Scoutmaster Podcast 202

I am Daniel Desjardins, I'm Brian Bluen And I am a Scoutmaster. We threw four, two, six in London, there in New Hampshire, And I am a Cub master with PAC three, two, eight, five out of Rockford, Michigan.

This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like us And now the old Scoutmaster. Well, this is the last podcast for this year And the new year is waiting, And it's waiting for you and me and our resolutions. Right, I don't know about you, but mine tend to go in one year and out the other. Hey, this is. This is podcast number 202..

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green, And just before I start with the mailbag this week, it came to me that this is a little bit like something I knew as a child. But let me play a little something for you.

So let's get started. Let's get started with the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green, And just before I start with the mailbag, little something for you and see if you remember this magic mirror. Tell me today that all my friends have fun at play.

All my friends had fun today, while I see Billy's having a special day, And so, as Barbara can, of course, friends. You know I see you love your friends. Have a good day. Bye, bye.

Are you hopelessly old like me? Do you remember the magic mirror? Anyway, no charge for that, Okay.

Anyway, I heard from Kerry this past week and he said: hi, Clark, And thank you so much for carrying on the scouting tradition in such a modern way. I'm an Eagle Scout And my experiences in scouting helped to set the course for my life. I appreciate your encouragement of the organization and of the role of Scoutmaster.

Well, thank you, Kerry. Always happy to hear that people are finding the podcast and finding it useful. There are a couple of reviews that came through this week for the Scoutmaster CG app.

Now the app is available for you on either an Android device or on iPhones and iPads. It's easy to find either at the Google Play store or on the iTunes app store, So check it out. You can access all the editions of the podcast.

Well, eventually you'll be able to access all the editions of the podcast. I think we've got the first 80 podcasts in the podcast archive right now And we're continually adding more. You may want to join the other folks who are accessing the blog and the podcast and all of the other resources through the app. It's a pretty easy way to keep up. Anyway, Steven Jarvis over at iTunes said this is a great resource for Scouters And the app is a great way to keep all the awesome resources at scoutmastercgcom at your fingertips. Literally.

It's easy to keep up with the podcast, blog, Twitter feed and more. Just another great addition to the family of useful resources for Scout leaders. Thanks, Steven. We've got a couple of new reviews over on Stitcher. If you're not interested in the app and you have a Stitcher smart radio, that's another way to access the podcast. Mike 381 said: always great content for anyone in scouting.

Share this link with everybody on your troop committee. Share it with your favorite cup parents so that they are prepared for the Boy Scout troop. If ScoutmasterCG says read this book, you read it. If he says buy this book, you buy one for yourself and copies for your favorite Scouters. Thanks for 200 plus weeks of great podcasts And thanks to Stitcher for making it easy to listen to. And thank you, Mike.

Also on Stitcher, Utah Scouter said this podcast is a must for new scouts. As a scout are getting ready to make the transition from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts, This podcast has provided a view into the Boy Scouting program. That will greatly benefit me and my son as I transition from the pack to the troop. Thanks, Utah. And we got this from best cook And I'm not going to tell you where best is, Let's see if you can guess, She said. I just wanted to take a moment from my summer break to say thank you for all the time and effort you put into ScoutmasterCGcom and your podcasts.

I found some of your diagrams while putting together a meeting a few months ago, discovered the podcast and, as a result, I am now hooked. In August of this year, I put my hand up to rescue a unit. I was a guide and ranger guide in my teens, but it had still been 15 years since I left. Although I've discovered you never really leave your right best. Your podcasts have been a lifesaver, especially in helping me to rebuild the patrol system.

We now have three patrols of four to five girls a piece and a thriving- dare I say, growing- unit. Having got back to basics, elected new patrol leaders, I now have a clear idea of taking my 2014 program towards more self government, with the confidence that my girls now have enough basic guiding skills to move forward and take responsibility. I'm recommending your podcast and site to any Australian guide leader who will listen.

Thanks again- I think I can safely say this comes from all my girls too- and keep up the good work. Well, thank you so much, Bess. And if you haven't guessed yet, Bess Cook is a guide leader in Sydney, Australia.

We're hearing more from the Scouters in Australia and I think that's just wonderful, And I'm still resisting doing my excellent Australian accent for you all, And I'll see if that makes, if that turns into a New Year's resolution. But it's always good to hear from folks. You're going to find out how to get in touch towards the end of the podcast. I hope you're enjoying the holidays. As I'm recording this podcast, I'm anticipating something in our little town's history that could prove to be kind of significant.

Now, it's no secret, I live in a little town in southeastern Pennsylvania called Kennett Square. Kennett Square has the distinction of being called the mushroom capital of the world. That's right, Mushrooms. Next time you go out and buy a can of mushrooms or fresh mushrooms, just take a look and see where they come from. I'll bet they came from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, But anyway, somebody in town came up with this brilliant idea for New Year's Eve We are going to have a mushroom drop.

Now what this is is it's a giant lighted mushroom that is going to drop from high above street level down to the street as we count down Allah. You know what they do up in Times Square, but they don't have a mushroom, They just have a ball.

We have a giant mushroom, So it's going to be kind of interesting. It's been all over the news, It's been on national news and things, So we're not quite sure what to expect. I am anticipating the first annual mushroom drop.

