Scoutmaster Podcast 228

I'm Mitch Stansby. I'm a Scoutmaster for True Floor Floor in Oran Beach, Florida. This edition of Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like me. Clark, you're doing a great job. Thank you for all you do for scouting.

And now to you. Scoutmaster School's out. It's the end of June, the beginning of July And of course we all know what that means. Scout Summer Camp is coming right. We're headed off in a couple of weeks. I know some of you are getting ready to go or maybe have come back and have already been.

I have this report from my meeting with the camp counselors at our camp. The Orienteering Counselor- I recommend him highly- has a magnetic personality, is a little overbearing at times and he gets needled about that, but he on balance does a pretty good job. The pioneering counselors were playing the best music. They had all the right chords Over. In the nature department geology merit badge was totally rocking. But the bird study counselor seemed a little experienced because I thought he was just winging it at times.

I got along with most of the counselors I met. I was kind of repelled by the climbing instructor Down at the pool. Aquatics was going swimmingly. One of the new counselors was a little dippy.

I think he was just a little wet behind the ears and he tried to cash a buddy check at the trading post. And speaking of the trading post, they were doing a fine job. There was one afternoon where they got a little behind in their work because one of them backed into the slushy machine. I did visit the health lodge. The first aid instructor was pretty competent but he couldn't really wrap his head around bandaging. And down in the handicraft department, scouts working on metal work merit badge.

They were forging ahead And basketry merit badge was going okay but it was kind of hampered because the counselor was a slow reader. So there's your report from summer camp. I hope that helps. Oh, my goodness.

Well, this is podcast number 228.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look at the mailbag and see what's happening.

Frank Maynard commented on last week's podcast, especially about one of the email questions where we were talking about council mergers. Frank said we've gone through two mergers in our area over the last few years.

Our local council merged with another council And then, a couple of years later, all the councils in Michigan merged together and became one large coordinating council. This model may spread around the country and may auger many more mergers to come. What happened here is that the scouting experience at the unit level seemed to change very little.

Merging councils can be a messy affair, but if adults take a positive attitude and find ways to ensure the scouting experience is improved for the youth we serve, which is really the intention of mergers anyway- right, The merger of councils can be done successfully with many benefits And Frank also lent this bit of advice when we were advising a den leader about getting their den up to speed in leadership. Frank reminds us of the position in a Weevillows den, called a denner, which is similar to a patrol leader, And it's a good way to introduce boys to the concept of leadership and service to their fellow scouts. Thanks, Frank, for that advice and those points Always appreciated. We also heard from Merrick Fosenbeck from Troop 581 in Lehigh Utah And he said: all right, Clark, the geek in me, Just had to figure this one out And what he was trying to figure out. A couple of podcasts ago somebody was happy to hear the podcast number because it corresponded with their unit number And I kind of quipped that we could dedicate each podcast to the unit that corresponded with the podcast number. Then I heard from somebody from Troop 918 who wondered how long it would take before I got the podcast number 918..

And Merrick was kind enough to figure it out. He says if you keep doing the podcast and if you keep the schedule of releasing a new podcast on Monday each week, then Troop 918 will have the chance to be mentioned in podcast 918 on Monday September 20th 2027..

So they've got a long time to wait. Oh my Well, thank you, Merrick, for doing that.

I think Van Donnelly got in touch about our talk about outdoor leadership. He said two popular ideas in the tech and the startup worlds are: failing fast and minimum viable project.

I believe both of these can be applied to scouting. We don't expect scouts to start learning how to build a fire with a big, giant, elaborate fire.

We want them to concentrate on the basics of gathering what they need to build the fire. The minimum viable project- As fun as fire building- is the organizational skills to put everything together and get the fire lit. And burning doesn't come easy to scouts.

We want them to fail fast and learn what they've done and try again to their success. Again, I agree: Failing fast and the minimum viable project is a good concept for scouts, because we want them in that loop as quickly as possible. We don't need to over explain, We don't need to over instruct. Let them get at it, That's the whole thing.

