Scoutmaster Podcast 233

I am Clark Harkingberry and I am Scoutmaster with Troop 1 in Hopedale, Massachusetts. This edition of the Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now for you, Scoutmaster: If you give a scout a 10 and you say this is a waterproof tent, he's going to try and pitch it in a way that it will get wet inside the tent. Trust me on that, okay. If you give him a frying pan and you say this is a non-stick frying pan, he's going to find something that will stick to that frying pan. Trust me on that. Don't take anything camping that says that it's fireproof. Just trust me on that one too, okay.

Hey, this is podcast number 233.. Hey, Hey, Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look at the mailbag here. We heard from Jeff Smith who said: I'm from first Hampton Hill Group, based in London, England, And as a scout leader, I love your site.

Well, thanks for getting in touch, Jeff. I'm glad that you're finding what we do useful. Andrew is with the British Boy Scouts in Belgium. If you watched our dispatches from Kondersteg the past couple of weeks, you saw Andrew. He said: I just watched all the Kondersteg videos. Let me tell you you are awesome for doing this.

Why? Thank you, Andrew? I appreciate that. I was impressed. You also learned some native English, like the word dodgy. Yes, I did.

Hopefully you guys learned a little Native American as well. You gave me some great ideas for our Waterloo Scouts. Next trip we are in Kondersteg. I will also teach them the I'm a Little Teapot Song and Dance you guys did at the International Evening.

Well, Andrew, that's one of our favorites And I'm glad that you like it too. Hopefully your Scouts will. And thanks for getting in touch.

Bess is with the Cambridge Garden Guides in Australia And she wrote to end to say: well, here we are just over a year since I stepped up as guide leader And around six months since you interviewed me for the podcast. Do you remember that Bess is a girl guides leader in Australia And we had her on the podcast about six months ago? If you haven't heard that, go back and listen. Bess and I had a great time talking together And she goes on to say what a year it's been. I've got to say I wondered when, if ever, we would get to the stage when we had a properly functioning patrol system in our guide group.

I probably spent more hours than I care to think, worrying about it, between taking so much reassurance from the podcast and simply taking it one step at a time. It dawned on me last night that for the past three weeks the unit has practically run itself. Apart from setting aside program time for girls to present badge work to the unit for peer evaluation and a campfire, We've just been assisting and advising with the girl's own projects.

Looks like we now have a functioning patrol system. Of course there's still a bit of ironing out to do and getting guides to manage a few things they should be doing without reminders. If we could get them to take the role and write receipts, we'd barely be needed as adult volunteers.

But I think we have a win, And a lot of it is thanks to you All the best for your retirement from active Scoutmaster ship. I can't imagine you're going to let yourself rust out Lots of love from best well, best right back at you. No, I am not going to let myself rust out. There is a really good example. Folks Work the principles of the patrol system and you're going to see results. And Baden Powell knew that And that's what he said.

If you work the patrol system, it can't help but succeed. So good on you best And thanks for staying in touch. I also wanted to say thank you to Frank Maynard.

Now, if you don't know, Frank, Frank has a blog called Bob White Blather. There was a question on the podcast last week about the advancement committee. Frank has a lot of experience with the troop committee and he expanded on the answer I gave in the podcast last week very helpfully. You'll find that in the comments in the post that contains podcast 232..

So if you're an advancement committee chair, make sure to check that out Now. Last week, I announced that I was going to be working on a project that would make it possible for you to take your scouts to Condorsteg International Scout Center in Condorsteg, Switzerland, next summer, And so far so good. I've successfully provided the opportunity for my scouts to take advantage of this really kind of once in a lifetime incredible experience- And you can see the videos of our 2014 trip at scoutmastercgcom- And I would like to host your group in the summer of 2015..

So I've tentatively secured accommodations in Condorsteg at the same place that we stayed this past summer- the Villa Foray- And that's a hostel directly adjacent to the Scout Center, And the Scout Center, remember, is visited from scouts all over the world And I've got two weeks tentatively reserved for late June and early July of 2015.. Now, to make this idea viable, a minimum number of participants has to make a commitment to attend one of those two weeks by October 1.. That's some heavy lifting. That's only 30 days away And this may work and it may not.

