Scoutmaster Podcast 246

I'm Ed Milius and I am an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 61 in Valerico, Florida. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me And now the old Scoutmaster.

So two biologists are headed into the back country to study bears. They're working on this big study. They got a couple miles down the trail and they see a sign that says bear left.

And so they go home. Yeah, bear left, They go home.

All right, Now, if you, if you listen for a long time, you heard that one before I need some new ones, folks Send them in This podcast number 246..

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look in the mail bag. We didn't have the chat feature on this past week, It was a holiday week. Happy belated thanksgiving to everyone. Just yesterday we published in Baden Powell's blog his thoughts about the camping season.

I published a couple of gift lists this week because you know it is the season. The first one featured my kind of wish list of camping tools and that's hatchets and stuff like that, And then I also published a list of things that I thought would inspire scouts, or scouts who received them, to do a little bit of handy work. There's a number of things on both those lists and look forward to a couple more being published this week. Also, this past week, we published our seventh and eighth chapters in our story of a new Scoutmaster. Several people left comments about that. Ken Tillman said: this is a great series.

I'm definitely putting some of the ideas to use as we reset the troop leadership with the scouts that we have now. Ed Bruce said: happy thanksgiving, Clark, Great series. I'm thankful for all your help and all you do.

Well, thank you so much, Ed. It's always great to hear that. I really do appreciate that. Dustin Tardidi said I'm really enjoying the series.

Thanks so much for continuing it Well. I'm really, once again, always pleased to know that people find what we're doing is useful, Just and sometimes a little amazed. Listen. If you're a regular reader or a listener and the resources that are available at scoutmastercgcom have been valuable to you, you can return the favor by becoming a back. Funds from our backers go to the expenses of producing and publishing the blog posts and the podcasts and the videos that are accessible freely to scouts all over the world. It's easy to do: Go to scoutmastercgcom and click on the support link at the top of the page.

There You can choose any level of support, and some of them entitle you to premiums like autographed copies of my books. I want to take a moment this week to personally thank Michael Duff and Will Adamson, who both became backers since our last podcast, and you can join them, Become a backer this week, and I'll make sure to thank you during our next podcast.

Now this podcast is another agonized alliteration of email answers, And this week we chose the letter C because I'll answer emails about Meribadge classes, patrols cooking their own chow, a scoutmaster a little worried about scouts who change troops, and an email about Scouting's Urban Legends or Scouting's Chimeras- I told you it was tortured- And finally, a little troop election chicanery, and that's going to take up the remainder of this week's podcast. So let's get started, shall we?

My favorite all time boy scout- He's my favorite all time boy scout- Send me a letter. Send it by name, E-mail, that is folks.

And here's an answer to one of your e-mails. Bill Chapman is the Scoutmaster, Troop 736 in Orange County, California, And he said: what are your thoughts on merit badge classes? Frankly, Bill, I don't care for merit badge classes.

I don't care for anything in Scouts that we're going to call a class, Because I think that scouting, learning and education is radically different than the standard formal type of education our Scouts receive in school. So when people call something and scouting a class it kind of rubs me the wrong way. Various influence have always been aimed at reducing things like merit badges to a classroom experience, And it's kind of inevitable because that's what we're used to, That's what we know. There are workbooks and worksheets and lesson plans and all sorts of other things that I consider to be mischief that reduce what could be really great hands-on active learning experiences to a dull slog through exercises that sit Scouts on their backside watching PowerPoint presentations and ticking off requirements.

Now I'm not complaining about the quality of the instruction or the quality of the work that gets done, But if we have things that we call classes, I can almost guarantee we're missing an opportunity to do some real scouting, And I'm actually working on a. It may end up being a book about scouting education and with a lot of practical methods to avoid bringing in the more formal kind of classroom education methods that we typically default to, And I'm hoping to have that done by the first part of next year. Mike Martin is with Troop 186 and he's a Scoutmaster. He said I was voted in as the new Scoutmaster and I'm trying to tell everyone that Scouts should be buying their own food, packing their own food, cooking their own food and cleaning up from their meals as a patrol, And this has never happened in our Troop in the past.

Well, first, Mike, good for you, because that is exactly what ought to be happening. I'm getting some pushback from one of my assistant Scoutmasters that thinks this is going to be confusing and questions who's going to buy the food and all those different things. My response has been that it'll be up to the patrol leaders to organize it and make it happen. The trickiest part is how it's paid for.

I think the patrol can make their own menu, buy their own food and then have the members of the patrol reimburse whoever bought the food. I've heard other troops go shopping during the meeting times the week of the camp out, which might be a good idea, but I'm asking your advice on how to make this happen.

Well, Mike, you'll have a lot of fun and develop some leadership skills if you put the question of exactly how that's going to happen directly to your patrol leaders, council and work with them at forming a plan. They'll get stuck here and there, probably in this process, So help them out. Make some suggestions Now. Based on my experience, the most practical idea is setting a budget for shopping. For instance, we budget $10 per scout for food over a weekend And that usually works out just fine. If a patrol wants to do something above that $10 budget, then they need to cost it out before they do, And if it takes an extra five or 10 bucks per scout, they ought to make sure that the families know and understand that ahead of time And that all the scouts and the patrol are part of making that decision The first time out.

