Scoutmaster Podcast 237

I'm Doug Marks and I've been Scoutmaster of 2451 in Terlach, California, for 18 years. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by bankers like us.

And now for you, Scoutmaster: If a scouter speaks in the forest and there are no scouts around, will they still be ignored?

Hey, this is podcast number 237.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Hey, let's take a look at the mailbag. We heard from Jim Apelli, who is the Scoutmaster of Troop 208. And he said: when asked what scouting was all about during a life Scoutmaster conference, one of my scouts answered: a fun way to make yourself a better person, And I thought it was a great answer.

I think so too, Jim. A fun way to make yourself a better person. Yeah, we put that on a t-shirt or something right. By the way, our trip to Algonquin this summer was absolutely awesome. We had five days of great weather and covered the entire Big Trout Lake loop. Gordon Baker of Algonquin Outfitters was great help in making this happen.

I'm really looking forward to doing this trip again in 2016 with my now 14-year-old son and his group. We're going to be a little smarter next time. Your advice was really helpful and made for a great trip. I'm really glad to hear that, Jim. Algonquin is one of my favorite places And we're going to be headed there with our bunch in 2015.. That's next summer.

If you're interested in making that happen for your Scouts, get in touch with me because I will work with you to make sure that you can get there. Algonquin Provincial Park is a monster-sized, one of the premier locations in the world to go canoeing, And we've been going there for about a dozen years now. I'd love to make it possible for your Scouts.

So if you're interested, get in touch. Bass is with the Cambridge Garden Guides in Sydney, Australia. If you've been listening for a while, you've heard from Bass a couple of times and we interviewed her on a podcast a few months back. But she wrote to say: I just listened to you endangering your man card on Padcast 235.. You have to go back and listen to that folks to understand what she's saying.

And I need to point out once again: Bass is a Girl Guides leader, which is kind of like Australian Girl Scouts, right, And she said: on a recent hike a Boy Scout tagged along with his sister- He was being a bit of a smart aleck and poking fun at the Girl Guides sash saying: why wouldn't you just put your badges on your sleeves like the Boy Scouts, which is not what we do here but what they do in Australia? Right, And one of the guides asked him: what do you do when you run out of room on your sleeve?

And he said: well, I've never run out of room. And the Girl Guide kind of ended the conversation by saying I've filled up three sashes Over at the blog. This past week we had a post about a new offering from the solo stove people.

Now, if you're not familiar with this, I'm a big advocate of wood-burning stoves, high-efficiency wood-burning stoves, in exchange for liquid fuel or propane stoves, especially those that use the disposable canisters, And there is a lot of alternatives out there for high-efficiency wood-burning stoves that make a lot of sense for scouts. The solo stove people have had a couple of models: one's kind of a small individual one- and I carry that backpacking- and they made a slightly larger one there, but now they are working on making a big one that looks to me like it would be a perfect patrol stove. They're going to send me one as soon as they're available and we'll have a review of them, But you can go and take a look at that and if you're already sold on the idea, you can get one through their Kickstarter campaign.

So go to scoutmastercgcom and look for the solo stove campfire post and you'll get some more details about how that's all working out. Publish an infographic about caring for axes and hatchets this past week. It's not a book, it's just an infographic.

It doesn't cover every single tiny detail about how to care for axes and hatchets And we've had a couple of interesting exchanges in the comments section on that, because as soon as you start talking about edge tools, it gets people very excited And there are always complementary and conflicting opinions about exactly how they should be treated and sharpened and things like that. But I guess that's part of the fun, right?

And then just yesterday on Sunday, BP's blog, which is something where I get a piece that Baden Powell wrote during his lifetime. I post it every Sunday And this week. If you haven't seen it already, give it a read. It's an interesting little history of where his book Scouting for Boys came from, how it originated.

In the years directly following the founding of the worldwide scouting movement, there were a number of people that stepped up and tried to supplant Ben Powell's claim that he was the one who started the whole thing, And so he has a couple of things to say about that in that post too. Very interesting. Hey, if you're a regular reader and listener, if the information and the ideas that we've been able to put out there have helped you, you can return the favor by making a one-time contribution as a scoutmastercgcom backer.

Now, the funds we get from backers go towards all the expenses of producing and publishing the blog posts and podcasts and all the other resources that are available to scouts all over the world. And it's a pretty easy thing to do: Go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page. You can choose any level of support, and some of those entitle you to premiums like autographed copies of my books.

