Scoutmaster Podcast 219

I'm Jeff Cavistat and I just wrapped up two years as Scoutmaster of troop 965, Kuwait City, Kuwait. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now to you, Scoutmaster. You know, believe it or not, one of the more difficult things about putting a podcast together is finding a really good scout-oriented joke to share with you right at the beginning of the podcast, which is what I usually do.

Right now I'm going through some submissions here. People do send me ideas for it and you're welcome to. I'd like you to.

There's one here about pizza, but that one is really too cheesy, I think. And this one about the sidewalks. You've heard the one about the sidewalks. It's all over town already. There's this one about the clouds, but I'm pretty sure it's over your head. And this one- somebody sent me one about a bed, but I don't think it's even been made up yet.

So do your best, send me a good scout-oriented joke that I can share with everybody, and we'll stop

Punishing everyone at the oh my, oh well, Hey, this is podcast number 219.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look at the mailbag to see who got in touch over the past week We heard from Julio Roman, who is the Advancement Chair with Boy Scout Troop 1959 and San Juan Trujillo, Puerto Rico. Julio wrote in to say your app should include an archive of Brick Mason episodes. They're awesome.

I'm going back through the podcast to see if I can complete my CG merit badge. There's a CG merit badge out there. I didn't know about that.

Yesterday afternoon I was taking my son to swim practice and listening to a podcast and an episode of Brick Mason came up and I looked at my son and he was concentrating very carefully on what he was listening to and then, after the Brick Mason episode ended, he looked at me and he said: that's my Scoutmaster. I've been sharing things from the podcast.

And at the end of a board of review the committee chair asked me: where did you get all these useful information? And I said from my counselor. I listened to him every Monday and I left it there.

Of course, the committee chair went to my wife and asked again where I was getting all this information and my wife said: well, he's finishing his CG merit badge. She smiled and gave her all the info about the podcast.

Well, thanks, Julio, for getting in touch, and you know what. There may be a new episode of Brick Mason coming along sooner than anybody thought, but I really appreciate hearing from you. I'm glad you're getting something from the podcast. Dave is an assistant Scoutmaster who wrote in to say, as always, thanks for all your hard work, time and efforts. I look forward weekly to the new podcast, like hearing from an old friend.

Well, Dave, thank you so much. It's always great to hear from you guys too. Jim Gilligy is the Scoutmaster with Troop 17 in Mansfield, Massachusetts, and he wrote to say: I'm out teaching introduction to outdoor leadership skills this weekend and I'm trying to round up a few more minions for you. I've been using the downtime between sessions to read from your thoughts on scouting book and everyone's loving it. I hope it nets you a few more fans. And Jim sent a picture of minions and the book.

So thank you very much, Jim. I got a big kick out of that.

Hey, listen, if you want to share either thoughts on scouting or my other book, The Scouting Journey, I've got a way for you to buy them at a discount price so you can get multiple copies if you want them for a training event or something like that. So go to the blog and it's under the about page. There You'll find out how you can get multiple copies of the book at a good discount. They're available. Both the books are available on amazoncom, if you're interested. Last week I issued you a challenge to put scouting into one sentence and I heard from Dale Karwike, who is a assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 672, and he said: that's an interesting challenge.

I've put together a kind of a run-on sentence to answer what scouting is for both a scout and adult, and this is what he came up with. Scouting is a fun game with a series of increasingly challenging opportunities that help a scout develop into a prepared, responsible citizen. Adults are president, scouting to support, mentor and enable scouts to meet those challenges.

What do you think? Well, Dale, that is pretty close. That's a little bit of a run-on sentence, like you said, and I've never been able to get too much closer than that.

To tell you the truth, I don't think Baden Powell actually got it all into one sentence, but it's a fun challenge, isn't it? Send me what you would do, how you would put that sentence- Not some slogan that you heard or something like that. In your own words, How do you get scouting into one sentence. Send them here to me and I'll- and I'll read them out on the podcast.

So on the blog, last week Enoch Hyze did another great three-part series for for green bar life and the green bar life. Part of the blog is aimed at scouts with a position of responsibility who are aspire to a position of responsibility. Enoch is a young adult, 19 years old, whose experience as a patrol leader and a senior patrol leader is much less farther in the past than your experience or my experience, and he wrote an excellent series this week on delegation. It's a three-part series and it starts with one title: the third option for patrol leaders. Go to scoutmastercgcom and check that out. Got a lot of good reactions.