But you know what? We're not going to do anything unless we try Now. Your group can be any size, but I need a total of at least 50 participants for each one of the weeks to make this work.

Now, if I haven't reached the minimum by October 1, well, we might not be able to make it happen. But you know how it is. We're scouts. We're going to do our best to make this happen for you. Week one begins on Saturday, June 20 and goes through June 27.. And week two begins on Saturday, June 27 and goes through July 4..

Now, if you're interested in taking your group to Switzerland next summer, email me. It's Clark C-L-A-R-K-E at scoutmastercgcom And let me know that you're interested and give me a phone number. Tell me the time of day that best works for you.

I'll get on the phone with you and we'll discuss exactly how we can make this work. So once again, I've got two weeks tentatively scheduled next summer, mid June to early July. I'd love to host you and your scouts in Kondersteg next summer. If you're interested, drop me an email with a phone number and we'll talk.

Now I know my own venture crew will be planning a high adventure trip to Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada, in mid August of 2015.. And if that interests you and your scouts, we'd be happy to help you get there. There's another opportunity that you can get in touch with me about Same email: C-L-A-R-K-E at scoutmastercgcom. Now. I noted that I got through last week's podcast without talking about backers at all, And I apologize for doing that, because I've had six people become backers since I last mentioned this. You are invited to become a scoutmastercgcom backer.

Funds from backers go towards creating the resources like this podcast and the blog posts and all the other things that we create to assist scouts all over the world. If you're interested in doing that, go to scoutmastercgcom, follow the support link at the top of the page and you can become a scoutmastercgcom backer.

Now, since we last talked about this before the podcast break, I want to take a moment to personally thank Frank Najera, Bruce Bennett, Joshua Silveris, Clark Hockenberry, Edzel Fuertes and Vince Hurnley for signing up and becoming backers. Thank you so very much. Your financial support is what makes all this possible.

Well, on this week's podcast and scoutmastership, in seven minutes or less, I have a recording and a commentary- that of a patrol leader's council meeting at summer camp this summer, And if you go back to the videos that I created and posted, there are letters from summer camp. One of you asked if I could post a video of a patrol leader's council meeting.

What I decided to do was go ahead and get the audio part of that and include it in a podcast, And so that's going to be featured in scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. And then we have several email questions to answer And that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast.

So let's get started, shall we

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. While we were at camp this summer, I set up my video camera to record one of our evening patrol leaders council meetings.

Just to give you a little context, while we're at summer camp, every evening the patrol leaders council is going to sit down, They're going to review their day and they're going to talk about what happens the next day, Before the patrol leaders council sits down, each patrol has gotten together and the patrol leaders led them through a brief reflection on the day and recorded things in their patrol log So he can then share them with the patrol leaders council, And this helps figure a lot of things out. I didn't include that part in the recording, but you'll hear at the end of the recording some reflections on how things are proceeding for the week at camp. And it's just a good idea that patrol leaders are talking to each member of their patrol, engaging their progress and their attitude and just checking in making sure everything's going well. And this is a habit that we've developed over time.

That doesn't just happen at summer camp, It happens at all of our events: When we go camping, when we have meetings. We're very conscious of providing the opportunity for the patrol leaders council to get together and to discuss, And these are largely going to be rather informal meetings.

They have an intention behind them, It's a habit now, so they do this pretty much spontaneously without being directed. Here's the senior patrol leader discussing the polar bear swim that happens every morning at camp with the patrol leaders council. You should know that this is, I guess, maybe three or four days into our week and they're still working things out.

Now I know how to do this, probably better than the senior patrol leader does. I know how to get the guys down to the pool and get them to do their polar bear swim and get them back up to camp in a timely manner.

