Scoutmaster Podcast 245

I'm Bill Chapman and I'm a Scoutmaster with Troop 736 in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like us. Thanks, Clark, for everything you do.

And now for you Scoutmaster. Hey, let's talk about trail mix for a moment. This is a ziplock bag of stuff that you make and you carry along when you go backpacking or hiking, or maybe you make some up just to go camping. I have found that there are two basic ingredients to trail mix. There are M&M's and disappointment.

Do you know exactly what I'm talking about?

Hey, this is podcast number 245.. Hey, Hey, Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look in the mailbag. I'm Donald Fowler, and Don said it's been five months since I've become Scoutmaster. I'm having a blast.

Our patrol leaders council is taking on more responsibility each month. My next challenge, of course, is getting the adult leaders to stay away from the Scouts during campouts.

Well, Don, first, I am really happy to hear you're having a blast. It is the best job going, isn't it? Being a Scoutmaster. I love it.

And there are challenges, and that's a very common challenge. If you get there, you're going to get those adults right on board and things are going to keep getting better. That's my prediction.

How about that? Don went on to say. I recently heard about a troop with over 100 Scouts with some unusual practices. They will not allow a Scout to advance more than one rank per year because they feel that Scouts who reach Eagle any younger than age 17 aren't mature enough. They look down on any Scout who earned Eagle at a younger age.

I did mention to them that this goes against the Guide to Advancement And the answer I got back was: well, that's how we've always done things And since we have the biggest troop in the area, it proves that we're right. Well, Don, of course it's pretty much a no-brainer, isn't it? The policies you described that this troop has adopted are specifically prohibited in the Guide to Advancement. It's right there in black and white. It's not hard to figure that one out.

What I think is stunning is that people who are expected to model the virtues of loyalty and obedience to young people can decide that they're a rule to themselves. Beyond that, they're convinced that they follow a higher and better rule than the rest of us poor brunited souls out here.

You know, I mean the hypocrisy in that would be comedic if it was not so tragic. I will say what I have often said: there's one way to become an Eagle Scout, and that's completing the requirements as written.

There's nothing about your age in those requirements is there? If it was written, I could understand it, but it's not there. Adding to the requirements in the way that this troop has done is just as misguided as detracting from the requirements.

Unfortunately, though you know, this is not the first troop I've ever heard of that does things this way. I've known troops in my own council like this that have set up their own higher standard of what an Eagle Scout ought to be, and they are usually insufferably proud of themselves, But, like the Emperor with no clothes, they fail to understand that their naked disloyalty and disobedience is plainly visible and, honestly, I'm just plain embarrassed for them. Dave Simmons got in touch with us and he said: I love the blog and the podcast, Just wondering why there's only 12 episodes of the podcast on iTunes.

I brought the Scoutmaster CG app to get the rest of the podcast, but I can't really find a way to download the files to my iPhone, so I can just listen to them when I'm ready instead of trying to stream them through the app. So, Dave, first of all, of course, thank you for your kind words. It's always great to hear that people enjoy the podcast and that they actually want to go and listen to all the back issues in the archive.

I emailed Dave some simple directions on how to get the MP3 files, get them on his iPhone so that he can listen to them whenever he wants. If you go to scoutmastercgcom, right at the top of the page, there's a menu, click on podcast and then you can get to the archive and there's instructions exactly on how to do that.

It's a little bit of a workaround when you're dealing with an iPhone and you know it's the best solution that I have so far. If you've come up with something better, let me know. Kelly wrote into and also said I am working my way through the podcast archives. Thanks for creating this great resource. I'm learning a lot by listening and reading scoutmastercgcom.

Thanks so much for getting in touch, Kelly. I really do appreciate it. This past week I spent some time chatting with folks live at scoutmastercgcom. Keep an eye on the Facebook feed and our Twitter feed and I will always announce when the live chat is turned on at scoutmastercgcom. If you can join us, stop on in And we just chat. This week I talked with Doi Shipman, who is in Okmulgi, Oklahoma, with Troop 102, where he's the advancement coordinator.