I also put up a post that kind of went slightly kind of sub viral on Facebook, which was just a very simple set of pictures I found online of modifications to one of those rubber made action packer boxes that a lot of us use for patrol boxes, and the fellow who made the modifications to it wasn't really involved with scouts. It was just what he did to take camping and it's worth a look. It's worth a look.

It's hard to explain on a podcast, but it's worth a look, so make sure to check that out. Post earlier last week that got a lot of attention too was one I wrote about training do's and don'ts for scouts and I got a lot of good reactions and comments about that.

Mitch Erickson said anybody who starts a sentence with well in my troop rarely contributes anything to the conversation and often reveals that quote my troop unquote is doing something off base and I've got to say, Mitch, that's, that's pretty astute reading of the situation. If I had a nickel for every sentence I heard that starts well in my troop, I would be a rich man right now, but or perhaps not.

But yeah, Bill McFarland, our old friend Bill, wrote in to say my biggest pet peeve during training is: well, that's the way we do it in our council, as if their council is some special place with special rules. And I gotta agree with you, Bill it that one can make me a little crazy too. Tom Gillard, who's down in Tallahoma, Tennessee, wrote to say please, folks take notes, don't be the person that asked the question that was just covered in the training. Yes, Tom, yeah, I've watched that happen in training courses that I've taken and in training courses that I've presented.

You explain something and somebody raises their hand and says: how do you do exactly what you just explained and oh well, another old friend of the blog and the podcast, Walter Underwood, commented: you know, if it kind of doesn't make sense, go with it and give it a chance to be integrated into the rest of the material during the training. If it really doesn't make sense to you ask because some scouting practices really surprising. Even if a game or activity you do during training seems dumb, go for it. You may need to find your inner tenderfoot or even tiger cub. When you're doing a new thing, it should feel kind of odd and uncomfortable. If it doesn't feel odd and uncomfortable, you probably aren't doing it right and I really appreciate that.

Walter, those are some very good thoughts. Scouter Paul wrote in and said good points.

Clark, here's a couple more from my experience as a wilderness first aid presenter: be there on time so I can end on time and get you back to your family. That includes stretching 10 minute breaks to 14 minutes. Plan to stay for the entire session and if you're not going to stay for the training session, let somebody else have your spot and please understand I've already reduced the time that I am instructing as tightly as I can. Asking to finish up 15 minutes early really isn't going to happen. And finally, Paul said active participation is a lot more fun than sitting and watching, and I've got to agree with you. We also heard from Lynn Turbaville, who is the vice president program with the Indian waters council in Columbia, South Carolina, who said: oh boy, this article about training couldn't have come at a better time.

I'm right in the middle of it. I'm really pleased that people found that one useful. Check it out. It's called training- scouter training do's and don'ts, and you'll find it at scoutmastercgcom this week coming up. I've got a great post to publish tomorrow that I'm really looking forward to you seeing. Scoutmaster john wipekey contributed a great article about their summer plans and no spoilers, I don't want to tell you anything more about it, but it's some great summer plans and something that should certainly spark your imagination, and I'm always happy to get folks who are willing to make a contribution to the blog and share their scouting experiences with us.

If you're enjoying the podcast and the blog, you can return the favor by becoming a scoutmastercgcom backer. If you go to scoutmastercgcom you'll see a link, a support link, right on the top menu there. Follow that link and we'll explain how you can become a backer. And the funds that we receive from backers, like Jeff that you heard earlier in the podcast, go towards the expenses of producing and publishing the resources that are freely available to scouts from all over the world.

Jeff, as you heard, you know Jeff's over there in the Middle East and he's been an active listener and contributor, so this really does get out there all over the world. Finally, before we get started here, the scoutmastercg app is a good way to keep all of the resources that we've created right there at your fingertips. It's available on iTunes and in the Google App Store.

You can join the couple thousand people who are accessing what we create using the app, so I encourage you to look into that. So in this week's podcast coming up in a moment, I think, I think we're going to hear from our old pal, brick mason, and then we've got a couple of email questions to answer and that's going to take up the rest of the podcast.

