Scoutmaster Podcast 204

I'm Justin Feld and I'm a scoutmaster with Troop 89 in Downers Grove, Illinois. This edition of the Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now the old scoutmaster. Hey, one of my favorite philosophers is Red Green, And if you don't know who Red Green is, just keep listening. But he said a tree is just a campfire waiting to happen.

Alright, this is podcast number 204.. Hey Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Oh my, The second podcast of the year. Let's take a look at the mailbag We heard from Andy McDonald, who's a scoutmaster with Troop 196 in Winnersprings, Florida, Who said: I really am enjoying the app. I'm having a little trouble listening to some podcasts.

They seem to cut off. But thanks for all you do. I'm a brand new quote green, unquote scoutmaster. Any help with the app is appreciated. Over the past couple of weeks we had a bit of a problem with the hosting service where scoutmastercgcom lives. They cut out for a little while and some of the access to the files on the host, which includes the podcast, have been a little spotty.

And when the app plays a podcast it's playing it off of that server, which is probably way too much information than anybody needed. But if you're having a problem accessing the podcast through the app, let me know and I will certainly look into it And I think we got everything corrected so far. But there's a little more news about that later on in the podcast. Steve Cottrell is a cubmaster and he is with PAC 3623 up in Michigan And he said I wanted to let you know. I've been enjoying your podcast for several months now. I started at the beginning and I am working my way through them.

I'm in the late 70s now And I recently listened to episode 69 and why. It was really touched by the story of a scouting dad. I'm an eagle scout and a cubmaster of my son's PAC. He started last year as a tiger cub and I'm excited to return to scouting after a nearly 20 year hiatus. As you noted in your story, it's fun and rewarding to watch my son grow and to watch his friends and fellow cubs grow too. I listened to the story and I imagine the years to come with my own son and the other scouts, And I was even more touched when I thought about my own dad and how it must feel seeing his grandson in a scout uniform.

Dad was there for me and my brother, who is also an Eagle Scout, as a den leader, a cubmaster and assisted scoutmaster. Last year he found some of our old scout stuff and gave it to me And I now wear his cub scout leader neckerchief and my son is currently wearing my old wolf neckerchief and slide.

After some 15 years dad's now an active member of scouting, again as a chartered organization representative. I want to heartily thank you for such a wonderful story.

Would you allow me to take that story and play it for parents when it comes time to recruit volunteers? Certainly, Steve. Anything that you find on scoutmastercgcom is freely offered for advancing the cause of scouting And you can use it in any way that you see fit. All I ask is that you let people know where you found it. Steve went on to say: although I'm not yet involved in a scout troop, I find the podcast insightful and I try and listen with a cubmaster's ear to get the most of what you have to offer.

I've told several other scouts about your show so they can try it out for themselves. Keep up the good work and thanks for all you do. And PS, my kids actually enjoy your jokes and ask me to play the ones I have on my MP3 player when we're in the car.

Well, Steve, thanks for the words of encouragement. I'm glad you found the story that we told in podcast number 69 to be meaningful to you.

I'm so happy you're back in scouting- and it is such great fun to be in scouting with your son- and something that any of us who've been through that whole thing will tell you will never, ever regret spending the time to do it. Chris Dunlap wrote in to say: I'm an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 1849 in Chickpea, Massachusetts. I'll be taking over the role of Scoutmaster in September 2014.. Keep up the good work and I love the resources and thanks, Chris. Good on you for becoming a Scoutmaster. It's a big job, but, just as I said in response to Steve a moment ago, I've never regretted a moment that I've spent with it.

Simon said I was wondering if it would be possible to use your not infographic diagram on a scout website I'm working on in Athlone, Ireland. Certainly, Simon, I'll repeat what I told Steve again, and I wanted to make sure to include these two messages just to cement down the fact that anybody is welcome to use anything we produce.

All as we want is attribution. Just tell people where you found the information, where you found the podcast, where you found the infographic. That's all, But it's all there to be used and to be shared. Jim Grig is a Scoutmaster with Troop 199 in Oldwick, New Jersey, And he wrote to say: I love what you're doing for scouting, Scouters and, ultimately, scouts. I've attached a photo of a pioneering project that's a result of the skills and interests created from taking a backwards engineering course at Mount Alamucki Scout Reservation in New Jersey last summer.

Participants now have a real new appreciation of STEM concepts and engineering applied in a really fun way, And I've got to agree, Jim, thanks for sending me that picture. Dave Edwards said I'm a new subscriber and just started listening to your podcast. I'm a Luden leader of Weeblows 2 of PAC 92 in Tom's River, New Jersey. Many years ago I recall a story at summer camp about a young Native American coming of age who had to set out on his own for a period of time. It was a really great story And I wonder if any of your listeners can help me find it.