There's a little backlog right as I'm waiting on some copies from the printer, but it's only a week or so, so take a moment and check that out. And before we go any further, let me take a moment to personally thank Jack Carter and Gary Brazell, who signed up as backer since last week's podcast. I really do appreciate it.

Thank you so very much. Without you, folks, none of this would be possible In this week's podcast in Scoutmastership, in Seven Minutes or less we'll have our third installment of the Patrol Methods series And then we've got some email questions to answer and that constitutes the remainder of the podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, Yes, it does.

So let's get started, shall we?

Scoutmastership in Seven Minutes or less. So a couple of weeks ago we started talking about the Patrol Method And our first installment talked about the Patrol Method as the character school of scouting, That real self-government makes the scout oath and law more relevant than a bunch of concepts preached by adults, and that scouts find meaning in the life of the patrol and troop, where individual responsibilities kind of become group responsibilities. It's the heart of the scouting movement, the Patrol Method.

And then last week we talked about the adult role And you'll remember we kind of sketched out the idea of the adult role in the Patrol Method being more responsive than directive. And when we start talking about those things, a lot of people find that applying the Patrol Method maybe has not been the strongest aspect of their troop And they find that there's some pretty dramatic changes that are needed. And of course it's pretty predictable what happens when you suggest that things should change.

People are human beings and there's a lot of us that don't really appreciate changes and we don't want to make changes. So we raise some objections to those changes, And these objections to the Patrol Method come from adults and sometimes from scouts.

So discussing these objections is going to help us understand the Patrol Method a little better And will lead us into the fourth and final installment of this series, which is how to make the Patrol Method happen. But right now let's concentrate on what the general objections are and see if that helps you understand things a little better. The first one we usually run into is that if scouts are given just the free will choice to form their own patrols, that their patrols aren't going to be all the same number, They're not going to be balanced by age and rank and things like that.

And you're right, If it's left up to a scout to decide who's in what patrol, there's not a whole lot of likelihood They're going to be as well balanced as they would be if adults sat down with all the metrics and figured them out. But I'll tell you something: they will be much more effective Now. An ideal patrol has around eight scouts. That's been the rule of thumb for about a century, But there's no hard and fast rule that says a patrol can't be five or a patrol can't be ten, Eight just seems to be the best workable number. Some scouts do better when they're in a group of five. Some scouts do better when they're in a group of ten.

If we let them decide, they're going to find the level that works best for them. I do know that if a scout isn't in a patrol with his friends, he's going to find a way to be with his friends. He'll gravitate towards them during meetings and outings and camping trips anyway. A balanced patrol is one of those things that we talked about in past podcasts on the subject as kind of an administrative decoration. That seems to matter a lot to adults.

But scouts, they're not so interested in balanced patrols as they are in patrols that work for them and that have their friends in them. Because why do you join scouts? To do cool stuff with your friends.

If you join scouts and you find out that all your friends are over in two different other patrols, you know what friendship is stronger than patrol membership. You're going to find a way to hang out with your friends And that's going to be frustrating for everybody involved.

So, yes, if, given the choice, scouts are not going to form the same balanced patrols that adults would form, but the patrols that they do form are going to be much more effective. The second big objection is that if we as adults don't have some kind of control or, say, over the process, the scouts aren't going to elect qualified leaders. And that can be true, but usually they'll make really good choices. That's been my experience. When somebody raises this objection to me, what I tell them is: the choice of the scouts is their choice in that matter right, And we will work with their choices.

If they choose someone who we think is unqualified, well then it's up to the patrol leaders council, the senior patrol leader and the adults involved to help them get up to speed and to do their best. We will meet the challenge no matter what. The third objection I hear most often is: without a lot of direct adult oversight, like an assistant Scoutmaster assigned to every patrol to make sure the patrol leader does everything that he's supposed to, that scouts will just not do any of their work or take any responsibility. Scouts will take responsibility and they will do the job as they understand it. Our work is helping them understand If adults are clearly in control, regardless of what scouts do or adults will do the work for them, then scouts aren't going to do much. They're pretty smart that way.

If the adults are going to take over and do stuff and we can just kind of hang out, hey, that's no problem for me. That makes my life a little bit simpler, a little bit easier, And that's fine.