Rob Kerrigan checked in from Portland, Maine, John Nelson from Westchester, Ohio, where he's an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 947, and Dave Smiley from Troop 55 in Santa Rosa, California. And Steve Carell with PAC 3623 in Shepherd, Michigan- All checked in. B Jody Lotzkar is with the 5th West Vancouver Mountaineer Scouts. He's a group commissioner and scoutmaster with them and they're in Vancouver, Canada. Rhonda Woff-Weinman checked in with us.

Rhonda comes from the Heart of America Council and was a scoutmaster for almost 12 years and is now the district membership chair. And Jim Gilligly checked in to chat from Mansfield, Massachusetts.

So once again, keep an eye on the Facebook feed and the Twitter feed. I'll announce when the chat feature at ScoutmasterCGcom is live and stop in and join us Over on the blog.

This week, let's see, We published two chapters in the story of a new scoutmaster and I know a lot of you have been following that And there were some great comments. This week James Stonehouse commented. As a troop scouter and a high school auto teacher, I always run into leaders and parents who do the work for youth because it's easier that way. I deal with a lot of learned helplessness where mom and dad always did it for me.

So why should I do it? It's a common situation I run to as a teacher and a scouter. I always remind myself I'm not the troop leader. My patrol leaders are Myself and the other scouters in the troop are valuable resources for the troop, but the youth leaders are the leaders. Unless it's an immediate safety issue, the information instruction ought to be coming from the patrol leader.

If a scout forgets something or breaks something or loses something, well they should go to their patrol leader for help. Being prepared doesn't prevent disasters from happening, but it helps you survive and learn from it.

Sometimes we need a couple of small disasters to help us see the need for being prepared. James, thanks so much for that comment. It got me thinking about scouting as a succession of big challenges and small disasters. Jim Hillier also checked in on that post. He says it does seem like our hero, who's the new Scoutmaster in the story, could have used a more collaborative approach with the adult in this chapter. He's doing a great job bringing boys along with his Socratic approach, but he's kind of bullying the vested adult leaders along the way.

And you know, Jim, those are very good thoughts. Our hero ran into some resistance in one of the chapters this week and the whole story isn't told yet.

We need to see how things go from there. I would say you know, and I can get where you would get the impression that he's kind of bullying his fellow adults, but I think if you look a little bit closer he's really leading them. I've only alluded to some of the longer conversations he's having with his fellow scouts. I haven't detailed those conversations because what happens in the rest of the story is he talks with the scouts. That's where you get the details of what he discussed with the other adults.

And in the chapter that you commented on I did imagine that he explains things a lot more and you know I went back and looked at it and I did a little edit where I made that a little clearer. So I really appreciate those thoughts, Jim. Dustin Tardidi wrote in on that same chapter. A volunteer who insists on doing things their own way is not really helping things out in an organization like Scout.

Yeah, it takes a lot of collaboration, It takes a lot of talking And in the story you have to kind of read in those longer discussions that I talked about and also posted an answer to lots of questions I got from one reader about scouting and money, And collaborating with me on that post was Frank Maynard from Bob White Blather, And Frank has a lot of experience as a committee chair And if you're a listener to the podcast you're probably familiar with Frank by now And his blog is Bob White Blather And I'll include a link to that blog. But it's something definitely you want to check out And you definitely want to check out the comments on that post. We heard from Scoutmaster Phil and B McWilliams. Julie checked in and one of the comments she made was that she wishes there was a little more training for troop or unit treasurers. John Weidke commented: thanks for addressing a common topic that doesn't get a lot of discussion sometimes. And we also heard from Terry Dutton on that post and Mike Cathers And everyone was generously shared what their troop does when it comes to scouting and money.

And so you definitely want to check out that post and the comment stream And it's at ScoutMasterCGcom. Look for the post on Scouts and Money. Hey, if you're a regular reader and a listener and if the resources we've created have helped you. You can return the favor by becoming a ScoutMasterCGcom backer.