So let's get started, shall we? In a time marked by a lack of truth. The world turns to mason. Scoutmaster- attention, please shout, quiet down everybody. I approach you in an attitude of complete ebullience before. I am privileged to share with you a demonstration of the proper wielding of that familiar implement, oh, one that indeed could be said to form the basis of any good outdoorsman's outfit.

Naturally, I speak to you of that instrument composed of a length of metal that has been machined to a fine cutting edge in a pocket knife, vis-à-vis the jackknife. Jackknife, yes, a pocket knife is truly a useful tool for many chores around the capsiting. But being entrusted to bear this most essential tool gotta be safe, carries with it an equal weight of responsibility for its safe and proper use. Yeah, you need to have like a totem chip card, like we got right here. Indeed, I got one. Perhaps the most important aspect of knife safety is learning to open the blade thusly away from oneself.

I think you're doing it careful, mr M. Looks like you cut yourself there. An apt demonstration, perhaps, of how careful one must be sure in one with the expertise that I hold.

Even so, yeah, I have been slightly, slightly injured. I think that looks like a pretty good cut. Here you go, mr round.

Here's a bandaid. A bandaid, yes, thank you. I will simply put my knife here.

You want to close it first, don't you? Oh, yes, well, you see, after many years of practice, I have become quite expert in this safe handling. But you got to be in. Uh, it's in your shoe.

Oh, yes, indeed, the open knife has lodged itself in my shoe and I believe perhaps, yeah, has gone on to penetrate the shoe and reached the first of my phalanges, just stuck in your big towel. Yeah, oh yes, oh, I would know, with all the blade, oh, wow, and close it.

Careful, we should get you another bandaid mr, bandaid anybody else you know, wow, kind of believe. Maybe you need a bandaid to put on your toe, a bandaid mr, perhaps a larger dressing, maybe, yeah, this particular mishap, maybe, so I don't know. Scouts, we will return to further instructions specific to the gel knife. All right, later let's continue through my introduction to the proper safety use of another essential camping. Yeah, implement the hatchet. Oh, watch out guys.

Oh, boy, the hatchet is. Uh, it's almost lunchtime.

You know why I'm getting hungry. It is almost lunch time, isn't it? Oh, I had misapprehended the time. Yeah, it's like a quarter after let's, let's eat lunch, capital idea. After our noonday we will resume instruction on the safe handling of the hatchet. I need to attend to my toe.

Yeah, go take care of yourself and I got some lunch. Hey, Georgie.

Yeah, where's that hatchet? It's over here.

I think maybe we should kind of put it away for now. What do you think that's a good idea?

I got it, okay, let's, let's get some lunch. I'm starving. Join us again for another exciting episode in the career of mason Scoutmaster. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Let's start the fun. Find me a letter, send it my name

Email. That is, folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. Jay Manoscalo is with Boy Scout Troop 307 in War Trace, Tennessee, and he wrote in to ask this question: where did the aquatic award patches go, now that there are no official swim trunks? I have a few scouts who have earned the snorkeling and the mild swim awards.

Since the centennial shorts double as swim trunks and uniform shorts, would you recommend getting a dedicated pair of centennial shorts as swim trunks? Well, Jay, those aquatic award patches, as you know, they go on the swim trunks and it's in the guide to insignia as far as the placement on the swim trunks and everything is concerned, so far as I know and I remember, I don't think swim trunks have ever been an official element of the uniform and I am absolutely willing to be contradicted in that, but in my memory I don't remember that ever being the case. I know the BSA has offered branded swim trunks for sale from time to time, but I would say that those are akin to branded t-shirts. They may be official but they're not necessarily part of the uniform and I've never really seen any rules or policies about uniform swim trunks. I mean, while we strongly encourage scouts to wear uniforms, they're not required at any time and I've never seen any encouragement to wear them swimming. It looks to me from what I read in the guide to insignia that it's the scout's option for what pair of swim trunks they can put those patches on.

I don't see any other placement options for those patches other than a pair of swim trunks and while centennial shorts are designed to go in the water, I think a dedicated pair for swimming might be going a little overboard. Get it going a little, oh well.