Well, Dave, we'll do our best. That's a note to everybody listening.

Do you have such a story? If you'll send it to me, I'll make sure that Dave gets it. Bill Young was back in touch with us. He had emailed some months ago about the issue of scout accounts, which we dealt with this past week on the blog, And he wanted to send his thanks for sending out information on that issue And thank you, Bill, for bringing it up to my attention. We had our scout circle for January last night And we had a great time with Kevin Callan who discussed winter camping, And amongst the people who were participating was John Dyer and Todd Archer who helped out with some really great questions, And Todd said thanks for an excellent show with lots of interesting tips.

You know I got to say that Arlen Ward, who was hosting the show last night, and myself and Kevin all had our winter hats on during the show because, hey, we were talking about winter camping. But Todd said it was like watching a wacky scout version of the Red Green show. If you're not familiar with Red Green, go to YouTube. Red Green's a goddess television show in Canada And it's kind of hard to describe. But boy, I'll tell you it's one of my favorite shows And it's over on YouTube. You can usually find a couple episodes of it over there.

Jim Gilligy is a scoutmaster with Troop 17 in Mansfield, Massachusetts, And he said: when will we hear something more from Brick Mason? It seems like ages since we've had a Brick Mason episode.

Well, Jim, it's only ages because nobody asks. So you asked you'll get and listen for a new episode of Brick Mason a little later on in this podcast.

Well, time is marching on And the improvements to scoutmastercgcom that have been made possible by our backers are almost ready to launch. We've upgraded our internet hosting service, We've redesigned the site slightly and we've added some new features, And I have a guest I want to introduce you to to talk about one of those new features I'm very excited about.

So let's listen to this. Joining me on the podcast today is someone I'm very excited about. I'm very excited to reintroduce to you. If you're a long-time listener, you heard this young man back last year.

We did an interview with him. His name is Enoch Hyze And he comes to us from the town of Bells, Texas.

Is that right, Enoch? Did I get that right? That's correct.

It's a tiny little town, but it's about two hours north of Dallas, if you know where that is. Enoch is going to be heading up something new at scoutmastercgcom, intended for youth leaders, that we're calling Green Bar Life, Enoch's especially suited to do this.

It's not been too long, Enoch, since you were a youth leader yourself, Right, Yeah, I'm 19 now, up till the time I turned 18.. I was a senior patrol leader at my troop And before that I was a patrol leader And I had really gotten into it and really was passionate about it, And I'm looking forward to sharing some of what I learned to some other scouts. You have a blog yourself- And I know that a lot of people who are listening have seen that blog, And it's called Scouting Rediscovered. Tell us a little bit about it. I started when I was 16.. I wanted to share some of what I was learning about the traditional scouting history and some of the stuff of the program that I just wasn't really seeing a lot of today, And I thought it was really cool whenever I'd read it.

You could check it out: scoutingrediscoveredcom. What are we aiming at here?

What are we going to try and do? I envision a place on the web where youth leaders, patrol leaders, senior patrol leaders can come and they can get some good information on leadership and ideas about stuff they can do with their troop and their patrol And a place where they can go if they have questions too, A place that they can be around a lot of other scouts who are going through the same things, And just a little bit of a web community that will help strengthen patrol leaders. It's basically about finding out that you're not alone and that people are going through the same types of challenges and having the same kinds of achievements And being able to share.

That has been important for me personally and a lot of the people who are listening, And we want to extend that to youth leaders. We want to get them involved in a conversation that will help them with what they're doing. Yeah, definitely. Whenever I first started getting more and more information about scouting and I was getting more passionate about being a patrol leader and being a senior patrol leader, when I went to summer camps and other places, I didn't see a lot of other scouts that took it as seriously as me, And I know there's plenty of scouts out there that are taking it serious, And I just don't want them to have that kind of that alone feeling that I'm the only one that really cares about this, because there's a ton of other people that care about it. It's just sometimes hard to stay connected with everybody. Yeah, and hopefully we'll be able to form those connections.

As we're recording this, we're still working on all of the framework and the way that this is exactly going to roll out, But I was so excited about the prospect of it. I wanted to make sure that you're aware You can start talking to maybe the scout that lives in your house who is a patrol leader or a system patrol leader, you know, has some kind of position of responsibility, And maybe the scouts in your unit, and we'll have some more definitive information about participating in this within the next week or so, But we're still developing it. I wanted to make sure that you knew about it and that you met Enoch. Let's start talking to our youth leaders. Maybe you can just ask them if this would be of any interest to them at all. To start with, We're working out some kind of virtual parental permission system.