The funds we get from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing the blog and the podcast, and you know the videos and all the other resources that we can keep accessible to scouters all over the world. It's pretty easy to do: Go to ScoutsMasterCGcom, Click the support link at the top of the page and you can choose any level of support. Some of them are tied to your premiums, like the autographed copies of my books, And I'd like to take a moment and personally thank Jim Hu and Ed Milius, who became backers since our last podcast.

Thanks so very much. It means a great deal and it keeps us afloat.

So go to ScoutsMasterCGcom and become a backer this week and I'll make sure to thank you on next week's podcast. And in this week's podcast we're going to be answering some email questions and that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast.

So let's get started, shall we Email, that is, folks,

And here's an answer to one of your emails. On a reasonably regular basis, I get a comment or an email that tells this story. We're new to town and we asked for a referral to a boy-led outdoor active troupe And we got a referral but found that the troupe that we selected has elections for youth leadership. But that's about where it stops. There's usually 20 minutes of adult announcements at the beginning of each troupe meeting. Three quarters of the meetings are dedicated to adult-led merit badge sessions and the outings are organized entirely by adults.

What I want to know is how can I help change this? How somebody helps change the way that a troupe functions is a pretty common question, And the most direct, simple answer I have for you is that there are three roles organizationally within a scout troupe that are empowered to make changes. That's the chartered organization representative, the troupe committee chairman and, to a lesser extent, the Scoutmaster. They're the only people who have the organizational role that empowers them to make changes like you would like to see.

Can someone who's not occupying one of those roles help make changes to the way that a troupe functions? Well, you know, naturally, that all depends on how receptive the people in those roles are to change and suggestion, And I will tell you that, unfortunately, in my experience, about eight or nine out of ten times they're not interested And pressing these ideas becomes onerous to them and subsequently you are identified as a troublemaker.

So where do we go from here? Well, your scout's interests individually is the most important factor in determining your way forward.

Okay, Let's not kid ourselves, folks. Many, many troops are administered just as described and scouts get something out of being a part of them. They get something out of scouting in that experience. That's undeniable.

So if your scout is happy, if he's built a lot of friendships within the troupe and you make your suggestions or you share your ideas with how things ought to change and those are rejected, then I would say, in the interest of your scout and because he's built up friendships in the troupe, he's getting something out of the program, just leave well enough alone. Now, if your scout is dissatisfied with the way things are going or you as a parent, weigh the importance of having him participate in a troupe that uses the patrol system, if you weigh that very heavily, then you're going to need to find another troupe.

You know, I know that that's not what most people want to hear, but it's actually that simple. There's lots of stories of adults who try to encourage change in an unwilling troupe and if they keep pressing things or they try and make an issue out of it, it all ends up with a lot of hard feelings.

So I would strongly suggest you find a troupe that is more suited to what you want for your scout. If you aren't in a role to make the changes like I described before, there's really no other viable solution.

Now the next concern that is usually raised when I have these discussions with people is: how can I in good conscience abandon the other scouts you know to this troupe that doesn't get it and who's running a program? That's not the patrol system and it's not what Clark talks about.

Now, if you decide that your family is going to change troops and other parents ask you why, well then you can share the reasons with them and maybe they will decide to make a similar change. If enough of them do this, folks in the troupe that you left may get the message. Unfortunately they may not. Let's remember what's important here. The interest of your scout is important.

If he's happy, satisfied, if he's got a lot of friendships in the troupe and everything like that, I would strongly urge you that if your ideas and suggestions are rejected, that you just leave well enough alone, because it's in his best interest. If he's dissatisfied and he's ready to make a change, get it done. It's a really difficult situation. It's a very common situation but it's very, very difficult and I hope that advice helps. Heard from Jeff Crump, who is the Scoutmaster of troupe 701 in Wakefield, Massachusetts. He said in September I was chosen as the newest Scoutmaster of our troupe.

I love your podcast and blog and you can help me immensely as I've been trying to figure all this out. We're all still trying to figure it all out, Doesn't matter how long we've been around, Jeff.

