Scoutmaster Podcast 214

I'm John Struemeier and I am a troop order of the Arrow Representative Advisor with Troop 55 in Houston, Texas. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me, And now it's your Scoutmaster. Hey, I wanted to share a joke with you today about Eagle projects, But, like most Eagle projects, it's not completed.

I'm still working on it, so you'll have to wait. Hey, this is podcast number 214.. Hey,

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clark Greene. Let's take a look at the mailbag and see who we've heard from in this past week.

Abdelhaman Char is from Agadar in Morocco and he wrote in to say: I visit your website regularly and I like it so much. I want to thank you for the efforts you do to serve the Scouting Movement. I'm a rover here in Morocco and I have a Facebook page where I translate Scouting Material from English to Arabic, and I hope I can get your permission to translate some of your articles. Abdelhaman, absolutely, you go right ahead. I extend that permission to any of you who are listening. If you want to use one of the articles or one of the podcasts or anything that we've produced, it's all freely offered to help support Scouting And all as we ask is that you just let folks know where it came from.

Terry Dutton is a Scoutmaster in Troop 16 in Oak Park, Illinois, And he says it's that time of year time to bring new leaders into the philosophy and methods of the Boy Scouting program. We all know how different that could be for our crossover Weebelow's adult leaders.

Your blogs and podcasts are great resources I'd love to share, but there are so many I don't know which ones you would think are particularly appropriate for introducing new leaders to the program. As always, your time and efforts are appreciated. Our Troop is stronger because our adult leaders are better at delivering the promise of Scouting thanks to your insights.

Well, thank you, Terry, And my answer for you is in Scoutmastership, in seven minutes or less, on this very podcast, And that'll be coming along in just a moment. But before we go there, I want to remind everybody: if you don't have the Scoutmaster CG app, I'm going to encourage you to give it a try. It's one way to keep up with us. You can access all the podcasts and the blog posts and the videos and more through the app, And it's available for Android devices on Google Play and for your iPhone or iPad on YouTube.

I want to let you know too that this week, Wednesday, March 26th, I'll be available at scoutmastercgcom to answer your questions or just to have a chat live between 8 and 9 pm Eastern Standard Time. So that's this Wednesday, 8 to 9 pm Eastern Standard Time, March 26th. Come to scoutmastercgcom and I'll be online. Hope to see you then. Let me see here.

Oh, I want to make sure to recognize a couple of people who signed up to be backers this week. Thanks to Alan Green and Ron Herrera. I really do appreciate it.

If you're a regular reader or listener and you're finding what is offered by scoutmastercgcom to be helpful, well, you can return the favor and help us keep things up and running by becoming a Scoutmaster CG backer. Funds from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing and distributing the blog and the podcasts and the videos, And we want to keep all of these resources freely accessible to Scouters all over the world.

Hey, we heard from Abdullah there in Morocco, so it actually does get out there, And backers help us do that. Alan and Ron, thanks once again.

Well, as I said earlier in this podcast and Scoutmaster Ship, in seven minutes or less we're going to welcome Weeblows, Dan leaders who are crossing the bridge with their Weeblows into Scouts. I have a little message for you, And then we've got some email questions to answer.

So let's get started. Shall we Scoutmaster Ship in seven minutes or less?

Well, if you're listening to this, I'm going to assume you've been a Weeblows Dan leader and now you're an assistant Scoutmaster. Maybe you're a member of the committee, maybe you're even a Scoutmaster now And you just crossed the bridge with your Weeblows into a Scout troop.

Now I got to tell you I was a Weeblows Dan leader. I was. I had 18 Weeblows in my den. It wasn't a really great idea. Don't do that, Don't do that- But I was in my early 20s and I had a giant Weeblows Dan. A long time ago, Weeblows was still a one-year program And the next year, after being a Weeblows Dan leader, the Scoutmaster of the troop that we wanted to join was retiring and I stepped into the Scoutmaster spot and I've been there for the past 30 years Now.