Thank you so much for the question, Jay. I hope that helps. Here's another question that I got, and the person in the senate asked to remain anonymous. You recently mentioned that part of the Scoutmaster's job is to mentor scouts and to lead adults.

Could you please explain exactly how you lead adults? It's often easier to work with scouts than it is to cajole the adults. The parents of our senior patrol leader, for instance, want to do the leadership mentoring for us. They frequently comment to him at during meetings and he brings ideas to the patrol leaders council that are pretty clearly came from his parents.

Well, this is a relatively easy thing for me to answer, because I don't cajole adults and I don't particularly treat them with kid gloves, far from it. I tell adults I'm their leader and I tell them exactly what to do and I stop them from doing things I don't want them to do with scouts.

It's more coaching and mentoring and you know, kind of letting them go ahead with adults. It's very direct: do not do that or please do this, because that's my job. I'm the Scoutmaster. That's what I'm supposed to be doing. Given the case of the interfering parents, you say I would take them aside. I explained that they have to stop doing what they're doing and if they don't, they won't be able to attend meetings anymore.

I- it's pretty plain spoken. I would go on to explain the dynamics involved and I would tell them why I was telling them what I was telling them I, and usually I explain this just like I have in the podcast.

Often you know coaches and players and the fact that scouting is much like any kind of athletic event: coaches stay on the sidelines, players stay on the field. So you have a head coach. Everything goes through the head coach doesn't go directly to the players and people who shortcut that are going to be seen as interfering.

You know it's very clear in a sports context. It's not quite so clear in a scout context. If you are an assistant coach somewhere, you understand that, however helpful it might be, any action that you take without going through the head coach, that's going to be seen as being interfering. And in any sports event, if a coach steps onto the field during the time of play, the whistleblows, play comes to a stop, they're told to get off the field. It's not what you would call very polite.

Now, sometimes people do get upset with this kind of attitude and I tell them they're welcome to become the next Scoutmaster, but as long as I'm in the position, we're going to play the game this way. Now this all sounds really abrupt and it sounds like I'm kind of an arrogant monster, but I'm not. I'm kind and considerate of others, but I'm also demanding and definite when it comes to who calls the plays. It's not something that everybody involved with scouting understands. It's not necessarily a tradition in every scout troop, but to me that is the Scoutmaster's job: call the plays, work with the players and coordinate all the other resources that go into it. But it always needs to go through the head coach, through the Scoutmaster.

The same person goes on to say: our troop has about 40 scouts. We have a handful of adults that occasionally go camping with us and that helps with the driving. However, none of these people have been willing to step up as into the assistant Scoutmaster position. A few have been willing to join the committee, but all felt that they could not commit more time than what they are currently giving. We really only have two regularly active assistants and one Scoutmaster.

How many assistant Scoutmasters in our case do you think a troop really needs? How do you go about recruiting or selecting new assistant Scoutmasters? At present time, my troop numbers somewhere between 30 and 40 scouts.

I haven't stopped to count them lately and around we have usually around four to five active assistant Scoutmasters. Sometimes we only have two of us at an outing, but we've never had to go looking for someone- necessarily beyond the youth protection rules of two adults being at each activity and the adults who serve on the committee and the Scoutmaster. A troop doesn't have to have any assistant Scoutmasters. They're certainly a good thing to have, but you don't have to have any. I am much more likely to guide interested adults towards the troop committee rather than towards being an assistant Scoutmaster. They're actually more useful in the committee, as far as I can see.

I see the ratio of some troops approaching one to one adults and scouts and I've really got to wonder why. I mean, scouting is a program for boys, not for adults, and frankly I think the fewer adults around, the better chance they have of actually getting to do the things scouts ought to be doing. I can't honestly recall any time in the past 30 years I've wished to have more adults involved.

I couldn't, can't remember ever, you know, going out and recruiting assistant Scoutmasters. There seems to be plenty of people who show up interested in that without having to go looking for them. My expectation of an adult volunteer being active is that they will be there when they can be there. Sometimes that's more often and sometimes that's less often. Everybody has a family life, everybody has a career and everybody has an impossible schedule. It's been that way since I became Scoutmaster 30 years ago.

