to go with the external frame pack because they're a little bit easier to pack and keep track of your stuff- at least that's my experience with them- and that one too, widely adjustable and we should be good for several years of use. So, Christina, I hope that helps. This email came from Ever Young, who is the Scoutmaster of Troop 31 in Connorsville, Indiana, and he said: my question may sound a little weird, but I have not seen this taught or how to handle the particular situation I find myself in. We're a new unit and we're coming on our one year birthday in December.

Well, first of all, congratulations. We have 19 scouts right now and the challenge is is that all of our scouts are between the age of 10 and a half to 13. I've read countless articles on the patrol method. We're progressing towards that, but we're far from it, to be honest and I know that this really isn't the way it's supposed to be.

In the last two months, scouts have taken total responsibility for the troop activity at each meeting, so at this point they take care of the opening and the closing and announcements, but I still take care of a lot of pieces of the meeting. It feels like we're progressing, but I know I'm still doing more than I'm supposed to do. I have to say the scouts have come a long way from where we started and they're really doing great.

We have so many things on the horizon. The way things are coming together and the support we're getting from the community and our parents is very heartening. We're anticipating 7 to 10 more boys in February through April.

So I am feeling the overwhelming need to improve our application of the patrol method. I'm just a little worried about doing it with such young scouts.

It seems to me like if we were a more mature troop with boys age 15 to 17, it would be easier. Is there anything I can do differently to accelerate our application of the patrol method, or is it just going to be a process until the boys mature some more?

Well, Everett, thanks for getting in touch and you're asking a really important question because I know that a lot of people who are listening often are coming from newer units and units where the boys are relatively young, between the ages of 10 and a half and 13.. Now this matters to some extent, but let's all remember that any Scoutmaster's job is to be a responsive leader. Your involvement in what goes on in the troop changes as your scouts gain more confidence and skill. You respond to their confidence and skill. I liken the process to someone tying a square knot. I'll show them how to tie it.

I put the rope in their hands and I let them give it a try. If they get it, we're good.

Now they know what to do. They can go around tying square knots all over the place. If they struggle a bit, I'm not going to immediately just take the rope away from them and show them again. I'll talk to them. I'll coach them through the whole thing.

You know, left over right, right over left, but the rope stays in their hands. If they're completely at sea, if they can't even get started, I'll ask for the rope back and show them again. The same thing works for engaging scouts in leadership and getting the patrol system off the ground. What's the best way to learn to tie a square knot.

We'll have somebody show you, So there will be a part in the process where the Scoutmaster has to show them how things work and then, once they've seen how things work- just like tying that square knot- you're going to put the rope in their hands, so to speak. Let them at it.

Let them actually lead, make them responsible for things and then coach them and let them work at it. It's much more complex and layered than something as simple as tying a square knot, but I think the same concepts apply When we're dealing with youth leaders. All of us are going to be in those three stages where we're showing them things, where we're coaching them through things and where we're just letting them do things in all kinds of different things at different times.

I will tell you this: in my experience, most of us hold onto the rope a little bit longer than we need to. We should let go and let them at it. Now. You've shown them how to run the rest of the meeting a few times. Maybe it's their turn to try it. Don't wait until you think they're mature enough, because that is a shifting standard.

If you're like me, they're never going to be exactly mature enough to please you. There was a time, as a Scoutmaster, when I looked at a boy who was 15,, 16, 17 years old. I thought these guys are really mature and responsible and advanced. And years and years later, after working with dozens and dozens and dozens of 15,, 16, and 17 year olds, they're not all that mature to me.

So that standard might shift, I think. Instead of looking for maturity, look for the excitement and the engagement of them doing things for themselves.

They won't do it as well as you, That's a given. They won't do a very good job of it to begin with. Things may not look like they're moving ahead at all. They may look like they're moving backwards, But if you hold on to the rope, they're never going to get to give this a try.

So keep a half eye on what they do, because if you hover over them, they'll be watching you. Instead of doing what they need to do and then ask them after it's done how it went. There's where you get to coach a little in small steps and you build on things a little at a time.

They'll surprise you with how much they can do and how well they get things done. And let's face it every once in a while- it's just going to be a total mess. You'll work hard to find that one little glimmer of hope in the total mess and you'll congratulate them on that.

And then you'll work with them to start a discussion about how things could have gone better. Like I said, of course, we're better leaders and instructors than any 12 to 15 year old and, for the most part, any 15 to 20 year old, So watching them can be a little painful. You'll want to step in and fix things, but don't you dare Think of yourself as a scientist studying animals in their habitat or an orthologist looking at birds. Stay back, Don't let them catch you watching or they're going to get spooked. You'll learn a lot from what you see.

Let them do their best, congratulate them on it and then ask them if there's any way that things could have gone better. Don't preach, don't try and teach them anything. Just have a conversation and talk with them and listen to their answers carefully. I gotta tell you this really works, even when it looks like it doesn't. Keep your eye on what your scouts are actually doing.

Rather than measuring how well they do it, Encourage them, support them and make the most of every opportunity, and you've got to be patient with yourself, as you're learning how to do this too, Everett, I hope that helps. Thanks for getting in touch. You can get in touch with me and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.