It took some time and mentoring to get me to stop being a den leader and start being a Scoutmaster. It took a long time and it took some very patient people to do that. There were some very patient Scouters in my troop who had been through everything before, and I had the presence of mind to listen to them most of the time- maybe not always, And I didn't always like what I heard, and you won't always like what you hear with the experienced Scouters in your troop, But that's okay. When they joined and they became new Scout leaders, they probably didn't like everything they heard either.

The changes are a little abrupt, So let's take a look at what happens. When you get to this side of the bridge, Your role as a Scouter really changes pretty significantly.

Think about it: Den leaders are required to do most of the planning and leading that now are the responsibility of the youth leadership in a Scout troop. The Scouts who are once members of your Weeblows Den are now under the leadership of a patrol leader.

They are now his responsibility. If that responsibility is to have any real integrity, the patrol leader for your past Weeblows has to be given plenty of latitude to do the job as he sees fit. Your Scouts are going to continue to look to you for direction. They are in the habit of your being there and having all the answers. When they do this, you turn them right back around to their patrol leader and tell them to ask their patrol leader for answers, even if you already know the answer, You turn them right back around to the patrol leader.

Another thing I want to tell you is that any concerns that you may have over what's happening in the patrol, take that to the Scoutmaster rather than the patrol leader. You're going to find out that youth leaders in a Scout troop are very respectful and responsive to any direction or comment that an adult makes And, keeping that in mind, it's important that direction comes from the Scoutmaster. The Scoutmaster is the head coach. He's the head coach of this scouting team and he needs your cooperation.

So if you were an assistant coach somewhere, you wouldn't just on your own initiative charge out onto the field during a game to direct the players. No, you would always make sure to check through with the head coach because he's running the show.

So stay on the sidelines, talk to the head coach. That's the way that this works. You're going to have two reactions to what you see youth leaders doing. One reaction is: you're going to be pretty impressed that they are actually able to do what they do. There's going to be some things that you're going to think: wow, that is a pretty capable young man. The other reaction is going to be on the total opposite end of the spectrum.

You're going to wonder if they have a clue about what they're doing. Well, welcome to the club, brother or sister. It's a natural reaction that all Scouters experience until they learn how all this comes together.

You know, as a den leader you were a hero. You're a familiar voice, kind of a port in the storm. You leave all that behind and let the older Scouts pick up where you left off. You're not going to like everything they do, but be patient and hold your tongue and observe from a distance and see what you can learn about the way all of this comes together. Someday your boy is going to be an older Scout. He's going to be working with a new set of Webelos that have just crossed the bridge and you're going to expect the people who are in your position then to have some respect for what your son is doing.

You need to get a lawn chair, if you don't already have one, because for the next few months it's going to be your most valuable tool as a Scouter. When you go camping, find a nice shady spot, set up the lawn chair and watch. You're going to learn a lot At meetings, find a comfortable observation post and become a student of Scouts behavior, kind of. In the same way an ornithologist watches birds from a distance, out of sight and in absolute silence. You're going to learn a great deal by doing this. At the same time, learn everything you can about Scouting.

Read books, check out what you find online and take every training course you can fit into your schedule. Scouts love to talk and there's always plenty to talk about, so keep your ears open, and there's always plenty of work for Scouts to do too, and no doubt you're going to be asked to help out in one capacity or another.

Now, there's no secret formula or 10 steps to ultimate Scoutmaster'ship that I'm going to be able to share with you. The simple fact is that we're all doing Scouting because we aim to help boys become young men of character and usefulness. That's all it counts. The rest is window dressing.

So we need to keep our eye on that aim. I've never known a Scout or a Scouter who doesn't hit a rough spot here or there. Don't give up and don't give in. Stick with the program.

You may not believe me, but your boy is going to be an adult before you know it, and I have yet to meet anyone who has regretted the time they spent in Scouts with their sons. I do know a few who would tell you they wish they had spent far more.