My question revolves around how much should a Scoutmaster be involved with Eagle paperwork? I had a great Scoutmaster conference with an Eagle candidate recently, but when he submitted his paperwork the essay was returned to him by our council as being insufficient. Some folks were upset with me because I didn't proofread the essay or review the application during the Scoutmaster conference and they implied that part of the Scoutmaster's job is to make sure that all the eyes are dotted and the T's are crossed. My feeling is, if the scout wanted any help with his essay, he could have asked me, and that the Scoutmaster conference is really not the place to review paperwork.

We have Eagle mentors that help scouts navigate the whole process. As I said, in the recent past some of these adults have been pulling scouts over the finish line a little too aggressively.

What do you think the proper level of involvement is for the Scoutmaster and Eagle mentors? Well, first off, Jeff, I noticed that you became a backer and I wanted to say thank you so much for that. And I'm always heartened to hear I'm providing some assistance to my fellow scouters out there.

And you know I'll tell you that being a Scoutmaster is great fun, Even though we run into problems like this now and again. But for the most part, you know, it's a great job. And in my experience there's no more kind of overblown, overmanaged cause of problems that Scoutmasters encounter than all of this kind of weirdness and frustration surrounding Eagle Scout. It has kind of the highest freak out factor of anything else in scouting as far as my experience goes. First, to clear up a couple of terminology things, and let's just clear that up real quick: There's no essay required for Eagle.

There's a statement of ambitions and life purpose that accompanies the application and we have project coaches. We don't have Eagle mentors. Really, The Eagle mentor thing is a pin that an Eagle Scout can present to someone who he considers has been influential in helping him reach his goal. My simple answer to your question- what is your proper level involvement and the proper level involvement for project coaches- is easy because I would answer as little as possible and, most of the time, only when the candidate requests our help. The best advice I have for anybody working with Eagle candidates is to take a good long look at the applicable section of the Guide to Advancement 2013, the Eagle Application and the Eagle Project Workbook. Once you have a working knowledge of the process, you'll better understand what your role is and you can aid Scouts in navigating their way through it.

The Eagle process to find in those documents is actually very simple and most of the verbiage in the documents- check them out and see if you agree with me- is there to protect Scouts from the kind of capricious, over anxious interference that we sometimes see. Now, unfortunately, I think it grows to be a habit that adults perform really intensive reviews of the paperwork and the Scouts writing and stuff on all of these forms and things and they review it pretty intensively and that leads to a lot of polishing and expanding and rewriting on the Scouts part.

So I guess if a statement or report actually written by the Scouts, somehow slips through. People are going to read it and they might look at it and say, well, this is insufficient because no adults have been involved in creating it. There's no essay required for Eagle. What you're referring to is called a statement of ambitions and life purpose in requirement 7 that accompanies the Eagle Application. That requirement does not define a certain length for that statement or anything that would indicate to me it could be judged insufficient, let alone that anyone's even really kind of permitted to make that judgment.

But anyway, so far as the Scoutmasters role in all this, well, my habit of Scoutmaster was to review the workbook briefly with the Scout during his life Scoutmaster conference and make sure he understood what the project workbook was so that he could get himself rolling on beginning thinking about an Eagle project. Now, once a Scouts decided, yeah, I'm going to be an Eagle Scout, I'll do my best to offer help and answer questions and make suggestions, but 7 or 8 times out of 10 I leave well enough alone.

If he's told me he wants to be an Eagle Scout and we go a couple months and there doesn't seem to be any movement, you know, I'm going to ask him about it. I'm going to encourage him, I'm going to do what I can, but the next time I get officially involved as a Scoutmaster is reviewing the project proposal because it requires my signature, I may look at it and we may discuss what a proposal is, what a plan is.