Let them be active, Let them fail fast, Let them produce, you know, kind of a minimal product to begin with, And then they have a basis of experience upon which to learn the more advanced things. Right, George Zach got in touch and said thanks for the ongoing delivery of the great podcast. It makes me think about how I approach scouting. I've been listening for about six months now. Even when my kind of knee jerk reaction has not been in complete agreement with you, I can see the way you came to the point and the wisdom in it. I was kind of surprised to disagree with you on your recent thoughts on outdoor leadership.

I think you mixed two things in this conversation and didn't differentiate between leadership skills or the tools that we use and the different environments. Leadership skills apply across environments and they're pretty much the same And, George, I agree with you. We really end up not disagreeing. It just may be that I inartfully expressed myself when I was talking about this. Yes, leadership skills are the same, The settings are different, but the skills are the same.

And George ended his message by saying: anyway, thanks in any case for leading me to think about this, George, I appreciate that That's what we need to do. I think that that's probably the most useful thing I can do is get everybody thinking.

I might not be able to express myself in the best way possible sometimes, And sometimes what I say may seem a little confusing or conflicting, but I think the goal in the end is to get everybody thinking right, Because once we think, hopefully that leads us to better answers and makes us better scouters. And finally, from the mailbag: this week, in recursive replies, both of these scouters got in touch after they were mentioned in the previous podcast: Rob Kerrigan, to say thanks for the shout out. I felt like I was in a speech by the president. That's Rob Kerrigan up there in Maine.

Hello, Rob, Now you've been mentioned again. And Dave Klein, who said woo-hoo, Love being mentioned in the mailbag.

So there's your recursive replies for this week. This week on Baden Powell's blog, the title of the post was Education. You want to make sure to check that out. Every week on a Sunday I'll post a bit of Baden Powell's writing just to tie us to our past. Just about everything that he had to say still works now- All the principles and the methods on which he founded Scouting. They're still perfectly applicable 100 years later.

The quiz this week was: do you know your maps? And the tough ones seem to be rapids and waterfalls.

So pay attention to those answers very closely, okay, And see if you can figure those out. Shared a PDF version and a print version of a patrol log book that you may find useful. We also reported on something that was in the national news: Scouts who survived a mishap while on a trip in the boundary canoe waters. Do be sure to check that one out.

I should go on to say- and I think it's pretty clear in the post- that the reason I wanted to talk about that was not to sensationalize or really even try to definitively analyze a mishap based only on news reporting, because I don't think that's a totally responsible way to respond to something like this. But to give you the story to work with is something to think about, because when we are familiar with the way that these things unfold, it helps us to avoid them in the future.

I think that the good message to come from that story was that this scouting safety net- the things that we drill our scouts in and we drill ourselves in- really, really works, because everybody got to walk away from that particular incident And early last week we had a post about hitting the wall, which was talking about something that happens, at least in my experience, to almost every youth leader I've ever worked with. So you want to check out that post at ScoutmasterCGcom.

So a couple of quick things before we get going. A couple of thousand of you used the Scoutmaster CG app. It's a great way to keep the resources we created your fingertips right there on your mobile device, And you can get the app on iTunes for your Android devices or at Google Play for your iPhones and iPads. A growing number of generous scouts have become backers for ScoutmasterCGcom. I have some premiums to offer to those of you who are willing to lend some financial support to the blog and the podcast.

If you've gotten something out of these things, well, you can return the favor and make it possible for me to create and publish these by becoming a ScoutmasterCGcom backer. And I want to make sure to recognize Heather Culliton, who signed up to be a backer this past week. Thank you very much, Heather. It really means a great deal.

So this week's podcast is a little bit different. I'm going to finish up with a Scoutmasters Minute.

Before I get there, though, I want to talk to parents about Scoutcamp- Not necessarily talking to Scouters, but just to parents of Scouts, with some thoughts about preparing themselves and their Scouts for camp this summer and what really happens at camp, And that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast. So let's get started, shall we

Well? Camp Granada.