This is a wonderful journey and it's great fun, and I'm so glad that you've decided to undertake it, and I want to hear about the experiences that you have in this first year of being a Scouter and a Troop. So get in touch with me, won't you? And you're going to find out how to do that towards the end of the podcast. Island cleanse and trucking bends to grip the aisles- We love the best. Write me a letter, Send it by name

Email, that is, folks. And here's an answer to one of your emails. Oh, we got a whole bunch of email questions here. We heard from Matt Malendick, who's the Scoutmaster of Troop 915 in Canal Fulton, Ohio.

What do you do if a Scout loses his handbook and there are no records to back up what he had recorded in it? This happened to one of my Scouts recently.

Now we have his tenderfoot achievement recorded, but he had several requirements, in second and first class too, that we didn't have written down anywhere other than his handbook. My thought was to sign off the tenderfoot. Because we already know he's taking care of that and because the Scout is trustworthy, I'll sit down with him and we'll do our best to remember what for second and first class requirements he had completed.

I know that he had a few done- probably not that many- and we should be able to figure it out. I'm interested in your perspective and thoughts on this.

Well, Matt, it sounds to me like you have this just right: Sit down with the Scout and the both of you do your best to recreate what he had signed off. This is not the first Scout handbook that has totally disappeared or gone missing or gotten lost, and there's no, there's no compelling reason that a Scout should have to go back and recreate and redo every single requirement.

You know you're gonna sit down with them. You're going to start out by saying: you know we both understand that a Scout is trustworthy, so we're going to do our best to honestly figure out what requirements you had signed off.

If there's any question about it, it's not going to be that big a deal, because it's kind of fun to do them anyway, right? This email is an anonymous email. During a Scoutmasters conference, I asked a Scout for his reflections on the Scout Oath and Law. Straight away he told me he didn't really think God needed to be in the Oath or Reverend in the Scout Law. I was kind of shocked and I did my best not to show it. He went on and he said that he thought that Scouts should just be able to have fun, learn and grow and stuff like that, and God doesn't need to be a part of it.

He mentioned that his parents were from two different religions and he didn't feel particularly close to either faith. Once he got started he began to go on with a lot of fervor saying: in my opinion- and that's where I stopped him- I said let's take your opinion out of this for a moment- There's good reasons that God is in the Scout Oath and that being Reverend is the 12th point of the Scout Law and we learned how to be Reverend and respectful of all religions. I asked him what he might do to give his best effort towards his duty to God and after some thought he said that he might study a religious text of one of his parents' religions and I said that was fine and I suggested maybe he could take a few minutes and meet with a religious leader of any faith just to have a little chat and to see what the leader might share with him, and he agreed to make that happen.

Has this sort of thing ever happened to you? I feel pretty good about my response, but I still wonder if I said the right things.

Well, I think you handled the situation you described very well. You'll say the right things if you have a good heart and an understanding of what we're doing and where we're headed as Scouts. The real test is how we react to what some would find a little jarring or difficult.

That Scouts share with us, and I think you passed with flying color. Now another email question gives us some guidance on how we address matters of religious faith in general. On a recent camp, out before a meal, a scout leader decided to lead Grace for us. He made the sign of the cross and said a prayer that I actually say every evening with my family. I wasn't sure if it was appropriate for scouting or not, because it is a specifically Christian prayer.

I would have much rather had a scout chaplain's aide be given the opportunity to say grace, but besides that, can you help me with this? Are faith specific prayers appropriate, or should we maybe be more general?

Well, when it comes to prayers and worship or discussions of faith and scouting, we'll take our guidance from the statement of religious principle offered by the BSA. Now, I have no argument with anyone who wishes to share a prayer or reflection of their specific faith. However, any prayer or reflection like that ought to be contextualized by what we seek to accomplish as Scouts In a situation where we're aware that not everyone present is going to share the same religious faith. A faith, specific prayer or reflection can be looked on as an imposition.