But I'm not interested so much in telling him how that happens and why I think it should happen the way that I think it should happen, but letting him and his patrol leaders kind of work their way through and discover exactly how they want to do it. So listen to what he has to say here. But tomorrow what's going to happen is we're going to wake up at regular time, 6.30,, head down to polar bear and we're going to come back here.

And I want to make a special note that you guys can relate to- your guys, mostly you three- That when we go to polar bear we go down there, we get up, we change as quickly as possible. We go down there and we get in and get out of the white section only because we want to get in, get out and leave, All right, and then every time we get back to camp we want to change back into regular clothes as soon as possible because we need to put up the flags- flag- one flag- and prepare for breakfast.

Now he's trying to find his way through something and I'm going to interrupt with a question- Note that it's a question not trying to give him a direction or anything like that, but I'm trying to help him kind of get on track to be able to think his way through this particular difficulty. Are you trying to take the whole troop down and come back all at once?

No, well, it's patrol when you're organized. I was just curious. Yeah, they go up as patrol. Yeah, that's what it is.

We try to go down as a troop and then at Polar Bear, when the whole patrol was there to go up, they can go up if their whole patrol was there. That's generally how it works.

So once they had that resolved, another subject came up, everybody's favorite subject at camp: keeping the latrine clean and how that affects their daily inspection. Who had latrine duty today? Me, my friend, You did your patrol. Yeah, I heard about that. Uh-huh, I'm just going to say in general: latrine duty: Yeah, check before rinsing. Check, Yeah, you will.

They go into some detail about the procedures and you probably don't need to go through and listen to two or three minutes of detail about exactly how this is going to work for them, and then the senior patrol leader asks this question- Anything else that you can think of Anybody, Anything else that needs to be said? Once he's open the floor, I do have a question and so I'm going to ask. And, just for context, our first year program at the camp we attend is called Trail Blazers.

Have we done any requirements with our Trail Blazers? I believe I saw steps seven, Stephen, Ryan and Evan. Yeah, yeah, Andrew's not coming along well. He's ready for his Scott Maths Wisconsin board will be sent in class and he started his first class requirements.

Okay, okay, That's the only one I've spoken to, but everybody else still knows that we're open during Siesta. So I mean people, So you do.

You know if anyone else is close to them. I don't, but they've been talking to Robin and Evan a little bit more, okay.

Is there anything else that needs to be said? I think camp is going absolutely fantastic. I'm having a lot of fun, Everyone else seems to be having a lot of fun and, honestly, if I could be SPL at Horseshoe more than once, I would do it. Um, yeah, everything's going well. Life savings- tough. A good maripat should get out of it, Yeah, yeah, that's why I'm doing it this year.

And, um, yeah, everything else is going well. I love the food- Yeah, the food's the best.

Camp's going good, Again, with life savings, you know, Yeah, it's because the only younger scouts are having a good time and working through some of their obstacles and barriers. A lot of the younger kids are stepping up and showing initiative.

So it's just great to see. I had a lot of them in my patrol last year, in my Goose Patrol, And it's cool to see how the ones who've stayed from then to now have changed and gotten better and over in the future.

Yeah, Doing what I did four years ago, Is that everything then, guys, I believe it is All right. Good night, fellas. Good night, Good night. Hello.

This recording I did pretty much on the spur of the moment and I've edited a little bit just to get at the content that I think is important. This wasn't orchestrated. The scouts probably knew that the video camera was there. It was kind of. It's kind of late at night and they're tired, if you couldn't tell, and they're ready to head off to bed. But what's going on is is a reflection on the day.

That kind of helps them get centered on what challenges they have ahead of them, how well they are doing in meeting their goals for advancement and for caring for the younger scouts over the course of the week. There's nothing particularly magical or revealing going on here, but it's these small things that we sometimes may discount from our perspective that mean a tremendous amount in achieving the aim of scouting. It's not just getting down to polar bear and getting back on time, It's not just cleaning the latrine, It's not just being concerned about the younger scouts and their advancement and helping them out with that or making sure that they're having a good time. It's really the sum of all those parts, and the sum is greater than the parts because they're developing a sense of compassion and empathy. That makes for good leadership. I gave you a couple of examples where I put my or in during the Patrol Leaders Council.

