Scoutmaster Podcast 247

I'm Will Adamson and I am a group Scoutmaster and Timber Wolf pack leader with the 80th Overmountain Scout Group in Abingdon, Virginia. This edition of the Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now for you, Scoutmaster, Before we get started this week, a warning: don't go camping in Itchy Coo Park. Itchy Coo Park, You heard me right?

Okay, We were camping there last week. I don't know what it was, but everybody had the same dream. I'm not kidding.

We all dreamt we were roasting giant marshmallows. And the next morning we got up and our tent poles were all charred and our pillows were gone. If you're old enough, you recognize that and I apologize. 10,000 bonus points to the first person who tells me who did that song.

Okay,

This is podcast number 247,. Hey, Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clark Greene. Let's take a look at the mailbag. Let's see. Here I had this email from someone who asked to remain anonymous, but they were commenting on the series that we've been publishing for the past few weeks.

It's a fictional series about a new Scoutmaster. If you haven't seen that, make sure to take a look at it over at scoutmastercgcom. As somebody wrote in to say I'm truly enjoying your new Scoutmaster series. I became a new Scoutmaster last year and the stories that are in the series are all too familiar to me. It mirrors my experiences, but unfortunately, the Scoutmaster in your story has a lot less resistance to making the changes he's making than I did.

So in the end, my son and I found an excellent boy-led troupe that was closer to home. Your podcast and website kept me going in the right direction. While all situations can't be as ideal as your story, it was a good learning experience for both my son and myself.

The one advantage I have in writing a fictional account, of course, is to make everything come out okay, And sometimes that just doesn't happen, And I salute your dedication to the idea of scouting. You gave it a good shot And then you did something that a lot of people may not have done And that is say: okay, you know, no harm, no foul. You guys don't want to do scouting the way that I'm looking at it. And you found another troupe. Good for you and your son, Because he's really the most important part of this right. His interests are the most important part of it.

So I'm glad you got in touch with me about that And I'm glad that things worked out ultimately for the good and that we could have a small part in that. Tennessee also. This week over on the blog I published a gift guide and it featured one item that I heard from my old buddy, Tom Gillard, about down in Tallahoma, Tennessee, And Tom wrote in to say I noted that you had fingerless rag-wool gloves in your gift guide.

Are you sure that shouldn't be digit-impaired rag-wool gloves? Thanks, Tom, I think. Check out the gift guide.

I've published maybe three of them so far and I've got a couple others ready to go. Just some ideas for scouts and scouters.

Sometimes we can be difficult to buy for It can be a little bit of a challenge. So I'm giving you some ideas out there. I had a couple of great live chat sessions this week and let me see who checked in with us. We talked about lots of different things, about winter camping and all kinds of great stuff. George Z checked in with us and he's with Troop 767 in Broomfield, Colorado. We heard from Dennis Unger in Watumka, Alabama, with Troop 13 and Pak 50.

And our frequent fliers checked in: John Nelson from Ohio and Steve Cattrall from Michigan. Rhonda Ruff-Wyman is a Scoutmaster and a district member in Missouri. Bradley White-Fendison is out there in the Mojave Desert in 29 Palms, California. Todd Lund is a Scoutmaster in Little Egg Harbor, Southern New Jersey, And that makes Todd and I neighbors in a kind of strange continental sense, because I'm in southeastern Pennsylvania. Hi, Todd Michael Menager is in the Foothill District of the Atlanta Area Council. Assistant Scoutmaster Dave checked in with us from Lake Forest, California.

Scoutmaster Sean, who's the Scoutmaster of Troop 1363 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Doug Boyce, who is the assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 103 in Wisconsin, And I've been meaning to mention this. But Doug has a great website with a blog and a podcast that are aimed at Cub Scouts And to find his blog you're going to go to BrightideaScoutingcom And it's B-R-I-T-E- Idea Scouting, all one word B-R-I-T-E IdeaScoutingcom. I'll make sure to have a link in the post that contains this podcast, But check it out. Doug's doing a wonderful job over there And I know that there's a lot of folks who are looking for Cub Scout specific information And Doug would be a great source for you. And finally, on the chat this week we heard from Merlin group scout leader over in the Netherlands.

It was great to hear from him. So, from coast to coast and around the world, a live chat.

Keep an eye on the Scoutmaster's CG Facebook feed and our Twitter feed And I will post when we're going to have live chats And then come and sign in and join us- Great fun. Hey, did you notice this week's backer announcement? Bill Adamson is a group Scoutmaster in Addington, Virginia, with a scout group in the B-P-S-A.