You know, Makes sense. Now, when adults leave the scouts alone and let them get things done, when they stop interfering or fixing or taking over, scouts gradually learn how to make things happen.

The fourth objection is that if scouts don't plan meetings or camp outs very well or present things at meetings as well as we do, our program is going to suffer. Well, if your goal is simply: you know, a quality show and earning lots of badges, put the adults in charge because they do a much better job.

Now the scouts really don't end up having to do much other than listen and follow along. But you'll have good presentations and you'll probably have a lot of advancement. But our goal really is not that kind of decorative quality of the program, is it, Or the number of badges that scouts earn. It's providing the opportunity for scouts to learn about planning and presenting things and leading and to derive all the benefits of the patrol method. Our goal is in building something for our scouts. It's providing them the opportunity to build something for themselves.

Now listen, if you're a parent, somewhere on your desk, on your dresser, somewhere, you have this treasured object- maybe a drawing or a lopsided clay statue- that your child created and gave to you. That little piece of artwork is never going to be written about by art critics or displayed in a national museum, But to you it's a priceless piece of work.

Right? We ought to use this perspective when we view what our scouts do. Comparing their skills in planning and presenting things and running meetings and all of that kind of stuff to what adults are capable of is like holding that prized piece of artwork your child made up next to the Mona Lisa.

They're two totally different worlds, right? If we value our scouts' effort above our own, we'll begin to see the true value of the patrol system at work. If we concentrate on making the patrol method a reality, our scouts will get more out of scouting than just a lot of badges or the pleasant memory of really cool presentations or activities that were led by adults. The fifth objection is that if we give scouts the choice of what they're going to do and their program. They will not advance. They will not do the things that scouts do, They'll decide to do stupid things.

It's kind of like the red herring is always: well, you know, if we told them they could do anything they wanted to do, they'd just sit around and play video games or something like that. Right, Well, you know, scouts advance when they do the things that scouts do, and the Patrol Leaders Council is focused on doing what scouts do.

So scouts are going to advance. They may advance a little slower, a little faster than they do, right, when adults run things, but advancement is really just only one indication of success. And remember, we're not chasing indicators and we're not decorating our program. We're doing the patrol method. That's the most important thing.

We need to value the other indications of success at least equally. Did scouts plan and present their own meeting? That's a great indicator of success.

Did they plan and carry out their own camping trip? Another great indicator of success.

Have they grown more competent and skilled as leaders? Are they gaining an appreciation for responsibility? Those are indicators that are hard to put in numbers on a piece of paper, but they're really, really important. Our job is to give them real responsibility about making the choices about what they do. We also work with them to keep it in the context of scouting.

And they're going to do what scouts do because really, you know, that's why we're there in the first place. And they want to do what scouts do because that's why they're there. They want to go camping, They want to advance, They want to learn the skills of scouting. That objection is really reasonably easy to overcome. Objection number six is our older scouts don't want to work with younger scouts. I'll agree that that is the case a lot of times.

But I will say this: football players, they're not particularly fond of wind, sprints and drills in practice, but eventually they see the value of them. Older scouts aren't always excited about working with younger scouts, but they reap the same benefits of service that we adults experience. They will get it.

This can be a particularly frustrating issue in a troop that runs the patrol method, because you know we're hands off and we're out observing what's going on rather than trying to control what's going on, And we will see the older scouts kind of grouped over here and the younger scouts kind of grouped over there every once in a while. Well, what you're going to do and what your job is in that situation is to build in them, build in those older scouts, an ideal of service, And it can be a big challenge, but they get it and they will follow up with it. While you're building this ideal of service, you also have to recognize the idea that they want to be with their peers and not just with all the younger guys all the time.

So you build in opportunities for that to happen too. And finally, a lot of the objection comes down to listen. We're just not comfortable with giving scouts this kind of responsibility and power. We just think everything's going to fall apart.

So go back to the sports analogy for a moment. Are coaches afraid to give their players too much power? When a team takes to the basketball court and the coach stays on the sidelines while the players play the game, the coach isn't worried about the player, that the players are going to start playing soccer or lacrosse on the basketball court- right, Because he's taken the time to train the players in the rules and the skills of the game. And once again, we guide and train our scouts to lead themselves in the context of scouting.