It may be getting slightly more complicated in this day and age, but I think it's always been that way. We all have these different things that we need to take care of, and I don't want anyone to ever feel as though they're not appreciated in scouting or that they've fall below some kind of active element or something like that. They're volunteers and they're volunteering their time and what time they can dedicate I am very thankful for- and finally I go on to say, other than providing transportation, there's usually absolutely nothing for any of us adults to do at a meeting or on a camping trip, or very little. I mean my typical scout meeting. I interact with the senior patrol leader for about 10 minutes or so.

I talked to half a dozen other scouts for one reason or another during the meeting for a minute or so each other than that they're doing their own thing. One of my one or two of my assistants may be working on a project with one of the scouts in a position of responsibility or something, but we're not in the middle of the meeting, we're not participating in the meeting, we're over in another spot getting done what we need to get done on camping trips.

You know, there's a lot of times where we won't talk to the scouts for a good part of the camping trip. They have their campsite, we have our campsite. We're there to help, we're there to maintain a good, safe environment and to supervise from that aspect. But they're doing the camping and they're doing all their stuff. If they show up in my campsite, usually I chase them out pretty quick because they need to be with their patrol and doing the things that scouts do. That kind of beats around the bush a little bit.

But to answer the question, how many assistant Scoutmasters does a troop need? Well, you know, if you're just talking theoretically, none. They don't need any assistant Scoutmasters.

How many do you need to keep your bases covered and to work with the scouts? Well, it really depends on your style as a Scoutmaster. It really depends on the needs of the troop. But my rough rule of thumb- and once again folks understand this- is me talking, this is my opinion. This is not an expression of policy or procedure from an official basis.

Okay, my, my opinion is that scouts are better able to do what scouts ought to be doing, that is, taking responsibility for themselves, leading their patrols and leading their troop, with a minimal amount of adult participation. You know, your mileage may vary on that right, and let's see. We got one more email.

Raleigh Buckner is a recently retired Weebelow's den leader in pack 833 in Simpsonville, South Carolina, and he wrote in to say I really enjoy the information and advice you work so hard to produce. It's been helping me out as a Weebelow's den leader and we've just crossed over into the troop and I know I'll be able to even use more good information as I go into scouting with my son. I recently read your article about scout accounts and I've seen other discussions online between parents and volunteers for a few years now.

I think the most confusing part about the situation is that we're getting conflicting information or mixed messages on the subject. In this month's issue of scouting magazine there were two direct references to units maintaining scout accounts, and that seems to be in conflict with the financial policies that we've that you've been talking about and that are clearly expressed in the documents that you've shared.

How do we interpret this? If we follow the hard line of the fiscal policies publication, we shouldn't have scout accounts, but there's been an example provided to us of units that have succeeded at helping lower income families participate in scouting through using scout accounts.

Well, Raleigh, there's a lot of times we end up with some kind of cross signals and maybe conflicting in advice. A lot of scout units have been around for a long time, have had these kind of personal scout accounts for decades, and I guess it's a hard habit to break. Let me bring everybody else in on the issue.

If you're not aware of it, I will have a link in the post that contains this podcast on scoutmastercgcom, to the document that we're referring to here, the financial policies document issued by the bsa, and it addresses scout accounts, and the short story is that nonprofits cannot accrue money to somebody's individual personal interest, and that is what a scout account does, and so the bsa, in this document that I will share with you, offers us directions based on the most conservative possible interpretation of tax laws that are actually, to my understanding, still making its way through the courts and are not totally cast in stone yet, and that is not to use individual scout accounts. This is kind of a complex issue, but it comes up and I did write a post about it and, to me, the definitive piece of information that you need is that that was published by the bsa. Go to scoutmastercgcom, look for scoutmaster podcast 219. You'll find links to that information there. Raleigh, I hope that helped, and I'll add that there's nothing that prevents us from aiding families and needs or from subsidizing scout activities with funds that the scouts have raised. If we don't have scout accounts, all that money can still be used that way.

We just can't assign it to individuals. And now the rising tide lifts all boats instead of just one boat and waters the entire tree instead of just one leaf.

How about that? Listen, if you've got a question for me, you can get in touch with me, and you are going to find out how to do that in just a moment.