I'm asking questions, I'm occasionally trying to help them figure things out and sometimes I'm just actually curious about what they're trying to do. Although I could have spent a lot more time talking, because obviously I like to talk, I do my best to avoid doing that because I know I'm going to learn a lot more about what's going on by listening than talking.

The other thing that is important to know is that this Patrol Leaders Council meeting happened with three or four other adults who were right there and being quiet and listening. I've basically directed them not to interrupt or not to offer questions unless they come through me or unless the Senior Patrol Leader asks them something specifically. That kind of helps keep the Patrol Leaders Council focused.

It allows us all to observe and to listen, and even though the temptation to speak up or to offer advice or to instruct the scouts about something is is pretty strong, if we learn not to do that and to work with them so that they are discovering the things that we already know really well, Instead of being things that they've been told to do or that we've shared with them, these things become part of their own personal experience, Things that they discovered for themselves, and they become very, very strong influences in the work that we're trying to do in both developing leaders and achieve the aim of scouting. I'm a little deep, short and stout. Here is my handle, Here is my spout. When I get all steamed up, then I shout: Tip me over and pull me out, Tip me over and pull me out. Tip me over and pull me out. Tip me over and pull me out.

Email, that is folks, and here's an answer to one of your emails. Ray Britton is with Troop 42 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and he wrote in to say recently: we found that there are a number of new families who expect scout camping to be family trips, where mom, dad and the siblings of the scout come along. We pointed out that this really wasn't the way Boy Scouts camp and this made some of the families feel unwelcome to participate at all. We had our first visiting Webelos for the year already and the question came up about parents participating in camping.

I found myself struggling a little to articulate that Boy Scout camping is not really family camping, while still saying we want and need parent participation. How do you suggest we handle this?

Well, Ray, you'll head a lot of this off at the pass by explaining the basics to visiting parents and by being very specific, and this is the way that I would put it. First, scouting is a progressive program. In Cub Scouts, boys work closely with their families. In Webelos they work closely with their adult leaders. In scouts they work together with some adult oversight and in venturing they set and administer their own program.

So there is a progression to all of this. It's not the same in Cub Scouts as it is in Webelos or scouts or venturing.

The second point is: scout camping is not family camping. When scouts go camping they are working and camping together as patrols. Adults all camp separately. We don't share tents with our sons and we may have little or no interaction with our sons on the course of a camping trip. Third point is: only parents or guardians and registered trained adult volunteers are permitted on camping trips. No younger or older siblings are permitted unless they're registered members of the scout troop.

As a rule of thumb we maintain an adult to scout ratio to maximum of four scouts to every adult. Now, before I go on, that's called a rule of thumb. It's not a set written policy.

It's just something that we look at and we say: well, that's the maximum number of adults that we really need to have or want to have along on a camping trip. Your mileage is going to vary on that. I'm just telling you what I prefer to do. Registered trained adult volunteers have the first refusal for open spots on all trips. Parents and guardians will be welcome to take any remaining spots.

Now, you may agree with that, that way of doing things, or not, but in saying that we try to maintain this ratio at a maximum, it gives everybody the idea that there's something more going on than camping just being a way for scouts and adults to interact with each other or for parents to come along and go camping with their sons. Fourth, we say that parents who wish to accompany their scouts regularly on camping trips are encouraged to become registered trained adult volunteers.

Now, those four things set a baseline of understanding. It's not that we don't welcome parents to participate, it's just that scout camping is a different thing. The committee chair can describe what is otherwise expected of parents and families during their visit, and that will give them some idea of how their role is changing as their boys progress through scouting.

And then I would go on to offer you this advice: If I have a number of new adults on a camping trip, I get them together and explain something that you and other listeners have probably heard me say many times before. I say that while we're camping, I am the Scoutmaster and I am the leader of the adults. Just to be clear about this. I expect you to follow my directions. Your sons have elected their own leaders and they'll be following the directions of their own leaders.