You know some notes about presenting it to the troop committee and what I found is that many, many times Scouts have never written a proposal and they may need a little help defining exactly how that works. So after I've done that, I really don't have an official role until I end up at the Scoutmaster conference for Eagle and we talk about what his plans are and what he'd like to do in his future. Usually by this time he's got the application- the Eagle application- in his hands and it's filled out. He's written his statement. But I rarely read the statements because we're sitting there talking about it anyway and I'd much rather talk to the Scout about these things than read it off of a piece of paper. I've had somewhere north of 80 and south of 110 Eagle Scouts of Scoutmaster and probably have read maybe 10 or 15 statements because the Scout asked my opinion of it.

In each case I kind of scan what they write and say it looks good to me, because in a lot of ways it's really none of my business. This is his work, this is what he's sending forward, and I can't ever recall looking at a statement that I would have judged insufficient, and then, basically, my last official in all this is shaking the Scout's hand and handing him an Eagle badge.

Anyone else involved with this process? You know the advancement chair is going to get involved. You can have a project coach, you can do all kinds of things.

I think the Eagle process is really very simple. I think that it should be kept simple and I think that people shouldn't get quite so anxious about some of the things that they get anxious about.

And I'll say this, and I think I've said it many times: there's only one way for a Scout to reach Eagle: completes all the requirements right and then he successfully passes a duly appointed Board of Review. There's no Eagle Plus, there's no Eagle Minus, there's only Eagle.

And everything else is kind of window dressing, isn't it? Eagle means something different to each Scout. Each one of them is an individual. Each one of them is different. Jeff got back and said: thanks for the response. I do appreciate it.

I agree, the process can get a little overblown, and you're right, I was referring to the statement of ambitions and life purpose. Thanks for your advice and all your hard work on the website and the podcast. Brad Schroer is the Scoutmaster, Troop 414 in Bedford, New Hampshire, said I've listed quite a few of your podcasts. Thanks for all you do. I've been moving our troop along with some of your suggestions.

I know you're a proponent of the Scouts forming their own patrols, but how does this work out for less popular Scouts when a patrol or a patrol leader doesn't want a particular Scout in their patrol? Do you have any particular ground rules set?

Well, we've talked about this in the past couple of podcasts. The ground rules for everything that we do are the Scout Oath and Law. It's really the heart of the matter. No other rules are required. Don't make other rules. Champion the Scout Oath and Law.

Scouts follow the Oath and Law. Scouts aren't concerned with popularity, serving their fellow Scouts.

So it's very difficult for me to imagine, in a situation where Scouts are following the Oath and Law, that there's going to be a problem with leaving people out when they form patrols. Now, boys, that's a different story. They need to think through what it means to be a Scout.

So when the time comes to form patrols, this is something that you want to point out to your patrol leaders council. So a boy says: I don't want to be in a patrol with this other guy, he's a real pain.

Well, my answer to something like that would be: maybe so, and I understand, because people can be a little bit of a pain sometimes. But what part of the Scout Oath and Law describes rejecting a fellow Scout because, quote, he's a pain? Unquote. Every boy gets to be a Scout and we accept him as he is because we practice the Scout Oath and Law. There are friendships between boys and that this is important. But a Scout is a friend to every other Scout and it doesn't necessarily mean that that Scout is their favorite.

But if the Oath and Law mean anything at all, no Scout is certainly an enemy of any other Scout and no Scout is deemed unpopular. Now, I know just as you do, the boys sometimes find it challenging to be Scouts.

So it's our responsibility to champion the Oath and Law that we do. If you work at it, there's no questions about popularity. There's no room for marginalizing any Scout based on whether other boys like him or not. Boys may do that kind of thing, but Scouts never do.

Brad went on to ask: how often do your patrols rearrange? I think I remember you saying on one of the podcasts it could be often and at will.

Is that correct? How many distractions does that cause?

Well, Brad, our patrols get rearranged when the patrol leaders council think that it's needed. That's the at will part that you hear me talk about.