So there are rules and goals to the game that we help them understand. The rules are the scout oath and law. The goals are forming character-driven, contributing members of our community. And what you have to do is you have to trust that the patrol method is a process that is going to create exactly that: Character-driven, contributing members of the community.

And it's a process, It's not a switch that we can throw on or off. We can't wave a magic wand and all of a sudden have the patrol method fully active, fully capable and looking exactly like we've pictured it in our minds. It's a challenge, but it's one of the most rewarding and greatest challenges of scouting.

So how are we going to make it happen? What are the practical logistic considerations in putting the patrol method into practice?

How does it actually work on the ground? Well, in our fourth and final installment on the patrol method, that's exactly what we're going to talk about: E-mail, that is, folks,

And here's an answer to one of your emails. I have three e-mail questions that came in and they all touch on the principle of dealing with individual scouts as they come to us, accepting them just as they are and working with them. Some scouts come to us and they're a little troubled or they have some challenges. Our work is making scouting available to them in a way that they can get the most out of the whole experience.

Now there are policies and rules and regulations and procedures and loads of advice, but when it comes down to it, we have to thoughtfully and carefully consider the individual scout, their ambitions and their needs, Not just the giant herd of scouts that we're working with, but each individual scout. It's a balancing act and the answers to these three situations are definitely reflective of that. We are sure to be successful when we call on our own sense of empathy, understanding and compassion and we work hard to understand what's going on in the life of an individual scout.

Each one of these situations deals with some delicate matters, so we're going to withhold the names of the people who sent the e-mails in at their request, But the first one says this: I was filling in for our advancement chair while conducting a border review this week and it was great fun, as usual. One review was for a socially challenged but active scout with kind of one of those parents who's like a helicopter parent. I received an interesting e-mail from our Scoutmaster afterwards and he said I was a bit surprised that the scout in question passed the border review. I completed a Scoutmaster conference just before and I really didn't expect him to complete the border review. In my opinion, he may not have been ready to advance, although he did have all the requirements completed and signed off in his book. During our conference he barely spoke at all, but he did tell me that he was just looking for the easiest way to get out of work in completing his requirements.

I want to help him and not stand in the way, but frankly, I just really believe that he's not ready to advance if he has that kind of attitude. If you guys on the border review saw something different, I'd love to hear about it so I can work with it. And the person who sat on the board answered back. I was impressed that this scout asked to have his border review because his mother was nowhere in sight. Yes, I understand exactly what you're saying there. The poor kid sat there and shook during the entire border review, but he made eye contact and gave more than yes or no answers and formed full sentences, which was a considerable improvement over his past border review.

Was he as sharp as his fellow scouts? No, but that's really not here or there. We don't want to compare scouts to one or another in a border review.

We want to see them growing individually, And so our judgment during a border review is based on what the individual progress that particular scout has made. I think we also have to consider that his parents are a little over-involved and that colors his experience, And, of course, none of us can really pick our parents.

We have to look past the kind of pressure that gets exerted by ambitious parents to the interests of the scout. We aim to provide a positive opportunity for him to discover and develop his own ambitions rather than those being imposed on him by a parent.

We must be careful not to misdirect the frustration of dealing with a really ambitious parent onto the scout, And that's a challenge for all of us, isn't it? At least the parent we're talking about is aware that they get a little over-involved and they're struggling to let go at times, And we ought to be thankful that they are at least aware of the situation, because a lot of helicopter parents are completely oblivious to the difficulties that they cause for their scout, And I thought that was a very good answer. We're focused on the individual scout, not how he does in comparison with others, and that's the real genius of scouting.

The awkward, uncommunicative or even treacherous and reluctant scout who's being pushed by a parent is going to have kind of a bad attitude, And it's a great example of why we need to look for things in each individual scout and not compare them to everybody else. We do what we can to focus on his best interests. We aren't hurting sheep right. We're dealing with one boy at a time.

And then I had this question from a cubmaster The last night. A question came up regarding a cub's brother who wants to participate in our pack. The younger brother is a wolf and his older brother, who wants to participate, has Down syndrome.

As a pack, we're open and accepting and we want this child to feel welcome. We also want him to be awarded for his accomplishments, as he does his best. I'm not too sure how to best handle the situation.

Would we be required to assign him to an official den based on his age, or can he participate in the same den with his older brother even though he's a couple years older? My advice is that when you're dealing with a scout with special needs, I suggest that probably the best idea is to kind of reverse engineer the experience. Start with the scout and his family.