I think you know, if you're a certain age you remember that song right. But anyway, on one Sunday afternoon soon I'll be standing in our campsite at our Scout camp as our Scouts begin to arrive for their week at summer camp. Our camp is about a half hour drive away. Scouts arrive at camp for the week individually. Their parents bring them down. We usually walk down to the campsite with them And I'll be watching as the senior patrol leader and the older Scouts sort things out and help the Scouts find their tents and get things moving.

And it's interesting because parents who are veterans of this, whose boys have been to camp several times, they spend a very short amount of time in the campsite. They usually get down there. They kind of unload the Scout, They say goodbye and they head back up and head home. Parents of Scouts who are there for their first year perhaps will spend a little bit more time, because this may be the first time that their son is going to be away from them for that long a period of time.

Their son is going to be out of their orbit, And you know what It's. A little worrisome, isn't it?

And I've watched this with parents for 30 years now, And so if you're one of those parents, I want to speak to you a little bit about what I see from my side and what happens during the week of summer camp. I will tell you, without a doubt, that your son is going to come home from summer camp more capable and mature than he was when you waved goodbye to him, Outside of the normal support structure of his parents and his family and away from all of those solitary distractions that bother us in one way or another. He's away from the internet. He's away from his computer games, He's away from the television set. He's got to take care of himself and cooperate with his peers. He's got to interact with people.

He does all this in a very supportive environment that permits him to try things out and maybe get them wrong, without compromising his safety. But he's going to be challenged to expand his abilities to accept and offer help and to function cooperatively in everyday tasks. If you think about it, what your scout does at camp is pretty amazing, And he does 99% of this without the mediation of an adult reminding him to do so. He is challenged to be responsible not only for himself but for his fellow scouts.

So he's going to get up in the morning on schedule. He's going to be sharing a tent with another scout and they're going to need to keep that tent reasonably neat and clean. He's going to share chores with his fellow scouts to maintain the campsite, Depending on where he goes to camp. At some scout camps they serve meals in the campsite. At some there's a dining hall or has a dining hall, And he's going to share three meals a day, served basically family style meals.

It's been some years since we had a scout in our house, but I know that when he was in middle school and high school at least, we felt pretty fortunate to have two or three meals a week where we were all sitting at the same table. But this is going to happen: three meals a day for every day that he's at camp- And you know what Grace is going to be said. He's going to have his opportunity to serve as a waiter for his table and serving and cleaning up after meals. He's going to manage and budget given him for camp. He's going to set and follow a schedule of activities according to his interests. He's going to be responsible to find his way to and from those activities and manage his time.

He's going to build character and values by attending campfires and ceremonies and reflecting on those activities. He's going to find himself complimented many times by the older scouts that are charged with his well-being. His opinions are actually going to be heard, and heard by other scouts and adults. He's going to have the opportunity to take on real responsibility at times and to be the leader of other scouts. He's going to make new friends. He's going to strengthen his existing friendships.

He's going to learn new skills. He's going to try something he's probably never tried before. He's going to become more aware of the natural environment that we live in. He's going to challenge his critical thinking skills. He's going to put what he learns into action. He's going to work with others to establish and achieve goals.

He's going to be challenged to apply himself to contribute to achieving those goals. He's going to trade all of those solitary pursuits like TV and video games and all of that for actual social interaction. He's going to have to find a healthy resolution to conflicts and he's going to benefit from a tremendous positive peer pressure. Following the good example of older scouts and counselors.

Now, summer camp for a young scout is going to be challenging, but it's also an adventure that's full of possibilities. It's an opportunity for parents to let him go a little, Let him stand on his own two feet, and when you do that, that's an expression of confidence and trust in his abilities and it's really a test of your parenting. And parents, I find, are usually a little less prepared for summer camp than their sons are. We will spend a lot of time working with them to make sure that they're ready. There is gear and clothing and things like that to gather. We may not appreciate what it's going to be like at home when our boy is off to summer camp.

It may be an uncomfortable feeling turning over full time care to others that you maybe just have gotten to know. Perhaps you're going to worry about the kind of food that they're going to serve, who's going to be looking after your daily concerns, like clean clothes and taking a shower, and how the older scouts are going to treat him- and that's a worry for every parent.