We are being very careful to observe all of the youth protection policies that we all want to make sure are in place. Enoch, I'm really looking forward to it. We'll get this live and launched very soon, Definitely. Yeah, I'm really excited about this and I'm excited about what it can become And I am really looking forward to that too. Give me just a few more days, folks. I know I keep saying this.

There's a lot of work and I'm getting it done and I'm no expert when it comes to these things, So I'm kind of learning to put these things together as we go. As I said, all of this is being made possible, as well, as this podcast, as you heard right at the beginning, is being made possible by folks who become backers for ScoutmasterCGcom. If you're a regular reader and listener and you're finding what we offer to be valuable and it's helping you out, you can help us keep things up and running and to make improvements and add new features, like Green Bar Life, by becoming a ScoutmasterCGcom backer. Funds from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing the blog and the posts and the podcast and the videos that are a valuable resource and accessible to Scouters all over the world.

This past week, we had four folks join us as backers and I want to make sure to recognize them. Thank you to Aaron Albright, Mike Flurant, Fred Grover and Carol Brennan. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for your support and your interest in the work and making all of this possible.

Well, in this podcast, in ScoutmasterCG in seven minutes or less. I've got a great idea to share with you that came in from a listener, about evaluating Scout Spirit.

And then I've got a brief email question for you and, as promised, somewhere in there, a new episode of Brick Mason. So hold on to your hats, let's get started, shall we Scout MasterChip in seven minutes or less? This email I'm about to read is the most reason in a discussion I've been having with a Scouter friend who asked to remain anonymous in this particular situation, and we had been discussing the evaluation of Scout Spirit.

My contention was: well, I think it's a good thing for a Scout to be able to self-evaluate, and if a Scouter handles this properly, it can be a very meaningful discussion with the Scout. And he was a little concerned that maybe that wasn't enough, and so he and their troop committee were discussing how they were going to do this and they were thinking about trying to maybe establish some kind of a standard.

And I warned them against that, because those standard type things don't usually work very well, and that this needed to be an individual evaluation of progress rather than some kind of progress towards an objective standard. We've talked about this before on the podcast, but I think what my friend came up with was a very brilliant solution, and let me read to you what he wrote. We agreed with your view that Scouts began at different starting points with maturity and home life and values and challenges, and should be judged on the progress they have made as an individual rather than towards some objective standard of Scout Spirit. We saw that Scouts seemed to take the whole question more seriously.

If we included others in evaluating the Scout Spirit requirement for each rank, There was a noticeable improvement in behavior in our troop when we did this. Since the requirement states that Scouts should live the Scout Oath and Law in their everyday life. We are asking Scouts parents to help us evaluate this and asking the Scouts Patrol Leader and the Senior Patrol Leader and the Patrol Leaders Council to give us their evaluation of Scout Spirit when it comes to that individual Scout.

So we're getting feedback from parents and youth leaders. This gives parents more involvement and awareness of what's happening in the program and gives youth leaders a responsible role in the question too. This is what we tell Scouts to do. We ask you to have two conversations: one with your mom and dad and the other with your Patrol Leader. Tell them that, as a Scout, you are trying to live the values of the Scout Oath and Law in your everyday life and that you'd appreciate their feedback.

Ask them where you're doing well and areas that you could grow in. Be ready to talk about four specific points of the Scout Law, as the requirement says, and have an honest conversation about the times where you could have done better.

Your mom or dad and your Patrol Leader should put their initials on this requirement in their Scout Handbook so that we know that you've discussed this with them. You don't have to live up to the Scout Oath and Law perfectly.

What we want to see is effort on your part and progress. If there are any areas to grow in, we want you to aim for improvement in the future.

I think that that is actually a pretty brilliant idea. When we're looking at this evaluation, it's always a tricky one. This is one of those real big judgment calls that we make as Scouters. Make sure that we're not adding anything to the requirements.

So my only caution on doing something like this is if somebody is unresponsive, if a parent is so disengaged and unresponsive and so uninvolved in their child's life- and unfortunately that happens from time to time that they don't take advantage of this opportunity to sit down and discuss what's happening in Scouts with them. We'd never hold that against the Scout because that's something that's out of their control.

But getting a parent's feedback, getting the patrol leader's feedback, getting the senior patrol leader's feedback, I think that's a really good idea. I don't think it adds to the requirement and if it's handled properly, it wouldn't create a stumbling block for the Scout. When it comes to matters of policy, I'm careful to say what you hear on the podcast and read on the blog is sometimes my opinion, and it's sometimes my best attempt to express what I read about policies and procedures. In this case, this is my opinion.

This is not a policy and procedure statement and there's plenty of room to disagree with me on it. But that's kind of the genius of Scouting, isn't it?