What's the ideal arrangement that delivers the promises of scouting to them? Now, it may take a little while to figure that out, but work along with the family and don't wait until you have everything figured out. Look at the scout participating and because that is going to help you figure out exactly what's going to work best for them.

Now, once you've worked this out with his family and you define the experience, the next step is taking that definition and fitting all the policies and procedures to it. You know, I kind of picture a wiring diagram where you're engineering an adapter plug. I mean I hope that makes sense. You'll find that there's a lot of leeway to define things for special needs scouts and someone within your council knows exactly how to do that. You'll want to locate them. I would give your district executive a call, or just cold call the council office and ask who can help out explaining some of the ins and outs of the way that this works.

Like I said, it's very flexible. There's a lot of leeway. At one point you'll be making a decision whether the scouting question is going to go with advancement requirements as they are in the book or if they're going to go with a set of alternative requirements, and this is one of the things that you and the family are going to work out together.

But that's only the advancement part and that's not the most important part, is it? The most important part is that we have a child who's able to get the benefit of being in scouting. What you and his family define as an appropriate method for evaluation for advancement, and what age group he participates with will likely work when it comes to making that adaptation for officialdom. If he's a couple years older and he wants to be with his brother and that works out best, usually that's not going to be a problem And, like I said, you'll make a decision based on his abilities: whether he can be assessed with the requirements in the book or whether it's going to make more sense to have a set of alternate requirements. And thirdly, in this triumvirate of emails that all deal with working with individual scouts, I got this message. I listened to your podcast avidly and thank you for all you do.

It's helping me. I learned that a scout in my troop had overdosed on a drug. We've really had no issues with his involvement in the troop. All of this happened outside of scouting. I was very concerned about this and I reached out to my district executive to see whether this type of conduct would prevent him from continuing as a member of our troop or from advancing, potentially, to Eagle, because the scout in question is a life scout. The district executive said he really couldn't see anything disqualifying in this incident as it was explained to him.

Now, that being said, it's going to be a source of some discussion amongst parents and leaders in our troop and I want to be prepared. The scout appears to be okay, but he's clearly troubled and he's been in distress for some time. I don't want to turn my back on him in his time of trouble, but I also don't want to get crosswise of any principles or policies that I'm supposed to be observing as a scout leader.

Have you ever experienced anything like this? Thanks for your help.

Well, the scout you've told me about, like any other young person, needs an intact support network, and scouting is going to be part of that. He's going through some tough times, to be sure, but he hasn't really threatened the safety or well-being of anyone other than himself, right? And the idea of having a drug overdose, even though it happened outside of scouting.

Well, that is naturally something that would raise a lot of concern. But other than expressing that concern to him directly and offering any support to him personally- and, you know, making sure that this is not an ongoing problem- I don't see any other actions that need to be addressed. Maintaining that intact support network for one of our children who is going through tough times is very, very important. I wouldn't want to go in with a lot of value judgments and things like that.

I would want to make sure that they understood we were there to help them as best we can and to keep that support network intact. Now, when and if he ends up in front of an Eagle border review, maybe he'll be asked to explain some of these things. Maybe there'll be a time where you sit down and have a Scoutmaster's conference and you ask him to explain these things in the light of the scout oath and law and you help him figure his way through them.

And you know, if you do this wisely and you're a compassionate counselor, you don't have to offer any judgments or be difficult with this scout. You have an honest, open discussion with him in the context of the scout oath and law and look for the conclusions that he comes to, and I'll bet that you're going to have a lot of common ground. Now. I've worked with plenty of scouts over time who have encountered some major obstacle, personally or in their family life, or at school or elsewhere. And I'll say it again: what they all need is an intact support network and caring adults committed to their success and well-being.

Now it sounds like, from the sense of the question that you asked me, that you're one of those people. So follow your heart and continue to be there for this scout.

Not everyone will think that this is a good idea and you may have to explain yourself and not everybody may get on board, But the point is is that you're doing your best to help a troubled individual scout, and that's all that really matters in the end. Well, there's three different but very interesting situations that point out why we want to stay focused on the individual scout.

We can do a lot of good that way. We can be of great service to our fellow human beings by doing that right? Listen, if you have a question for me, it's really easy. Again in touch and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.