The reset of patrols is usually spurred by the election a new senior patrol leader and then he's appointing Scouts to new positions of responsibility and sometimes that makes resetting the patrols necessary. Now, in my experience, this causes pretty much zero distraction. Every once in a while a Scout may want to shift from one patrol to another. They ask the senior patrol leader and I like to be made aware of those situations and give them a little advice. What I like to do is discuss the importance of patrol size related to function- not too big, not too small, and we've had happy patrols of four or five active Scouts and equally happy patrols of eight or ten. And overlaying all of this, as I said before, we talk about how the oath and law informs these decisions, and usually things come off without a hitch.

Here's two questions from the same source that asked to remain anonymous. Question number one: I've been told as customary for Scoutmasters to step down from their role while their own son serves as senior patrol leader, which my son is currently doing.

Is this a common practice? I'm unaware of. I can remember sometime in the long, dim, distant past of hearing this somewhat obscure urban legend in Scouting. But no, it's not a common practice. If it was advisable or customary, it would be mentioned in our training or in the Scoutmaster Handbook or the troop committee guidebook or other resources that are provided to us. And I would ask whoever advised you to do that to point out where it's advised or mandated in the literature, because they won't find anything.

Question number two: a small faction of parents would be creating havoc for our troop committee. Our district executive and unit commissioner have been in close contact with these parents, but they did not communicate the concerns that they had to us in a timely manner, and that complicated things further.

Is this a common practice? Well, I really can't tell you if that's a common practice or not, but I've seen it before.

It certainly seems to be kind of a counterproductive way of handling things I think anybody would rather hear about any issues or problems being raised right away, when possibly they could do something about it, rather than a couple of weeks or months later. These kinds of storms where parents get upset- maybe they talk to a commissioner or a district executive. These kind of things happen, hopefully rarely. I don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about them myself. I learned over years the hard way because I know how upsetting it is when this happens. If you just stick to your work as a Scoutmaster focused on delivering the program to your Scouts, things gain a little perspective.

A lot of times storms like this come up when there's been some fundamental organizational change, like appointing a new Scoutmaster, and if you look at it from a positive perspective, when people are questioning what's going on, they're a good opportunity for a little introspection. You know, I ask what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and if I've carried out my responsibilities properly and whether or not I need to change my practices and attitudes. And when questions like this have come up in the past, they have certainly helped me do just that. Another anonymous question: our troop committee recently discussed a Scout who has been consistently spoken to about his disruptive behavior for the past six months. At our last camping trip he managed to bully two boys to the point where he made them cry. The Scoutmaster decided the Scout would be told he was taking a month long time out and the time that he had already served in a position of responsibility would not count towards his next rank.

The committee disagreed with the Scoutmaster's judgment on this, but the Scoutmaster replied that this Scout was not living the oath and law and that's part of our expectations. I would appreciate your opinion on this situation.

Well, in my opinion, informed by the Scoutmaster handbook and training, in my experience Scoutmaster's troops and committees, or anyone other than the Scout's parents, should never discipline or punish Scouts, and this includes a month long time out you describe if a Scout is continually misbehaving- and to me continually is twice doing the same thing- after I've discussed it with him once, I speak to his parents. How we get six months into this without anybody taking any definitive action is part of the problem. If I've had to speak to a Scout about the same misbehavior more than once, his parents are going to get involved and I speak to the parents and I tell them that they need to address that at home because we don't discipline or punish Scouts and when they've taken whatever actions they consider adequate, for however long they think they need and can assure me that this sort of behavior won't be repeated, then, and only then, can their Scout return to being active with Scouts, and I go into this in a little more depth in a post called Constructive Scouting Discipline and I'll link to that in the post that contains this podcast. As for denying him a tenure, he's accrued towards a rank requirement. That is patently unfair. The Guide to Advancement spells it out very clearly in Pencils Ready, Section 4.2.3.4.5, titled Win Responsibilities Are Not Met.

It spells out very clearly that concerns about a Scout fulfilling a position of responsibility are addressed immediately, not six months later, not two months later. The Scoutmaster suddenly decides that none of this applies immediately and that there's a clear understanding of precisely what the problem is and how it will be remedied. It also states that denying the Scout his tenure retroactively is not fair.

So if you have a question and you'd like to get in touch with me, you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.