It's not particularly courteous, is it? If a scout or scouter asked to offer a prayer or lead a religious reflection or worship service, I would ask them to preface it by noting that in scouting, we express reverence not only as our personal dedication to a specific faith, but as an opportunity to learn about and express our respect for the faith of others. When I lead a reflection personally or a prayer, I say something like: in the scout oath we affirm our duty to God and in the scout law we aspire to be reverent. Scouts respect the differences in the way people express their faith, but, more importantly, we search for those things that all faiths share in common. If I was going to offer a prayer that was an expression of my faith specifically, I'd first acknowledge that it was an expression of my personal faith journey.

I would want to be careful that what I was saying was not mistaken for an imposition of my faith on others, but simply as a way for me to share what I believe. Now, for many years, I've taken the lead from the Religious Society of Friends or the Quakers, and I've asked for everyone to join me in a moment of mindful silence rather than saying a prayer, and in that moment of mindful silence, I tell everyone that we can express our thanks, each in our own fashion, and reflect on our own faith.

So, in my opinion, it's not that faith specific things are improper- there are situations in which they would be a little discourteous and inconsiderate- and that in scouting, we have this wonderful opportunity not only to express faith specifically, but to learn, and to learn respect for all expressions of faith represented by our scouts. And there's this email question that, for obvious reasons, will remain anonymous.

We have a scout diagnosed with ADHD. He is on medication and his parents do not want his identity to be shared or even have his medical form on file with us for fear that somebody is going to read it and reveal this secret. At this point, only the committee chair knows who this scout is.

I think that for this scout safety, all of the registered adults involved should always have access to this form and the Scoutmaster, as well as all the assistant Scoutmasters, should be informed of all important health information, even at troop meetings. This knowledge and having the form on hand seemed to be pretty important to me.

How do we work this out with a parent who's reluctant to share this information at all? I'll tell you what. Go to the health form and you're going to see the parent's signature under this statement, Quote: I further authorized the sharing of the information on this form with any BSA volunteers or professionals who need to know of medical conditions that may require special consideration in conducting scouting activities.

Unquote: So that's right there. On the medical form, It's really not a question, is it? I mean they have already given the permission for this information to be shared. They may not have read the form very carefully- Most of us don't right- But that permission and that statement is there for a very good reason.

When we're charged with the care of a scout, we have to know if a scout is taking medication, even for something like ADHD, so we can monitor his behavior and we make sure that he remembers to take his medication. Hiding this sort of information is really endangering the well being of a scout, and it actually can be endangering other scouts in our care.

I want to know if this scout is carrying medication, and I need to know that he understands he must never share it with any other scouts or leave it in a place where other scouts have access to it. I understand that parents can be a little jumpy about this stuff, but your committee chair really needs to talk them through this. There's really no way their son can participate safely without trusting the scouters charged with his care.

You know, I think if you got a dozen scout age children together- not even just in a scout group at school anywhere, three of them are taking some kind of medication or have an allergy or a medical condition that, as it says on the medical form, may require special consideration in conducting scouting activities. While a parent may be skittish about something like this, they really need to understand that it would be irresponsible to do anything else but to share this information with the volunteers involved so that they can look after their son.

And, last but not least, guess what? Another anonymous one. That's right.

Here's the email. I am a former cub master and just started as a Scoutmaster about six months ago. I have two sons in the troop. The previous Scoutmaster was pretty anxious to step down and turn the program over to me. I've been through a lot of training and I'm very committed to the patrol method.

We have about four or five experienced scouts ages 13 and 14 that may be good leaders in another year or so, but our older scouts, age 15 into 17, don't seem to be committed to the program. They don't seem to be willing to lead, they're not interested in camping other than summer camp and they've commented that they really aren't interested in hanging out with the younger scouts.