Is he going to be teased? Are they going to be tough and mean to him? And we're going to be worried if.

What? If he doesn't like being at camp.

Is he going to be able to call home? Or can we call him and check in with him?

And all of these questions cause us a little bit of anxiety, and you know what a lot of times we parents have a harder time with the experience of sending our sons off to scout camp than they ever will- at camp, I mean. And that first letter home, if we even get one, can sound kind of miserable and we try to read between the lines and, yeah, it can be a distressing time for us as parents.

So I want to help you prepare yourself for this experience. If this is the first time you're going to be separated from your child for this length of time, it's a new challenge and, even though many others have gone through it before, it's something that's new to you, and the first step is really acknowledging that this is possibly possibly going to cause you some distress, no matter how much I talk about it, no matter how many other parents have been through it.

This challenge of being separated from your child for this length of time could be new to you, but you know what. A lot of us have gone through it before and we know that it gets better.

So don't worry if you feel distressed or anxious, it's pretty normal. It's a pretty normal reaction, but it's temporary and you're going to get over it and you're going to feel better.

Now I will tell you that most younger scouts are going to encounter some amount of homesickness. They're going to have some ups and downs because if camp is going to reap the benefits that we want from it, it's going to be challenging for them. They're not going to be abjectly miserable, but they're going to find things challenging and all of this is really a part of a healthy process of growing up that scouts are going to encounter one way or another at one time or another. If they're 11 or 12 years old and they're off for a week at summer camp without you, they're going to encounter some of the same challenges that are going to happen when, after they've graduated high school, which I know seems an impossibly distant thing in the future, but I can tell you it's right around the corner. After they've graduated high school and they've gone off to college, they're going to be encountering the same things that they encountered at camp, maybe on a bigger scale and for a longer period of separation from home.

So getting over that now, dealing with it now, is a very good thing for them to be able to do. A couple of ways we can prepare ourselves for this time that our children are away at camp is to think positively.

I know that sounds very trite, doesn't it? But scouts typically thrive at summer camp and they come home happy. And when you're talking to your scout about camp, instead of discussing your worries and how much you're going to miss them, talk about all of the great things that are going to happen at camp and the great new experiences they're going to have. Keep everything on a positive level- and of course you're going to miss them. Of course it's going to be difficult for you, but one of the ways that you can kind of help your scout avoid feeling really homesick for camp when you're discussing it with your scout, stay positive for a long time Scoutmaster.

I am always ready to answer questions about summer camp and there aren't any silly questions. Really, it's always better to ask than to worry, and a lot of parents worry about things that they may consider silly.

Well, what if he doesn't like the food? What if he runs out of clean clothes?

What if he runs out of money? What if he really doesn't like it?

There is there a way that he can call us, but we have to come and pick him up. You know, ask those questions, and there may be a lot of questions that are just kind of specific to a given summer camp or given scout troop that I won't have the answers to here.

So ask the people who are going to camp with them. There really aren't any silly questions and it's always better to ask than to worry about the answers.

Right now I will tell you. One of the things you're going to want to understand is how you'll be able to communicate with your scout while he's at camp, and most of the time this is going to be pretty minimal communication. Before the advent of cell phones and things like that, it was almost exclusively one way communication, when the scout was encouraged or compelled to send a letter or a postcard home. Usually you can mail a letter or a card for them at camp. I know at our camp you can email messages to scouts that could be helpful for you talking to them on the phone.

Well, you know what it all depends. I don't have a blanket policy and I don't have blanket advice for how to manage that yourself. I will say that generally it's a better idea to minimize those types of communications. I will address home sickness and scouts by making sure that they can contact home and talk to home, and in my experience that actually helps. Over time we got to remember that every experience and every set of challenges is an individual one.

So the way that these communications are going to work and exactly what you'll be able to do and what you won't be able to do is something that you should ask questions about, and you should also prepare your scout for that. Unless your summer camp is very close by, like ours is, it may not be very likely that you're going to get a chance to visit camp.