We can take different approaches that work, so long as we're not adding to the requirements, so long as we're not creating stumbling blocks for Scouts and so long as we're not too doctrinaire and too picky about things. I think my friend has come up with a very interesting and innovative way of including as many people in the Scout's life as possible in this evaluation and making it real. I wanted to share it with you once again. Just my opinion. It's not official policy, it's not official procedure, and you may differ with the way that they're doing it, but that's alright.

You don't have to do it that way, do you? In a time marked by a lack of truth. A world turns to. Frick Mason. Scoutmaster. Good evening Scouts.

Good evening Scouts. Hey, Mr Ram. Hi, Mr Ram, You will kindly lend me your attention for a moment. I would like to demonstrate to you the formation of the Bolin Canot. You mean the Bolin.

Well, some variations in pronunciation of certain notting terminology. Can I show how you do it? But I was instructed that the pronunciation Bolin Canot is perhaps the most accurate. You might be talking about the bow line. Regardless, let us proceed. First, one secures a length of cordage, such as I hold a little short, then losses that length of cordage around one's waist.

Be long enough seems to be inadequate. That's only six feet. Let me get you one of the ten foot ropes. He's a big guy.

I'll pass the cordage around my waist and then relate to you a slightly humorous story that will help you. Find I remember that that will assist you in forming the Bolin Canot, should you remember the story? It begins with the formation of the Borough of the Lagomor. No, it's the hole in the bottom Borough of our fine, long-eared forest friend.

What It's? A bunny, Do you mean a rabbit? It's a bunny, It's a rabbit, Perhaps better known by his common name, the rabbit. Yes, or indeed bunny. We like the bunny. Anyway.

In my left hand, I form the cordage into what is commonly called a loop. In my right hand, representing the Lagomor, with the loop representing his Borough, I put the knot, I put the end of the cordage through. You see, thusly this represents the Lagomor leaving his Borough.

The bunny, It's a bunny, isn't it? That's really something. That's what always happens. That's what I say. It's such a lively chap. This piece of cordage represents a tree that is in a close proximity to the Lagomor.

The Lagomor, in our story, goes around the tree thusly, and then returns to his Borough, and this appropriately forms the Bolin Knot. Once we

Have the knot formed, we jig it up. I don't think he got it. Oh boy, The Bolin Knot is restricting my ability to respirate. I have apparently formed it incorrectly. I'm going to have to be cut off. Thank you, Careful.

Well, Look at this. Look at this.

Here's the way it works. See how he's got it.

Now It's supposed to be a running loop. Perhaps he would like to share that

With your fellow Scouts. Well, I go over to this quadrant of the meeting room. That's an idea. Put your feet up and regain my composure.

Why don't you do that? We'll tie some knots.

Here we go. Look at the Bolin. Yeah, Bolin, Join us again for another exciting episode in the career of Britt Mason. Scoutmaster Email that is.

Folks, and here's an answer to one of your emails.

I had this email from Terry Dutton and he said: as always, your efforts are appreciated. I find myself improving my own methods to do best to meet the needs of our Scouts. Based on your advice, I did a little bit of a study. I had a sense that Scouts who joined our troop outside of the typical time frame didn't stay active in the troop for very long. I looked at all Scouts joining our troop from 2006 to 2011. That was approximately 90 Scouts in the 5th and 6th grades.

Those who joined during the typical time frame- April through early September- attended a median of 13 weekend campouts and achieved a median of 3 rank requirements in their scouting tenure. Scouts who joined after September attended a median of 2 weekend campouts and achieved a median of 0 rank requirements in their scouting tenure. I was shocked at the difference between these two groups.

I think 6th grade Scouts who joined late missed key experiences like the first year at summer camp and forming patrols and the excitement of tender foot rank advancement with their peers. Scouts who come into the middle of this sort of thing seemed to have a sense of missing out.

Now we know this, we're going to make every attempt possible to get our Scouts registered and active in the spring, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Well, Terry, I think that was a very astute observation on your part and I think it's consistent with what I have seen too.

I think that that first year of summer camp with your brand new patrol after you've joined this troop in the late winter, early spring, is pretty crucial to your future involvement in Scouts, and I try and communicate that as strongly as possible to parents who are looking at our troop for their boys. My preference would be that Scouts joined the troop much earlier than April if it was possible, but it doesn't seem like everybody follows the Weeblows 2 program, where they're basically supposed to be done before the holidays and be in the troop in the mid to late winter. I would really rather see it happen that way.

Barring, that I really appreciate you sharing those findings with me, and I think it will interest everybody listening too to understand that the earlier in the year when our Weeblows transition happens, it seems to indicate that things go better for Scouts who do that earlier in the year than later. Thanks very much, Terry. If you have a question or a comment or something that you found that you'd like to share with me, you can get in touch with me about how to do that in just a moment.