And doing what scouts do? I have a couple of basic ground rules. We adults have an area assigned to us.

That's where we put up our tents, and I'm going to ask you to stay in that area Now, like just about every other parent who's been in your place before, this is going to make you a little uncomfortable, but you'll begin to understand why this is important as time goes by. And then I have these three important things that I want to ask of you. If your son asks you a question, I'd appreciate if you reply with the following answer: go ask your patrol leader and leave it at that.

If your son walks away from his patrol to come and find you, I would like you to ask him where his patrol is and then tell him that's where he needs to be and leave it at that. Now, if you see or hear something that concerns you, I'll ask that you come to me and talk to me and let me handle it, unless what you see or hear is going to lead to injury before you can get to me. Our youth leaders are very respectful of adults, and even an offhand comment from you may end up misdirecting them.

So anytime scouts need direction, it's going to come from me, the Scoutmaster, And before we leave, let me ask you that if you've packed any gear in your stuff that your son is going to need, I need you to unpack it and give it to him now, before we leave, so he won't have to find you later on and he won't be distracted from following his own leaders and working with his patrol. Now most folks get it. Myself and my assistant Scoutmasters are always ready to throw a friendly, kind and courteous block at a parent who leaves the adult area and starts heading for scout country on a camping trip, and we explain that someone else had to do this favor for us. In the past, I've always been able to safely tell new parents that, unless at some point they are not at least a little upset or uncertain about how we do things, we're probably not doing our job correctly, because scouting isn't like anything else and it takes some time to understand how it works. And it doesn't work like you probably think that it does.

So finally, Ray, I'd say that an annual family camping trip is usually a good idea for any troop. This allows parents and siblings to get out with the scouts once, and that's usually enough for most. But if we give people who really want to do that the opportunity to do that and we make that the program for one of the camping trips during the year, then that usually satisfies their desire to get out and go camping with their sons. For this next question, I was asked by the center that they remain anonymous.

Does your troop have bylaws? I have a family who's recently joined our troop that thinks that we should. They seem to be the type- and you probably know them well- that create controversies and try to solve them by suggesting that we adopt lots of rules. They prepared a huge document with the added bonus of things like stating that new parents are required to come on x number of camping trips for the first year. I find these conversations at the committee meetings are distracting to me and everyone else, and they seem to be scaring other parents away from participating.

So, besides the initial question about having bylaws, how do you and your committee chair handle these sorts of parents? Well, my troop does not have any bylaws. We don't have any rule book. We don't have a procedures, manual or anything of the kind. If bylaws and rule books and policy manuals and things like that were useful in the past century of scouting, we'd be trained to use that sort of thing Now.

Do you recall anything even remotely resembling this in training? I don't.

So once again, no bylaws, policy manuals, rule books, things like that. You know, if you want to familiarize new families with the way that the program happens, you can do that on one sheet of eight and a half bylaw and paper. You might need two sides, but if you're smart you can keep it to one side.

So how do we deal with parents like this? So you asked my advice about how to stop parents from interfering like this. Before I brand everything like this as an interference, I will accept the premise that they're trying to be helpful.

They may not understand that it's interfering and we need to be very sensitive to the idea of things that we hear that we don't particularly want to hear. That may be indications that we're getting something wrong.

So before I go in and I start telling you how to deal with people who interfere, let's be sure that I don't accept the premise that everybody who has something to say that might cross the grain of the troop committee or the Scoutmaster is necessarily interfering, but if it's determined, they do. The only real way to deal with them is to tell them to stop. My troop committee chair is able to do this very well.

Now, you're not necessarily going to end up being polite about this, because people who interfere run over polite people in a few seconds, but my committee chair draws a very specific line and tells them that that's the end of the matter and if they don't stop, they'll be removed from the troop along with their son. There's not going to be any arguing or equivocating.