You may consider having the patrol leaders be the ones who actually buy the food. Have them meet you at the grocery store after the patrol's figured out a menu and you can help them navigate through this the first time. In doing that, you see, you will have trained them to train the other scouts and their patrol, And the way that that happens is actually outlined in one of the first couple of chapters of the narrative that we've been publishing over the past several weeks, called a new Scoutmaster.

So make sure to check that out. Steve wrote in to say I'm currently preparing for a University of Scouting program on debunking the urban legends of scouting. An example of an urban legend would be that scouts must wear their uniforms while traveling to be covered by insurance. I'd appreciate it if you could send me a few of your favorites.

Well, Steve, I think one very useful thing for you to do in that program would be to make sure that people are provided with the three publications that debunk all of the urban legends of scouting. I'm gonna direct you by a link in the post that contains this podcast to links of PDF versions of these three publications: The Guide to Safe Scouting, the Guide to Advancement 2013, and the Uniform and Insignia Manual.

Now you asked for some of my favorite scouting urban legends. Well, wearing the uniform seems to be the most persistent myth, And many folks are surprised when they find out that scouts are never absolutely required to wear a uniform. Because if you look at the Guide to Awards and Insignia I mentioned before, on page five it says this: while wearing the uniform is not mandatory, it is highly encouraged. The leaders of scouting, both volunteer and professional, promote the wearing of the correct complete uniform on all suitable occasions.

So wearing the uniform is not mandatory. It's highly encouraged, but it's not mandatory.

Now, of course, what I think really needs attention are not so much policy myths or misunderstandings, but basic misunderstandings about the motivations behind scouting. These are more attitudinal issues than policy misunderstandings, The most common among those being that scouts are somehow not trustworthy and they must be policed by the establishment of lots of rules and regulations, metrics, tests and proofs, or that scoutmasters employ youth leaders like their employees to carry out responsibilities they would otherwise have to do for themselves. Both attitudinal myths that often need a little bit of correction. George wrote in to say our troop holds leadership elections in what I consider to be an unusual manner.

The scouts elect a slate of potential senior patrol leaders and then a board made up of adults interview those potential senior patrol leaders and selects the quote winner, unquote. I've never seen this done anywhere else and I kind of feel like it undermines the concept of youth run so far as a scout troop is concerned.

What do you think? Well, George, that's a new one on me, Of course, as you suspect, it undermines the choice of the scouts, doesn't it? Either they're going to elect their leaders directly or adults are gonna get involved in some kind of chicanery that marginalizes their choice. It's interesting how many different ways adults find to invalidate youth choices or coerce the results that they would like to see.

Why even go through the artifice of having the youth involved at all? Just pick the senior patrol leader.

If that's the way you're going to do it, I think it's a little craven to try and hide behind this idea that while we're letting the scouts choose a slate of candidates from whom we will choose the winner, Come on. You know, you don't have to go any further than the Scoutmaster Handbook to learn that the senior patrol leaders are elected by all the scouts in the troop, and it's just that, plain and simple. Pete got in touch with me. He said I lost two scouts in one week to another troop in town. The father of the first one, who is also one of my assistant Scoutmasters, told me his son wanted to be with his friends who were members of the other troop. When the first scout left, a second one followed whose father happens to be another assistant Scoutmaster, and that really hurt.

It's bothered me so much. I've had trouble sleeping trying to figure out if I did anything wrong. I put a lot of time and effort and money into scouts and this loss has hit me kind of hard.

Well, Pete, you know there's nothing about this that isn't upsetting, And I've had the same sort of thing happen to me and don't feel alone, because I'm sure that other people listening have had the same kind of thing happen to them. So let me offer you this: Either you were the cause of the scouts changing troops or you weren't.

Now, if you were the cause, that's kind of the worst case scenario. Well, you know what? That's just the way of things sometimes. Sometimes people don't get along with each other, sometimes people don't like somebody's leadership style or personality or something like that. I've had it happen to me. Like I said, people who are listening have had it happen to them and that's little consolation, I know, because this is very upsetting, but it's not the end of the world- If you weren't the cause of these scouts leaving- because- let's note this- the first scout that went said he wanted to be with his friend, and probably the second scout decided the same thing, and that's a pretty common reason for changing troops, because boys want to be scouts with their buddies and if their buddies are all over in another troop, it would seem very natural to me that they would want to go over to the other troop.

It's a very common reason for changing troops and I would accept that at face value. And it is what it is, And you aren't going to be able to do anything to change that, because scouts pick their friends. Don't take it as a personal affront to your dedication or the resources you put into scouting. Listen, the boys that we serve as scouts are at an age where they can be very capricious and thoughtless when it comes to things like this.

Now, you'd hope that their parents, especially those who are volunteers, would be a little more thoughtful, but sometimes they aren't. So, Pete, this is where your sense of professionalism about your work as a scoutmaster needs to kick in. It's easy to be resentful or to take this personally, but as a scoutmaster, you're expected to have a higher standard in the way you approach this, even if other people act poorly.

So you focus on the scouts who are there and you'll get over the ones that you lost. And I would add that losing scouts one way or another is both inevitable and expected.

It always hurts a little bit and sometimes it hurts a lot, but scoutmasters have important work to do and we need to have a sense of professionalism about that work. And I hasten to add that this is also an opportunity to do a little introspection: take a look at your program, take a look at your attitudes and the way that you're approaching things and see if there's any room for improvement. I know when I do that, I always find room for improvement. Hey, listen, if you have a question or a comment and you'd like to get in touch with me, you're gonna find out how to do that in just a moment.