As I record, this podcast has absolutely nothing to do with scouts, But I just thought it was so interesting that I would mention it Now. As far as the site goes, over the holidays here I've been working behind the scenes preparing to launch a couple of new resources within the next few weeks, And things are coming together nicely.

I think you find them useful. As soon as all of those arrangements are in place, I'm going to let you know the details.

In the meantime, I want to let you know that those of you who have become backers are making all of this possible. If you're a regular reader or listener and you find what we are offering to be helpful.

Well, you can help to by keeping things up and running and become a Scoutmaster CG backer. Now. Funds from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing all of the resources, including the blog and the podcast and the videos that are proving to be a valuable resource.

We want to keep those freely accessible to Scouters all over the world. I want to make sure to take the time to thank the folks who signed up as backers over this past week, And I've got to say I am pleased and amazed that people are doing this during the holidays, But really thank you so much for your generosity Over the past week. Jim Gillagy, Dev McCabe, John Collins and Michael Doemer have joined the ranks of ScoutmasterCGcom backers, and we sure do appreciate it.

Well, in this podcast- and it's a brief one, because you know it's the holidays and we all have a lot to do in Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less, I got a couple of questions to get you ready for the new year, And then I have an email question, a very brief one, to answer, 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? Well, towards the end of the year. There's some. There's some traditional things that happen in scouting units. We're all just been through the big administrative task of rechartering our units and kind of assessing our past year and doing the journey to excellence and all that type of thing. Looking back on the past year, you're satisfied with a lot that's gone on.

If you're like me, there's going to be some things. You're not completely satisfied with, some things that you know you should do better.

So if you're dissatisfied- I got this to tell you good good, you should be dissatisfied because the Scouters are always striving. If you're like me, you're obsessed with getting things right and making the most of the opportunities that are presented to us.

We know that time flies and there is so much potential and so much more to do and there are so many possibilities. Now are you disappointed or irritated or impatient? That's not good And you shouldn't be. And let me tell you why. Being dissatisfied with things motivates us to do better.

Being dissatisfied or disappointed with people, that can make us irritable and impatient and grumpy, And I think there's a big difference. Now we accept that things are not always going to go well and we know that there's always going to be room for improvement. What we don't want to do is confuse the impermanence and uncertainty of things with the way people react to them.

Any scouter can throw an honestly deserved pity party any time we want, right, I mean, there is in the nature of the work. We can look at it and we can say: you know, I try really hard, I do everything I was trained to do and nobody seems to care. And I have been there, We've all been there before.

There are times when we are sure that we're hitting on all eight cylinders and stuff is going great And there's times when nobody seems to care at all- Parents and scouts. They may misbehave or game the system and they may not act as though they appreciate our efforts. They may take advantage of our kindness and they may be selfish and they may misunderstand what's going on. I got to tell you this is nothing new. This sort of thing has dogged every scouter for the past century. It doesn't take much to go back and to look at old scouting literature and see that we've always had the same frustrations.

And if we concentrate on the way people react, that's really frustrating. If we strive to study and understand why they're reacting the way that they react, we learn how to make a difference.

That's why I think every scouter should always have this little edge of dissatisfaction with the way things are going. But we need to strive not to be dissatisfied with the way people are reacting.

We need to study that and see what we can do to make things better. It's easy to take these reactions personally. If it's happened to every single scouter ever claimed the name over the past more than a century of scouting, it's going to happen to you. Don't take it personally. Just strive to make a difference, and making a difference happens one scout at a time, And really I got to tell you it really can't happen any other way.

That's why you are so important. That's why the work that you do is so important.

Get a hold on the spirit of service, not just to a program or an ideal, so much as service to an individual scout. How can you make their lives better?

How can you help them progress? What are you aiming at?

The answer is always based on the individual scout and for some it takes a lot of work to understand how we're going to reach them. I don't think I will ever be completely satisfied with my work as a scouter. I'll always strive to do better. Most of all, I'll strive never to allow my dissatisfaction to be directed at the reactions, but at the work itself.

Maybe then I'll get to be useful: Now what we've done over the past couple of months and filling out forms and assessing how we're doing. In that process, we're going to discover flaws.

We're going to discover the things that we need to work on. Each one of those things is not just a flaw or a shortcoming. It's a potential for doing better.

So welcome to the ranks of dissatisfied scouters. Good You ought to be. If we look at it through the spirit of service to the individual scout, it's going to be positive and it's going to make the coming year all that much better.

Email that is, folks, and here's an answer to one of your emails.

David wrote in with this question. He said: do you have any information on the rules and regulations stating what to do with money and gear for a unit if they disband or do not recharge her? David, the BSA has a what I would call rather obscure document called fiscal policies and procedures for BSA units. It was published just in August of 2013 and look for a more complete post on it later this week on scoutmastercgcom. This is what it says about what should happen to unit funds and equipment if a unit should dissolve. If there's any outstanding obligations, of course funds need to be applied to those.

If there's a surplus leftover, the charter organization and the local council agree on who should hold those things in trust pending the reorganization of the unit or for the promotion of the program. In finding the answer to your question, I found this fiscal policies and procedures document and, as I said, we're going to expand on it in a post later on this week, So keep an eye out for that. If you have a question and you'd like to get in touch, you can certainly do that, and you're going to find out how to make that happen in just a moment.