That sounds pretty harsh, doesn't it? Well, you can wait six months to get to the point where you have to draw that line very specifically, after you've been polite and they've run over you for six months, or you can just draw it to begin with. I would suggest that you just draw it to begin with. If they get it and they understand what you've said, you've solved your problem. Unfortunately, some people don't- it's a small percentage, but they won't- and once you've drawn the line, they're going to cross it in a few hours or days and you'll have to tell them to leave, and that's unfortunate.

Now, in 30 years I've seen this happen maybe once or twice, so this is not necessarily a common thing. When it needs to happen, it needs to happen quickly, and sometimes the best way to do it is just to get them out of the picture. Scouting is constituted to put absolute decision-making power into the hands of the committee chair and the chartered organization representative. Any volunteer or any member of any scout unit, and thus their family, can be removed at any time, with or without cause. Nobody needs to vote. There's no quasi-judicial proceedings.

There's just a letter with one sentence: as of this date, your registration is terminated, and there's no appeal of that decision. Now, naturally, most committee chairs and chartered organization representatives and scoutmasters and all the wonderful people who are involved in scouting are going to run things based on consensus and goodwill. But you'll also need to have a backbone to stand up to people who cause trouble and you have to tell them to stop or to leave. And this all sounds very drastic. I know Too many adults who interfere inappropriately, kill scouting for boys, and it's up to the other adults involved to protect the scouts from this sort of thing. The only mistake that you can make in a circumstance like this is not ending it soon enough.

Nobody wants to confront things like this and but sometimes it's what we end up having to do. Like I said, the biggest mistake is not getting it over with before. People like this have unalterably damaged scouting for your scouts. Danny wrote in with this question. He said: I'm looking for something more quote-unquote for our older boys. Our older scouts seem disconnected.

They seem to just want to play cards or go hide from the responsibilities most of the time. I'm hoping to change that soon. However, I'm wondering if I need some new program or some kind of carrot to get them fired up when the time comes.

Well, my reply to Danny was: what do these scouts tell you when you discuss your concerns with them? If you sit down with them and you say: hey, fellas, looks to me like you're avoiding responsibility, just kind of sitting around playing cards, and I'm wondering what you think about that.

And Danny replied: well, I'm not the Scoutmaster yet, so I haven't had that discussion. These boys have been led down the garden path about youth leadership some time ago, but things really didn't change on the part of the adults who were working with them. I'm just kind of putting my thoughts together and getting ideas for when this discussion happens, I will be the Scoutmaster and I'll be the fourth new Scoutmaster within a couple of years. My reply was: well.

My best advice, then, is to keep observing and thinking like you're doing now and to do more of it when you become the Scoutmaster, but just to add to that, asking lots of questions. It's important that you have the best principles of scouting in your heart and mind, and by what you've told me, you do, and it indicates to me that, if you're asking this question, you do, and that's more important than any kind of master plan that you're going to come up with When you become the Scoutmaster. What you want to do is get the scouts to come up with the master plan Now.

That's not going to happen quickly and it's not going to change things overnight, but when you are in position to do so, you start asking questions and you get them to figure out what needs to change. You could roll in with a big plan and lots of new ideas, but you'd just be the next adult that stands there and tells them what's good for them. Obviously, that's not really been working very well.

Because why? Because they're shirking responsibility, hiding out and playing cards. What will surprise you is is that when you appeal to them for solutions, they're going to come up with things that you thought should happen anyway. If you let them discover these things instead of telling them all about it, it's going to be their idea and not yours, and they will voluntarily do what you thought you'd have to make them do. And to end the conversation, Danny replied: I absolutely agree, thank you. I didn't think about the fact that I'm just another guy who's going to tell them what he thinks.

Instead, I'll just give them support and ride along with things, and I'll do my best to keep on track and lead them through the program. Well, that's the way that it's going to work. Like I said, it won't come along overnight, but if you work it this way and you let these changes originate with the scouts as soon as the changes start to take place, you won't be able to stop it. You won't be able to kill it, because it's something that they've come up with on their own and that they feel is important, rather than just something that the next adult, who happened to be the Scoutmaster, told them to do. Listen, if you have a question for me, I'd love to have you get in touch, and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.