Now I inherited this situation, but I'm concerned about the new scouts that have followed me through the Cub Scout program and I also feel like I'm failing to make a positive impact on the older scouts. Well, listen, it sounds like you have the best of intentions and you're asking all the right questions.

You've inherited a really difficult situation from your perspective, but I want to encourage you to spend some time in the shoes of your older scouts and see if you can empathize with them a little. If I'm one of these older scouts, I've been around for a few years and my old Scoutmaster defined what scouting was for me, as did the scouts who preceded me under his direction.

The old man's gone now and you know what I could feel- a little betrayed by that, I might be a little relieved, or I probably have both reactions at the same time. I may be thinking: you know, this new Scoutmaster is speaking some sort of foreign language. This is not the way the old Scoutmaster was. He's got new ideas that aren't anything that we've ever seen before, and I'm finding it a little insulting that this new Scoutmaster thinks he knows better than we do. We've been doing this longer than he has and really all he cares about is his kids and the young scouts. And those young scouts are just a pain.

They're just little kids. I finally stopped being a little kid and I don't want to hang out with little kids anymore. I like my friends. We know each other. We've done a lot together. This is the way our troop has always been, and the new people are trying to change things and to change us and we don't like it one bit.

A 15 to 17 year old is not really going to be very adept at expressing themselves in the language or ways that adults do. As a matter of fact, I think most of the time they actively resist adults trying to communicate with them because, in their opinion, adults don't understand anything anyway. Right, Your challenge, then, as the new Scoutmaster, is sitting down with each of them individually and asking some questions. See if you can figure your way out of this. I wouldn't spend any more than five minutes with each scout. I would make it quick and I would have my listening ears on.

I might ask him to tell me a little bit about life in the troop before I got there, what they like to do and what they don't like. I would ask them what goals they have for the next few months so far scouting is concerned. I would ask them how they think I, as the Scoutmaster, can help them achieve those goals. I would ask them what they think of the new scouts.

Do they see themselves being able to help them like the older scouts who were there to help them when they were younger? You get the idea right: open ended questions that, trying figure out exactly what the attitude and the mindset of these older scouts are.

Now I'm going to tell you something important: don't comment on their answers unless you have something positive to say. Don't issue any opinions or judgments. Just listen.

I want to emphasize how important that is because if you start issuing judgments or opinions, they're going to shut down. They're not going to share anything with you.

Now, once you've met with each one of these scouts individually, spend a few days thinking about what they've told you and I bet some answers will begin to form. Then get the whole group of older scouts together and talk.

Tell them that you're not too certain about how to move forward- you know that you're the new guy and they've been around for a while- and tell them that you do have a vision for how things should be, but it's never going to work if it's not a vision that you all share. Ask them how, together, you can shape a few goals for the next few months and work together to make them happen.

So just to be clear, the plan is that you do some listening, some heartfelt thinking, and then you define a decision point. You involve them in shaping an agreement you can all get along with. It won't check every single box for you, it won't check every single box for them, but it's the basis of a working relationship. You may break through and you may not. If they aren't interested, then it's time for them maybe to think about moving on, plain and simple. There's no option available in which they just hang out and don't do anything, as it's happening now.

I will tell you as a friend: you're a hundred percent dead wrong about one thing. When you say you have four or five experienced scouts from between the age age 13 and 14 that may be good leaders in another year or so, you're just wrong. These scouts are ready to be leaders now. If they are ready to say, yes, I'll do that. They're ready to start leading. Don't underestimate them or marginalize them.

A leader is the guy who steps up and their age is inconsequential. If you see a glimmer of leadership initiative in any of those guys, give that. Get them into a position of responsibility right away. There's no seniority in scouting. If the older scouts get chapped because younger ones are leading them, challenge them to have a little initiative and step up like those younger guys did. I've seen 12 to 14 year old scouts who are much stronger leaders than many older scouts.

Listen, I hope all that helps. If you have a question and you'd like to get in touch with me, you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.