If you do get a chance to visit, there are going to be some rules associated with that visit and it's something that you want to familiarize yourself with at our particular camp on a Saturday, when parents can visit, we can have several hundred extra people in camp and you can imagine that that can be a little stressful for the camp staff and even for the adults that are down with a scout troop. So think very carefully about the impact your visits going to have and be respectful of the rules and the common practices around that. And finally, to get ready to send your son off to camp, think about planning something special for yourself. You're having a little mini vacation from being a parent for a few days. Plan something interesting or special that you couldn't otherwise do, and make that happen while they're away at camp. As with most other things in life, this whole experience of being a parent and sending your scout off to camp really has a lot to do with the way that you've prepared yourself, the way that you've prepared your scout and the attitude with which you approach the entire thing.

There's going to be challenging times, for certain. There's going to be challenging times for your scout at camp. There's going to be challenging times for you at home. But I would have to say that, based on my experience over 30 years of doing this, when you meet these challenges with a positive attitude, both yourself at home as a parent going through this experience and your scout at camp going through this experience. You're both going to benefit from it.

The ninth point of the scout law: quick, quick, thrifty. I have a fondness for words- I really do- especially uncommon or obscure words that have been around for a long time. I find that words like this creep into my conversation very often and when I talk like this around my scouts I usually get a confused look from the younger scouts and the older scouts kind of glance at each other as if to say there he goes again, another one of those $9 college words that nobody knows what it means. But anyway, thrifty is one of those great old words, a word you don't hear every day, and I get a kick out of talking to scouts in a Scoutmasters conference and asking them what they think thrifty means. It's kind of like art link letters. The things kids say or whatever that show was.

Their answers are all over the map and sometimes they're a little entertaining. But understand the fact that we use the word thrifty in the scout law. It would be a great opportunity to be able to discuss the concepts behind it with scouts, because it's not a very common word.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we ever dump good old thrifty for something new or something updated. I think we need to keep thrifty around, like we need to keep old men like me around, because we're quirky and entertaining. If you want to help scouts understand thrifty, then ask them what it means to be resourceful.

Resourceful is not exactly a synonym, but it's pretty close, isn't it? In the handbook, the ninth point of the scout law is explained this way: a scout works to pay his own way and to help others, he saves for the future, he protects and conserves natural resources and he uses his time and property wisely.

Now we know the scout law isn't just for scouts, it's there for us too. So how, in our role as scouts, are we thrifty or resourceful? I do that question in many ways, to be sure, but I'm thinking about a certain aspect of resourcefulness, a daily opportunity for our scouts to gain a useful life skill. And to illustrate that, I'm reminded of a cold, wet, long November night guiding a youth group over Indian Pass in New York's Adirondack Park right there in the high peaks region. It was not my favorite trip ever, but it was pretty memorable as we headed over Indian Pass. It was November, it was cold, it started to sleet and to snow and all but one of our flashlights gave out.

So the only way to make progress on this rocky, steep trail was to light the trail ahead. I had the only working light and so I would go up ahead of the group and I would shine that light on the trail and they would hike the twenty yards or so up until they caught up with me, and then I would go forward again and they would catch up.

And so we kind of leapfrogged our way over several miles of really tough terrain in a slow, steady slog well into the early morning hours before we got to our campsite. Our role in scouting is similar: we illuminate the trail ahead and we wait for the scouts to kind of catch up with us and then we illuminate some more of the trail.

And the way that we do this is by being resourceful and thrifty with our words, by asking good questions, because we want scouts to learn to be resourceful and thrifty themselves, to find things out for themselves. So asking a well formed question opens the doors of opportunity to them. We tap the resourcefulness of our scouts and appeal to their sense of curiosity, we get them up and active, we ignite a flame of inquiry when we are thrifty with our words and we're resourceful by asking them questions.

And where are the answers to those questions? A lot of them end up being within ourselves, some are beyond ourselves, but a lot of them cause us to look deep into ourselves and when we do that we learn more about ourselves. And when we do that in a positive environment, we develop the character that is the aim of scouting.

Now, it is thrifty, but so are scouts. Be thrifty, be resourceful and light the way forward for your scouts by asking good questions.