Did you get it? B-P-S-A? That's the Baden Powell Service Organization. If you haven't heard of them, check them out at B-P-S-A-USorg- Another one that I'll have a link to in the post that contains this podcast. But the B-P-S-A is a program for people to do scouting in their community. Looks great to me And I've corresponded with several people involved with the B-P-S-A And, as always, the majority of the people who listen to the podcast and read the blog are from the United States.

Most of them are involved with the Boy Scouts of America, the B-S-A, And some of the advice and the answers that you get from the podcast and on the blog are organizationally specific policies and procedures. But my aim is always to focus on those broad underlying concepts of scouting that hopefully will apply wherever you are doing scouting and whoever you're doing it with, And I want to thank Will for signing up and becoming a backer.

Now, if you're a regular reader and listener and the resources we have created are helping you, you can return the favor by doing exactly what Will did and become a ScoutmasterCGcom backer. The funds we get from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing the blog posts and the podcast and the videos and all the other stuff that have become a valuable resource that are accessible to scouters all over the world. It's easy to do.

Here's what you do: Go to ScoutmasterCGcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you can choose any level of support, and some of those entitle you to premiums like autographed copies of my books. And let me make sure to personally thank this week Paul Farley, Carlton Scott and Dennis Unger, who all became ScoutmasterCGcom backers since our last podcast.

So go to scoutmasterCGcom, click on the support link at the top of the page, become a backer this week and I'll be sure to thank you during our next podcast. Well, in this week's podcast in Scoutmastership, in seven minutes or less, we're going to talk a little bit about the tone and volume of your voice, Of your voice. That's right. It's about time we talked about that too. Don't take that tone with me, Mr.

And then we have some email questions to answer, So that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast. Let's get started, shall we

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. You know, early on when I became Scoutmaster, I found myself yelling at my scouts.

Do you find yourself yelling at your scouts? How about your youth leadership?

Or your fellow scouts? Oh yeah, I've been there. I know that sometimes things get frustrating or sometimes you have to get attention, but yelling is really kind of an aggressive, authoritarian leadership thing. Right, It gets compliance, but it doesn't really get anything else.

I'm a big guy, especially when it comes to you know, in comparison with my scouts, I can loom and I can be very intimidating, And if I raise my voice that's doubly intimidating. But raising my voice does not earn me respect, not at all. It makes me into someone who's feared and disliked. I mean, it's the lowest form of leadership, if you can even call it leadership, And it reminds me of something that Baden Powell said in one of his writings. He said: any ass can be a commander, And I don't even have to comment on that. I mean he had it down right.

There's a big difference between speaking loudly and yelling, And let's define yelling as raising your voice and frustration or anger. Now, speaking loudly is asking everybody to volunteer their attention, And in scouting sometimes you're going to raise your voice And you can do that in a friendly, kind and courteous attitude, Something you can't do when you're yelling. A lot of times you'll be able to use the convention of holding up the scout sign and getting everybody's attention. But if you're in a campsite or something like that, or everybody's all spread out, sometimes you may have to raise your voice. But we don't want to train our scouts to only respond to an adult or a youth leader who yells.

And we don't yell at scouts because we have a much bigger job to do than merely making them compliant. Right, We want good group discipline and that comes from a combination of citizenship and loyalty, And I think that's best developed in an atmosphere of voluntary obedience, not obedience compelled by the threat of punishment or being yelled at.

Here's what I tell my youth leaders. Right, If the scouts are all distracted and squirrely and you need your attention, you ask for their attention once and then you wait If they don't respond right away- and they hardly ever do. You just continue waiting. This is what I tell my youth leaders.

Okay, And let's. We're at a troop meeting, we're in a campsite, we're in any situation. They need to get the attention of the guys and their patrol. Or maybe the senior patrol leader needs to get the attention of the troop.

And you know a couple of guys, just he just can't break through. So I say you go and ask them this question: Can you get with the program here or do you need to go talk to the Scoutmaster?

So give them a choice. Right, They can get with what you're doing or they can come and talk to me. Any scout who gets referred to the Scoutmaster gets to talk to me.

And if that same scout needs to come over and talk to me on a regular basis about this, well then we're gonna be getting their parents involved and we're gonna be talking to them too. But this discussion with your youth leaders would help set the way forward. You work together to arrive at an agreement that nobody- no adult and no youth leader- ever yells at anyone for any reason.

And once you've done this, once you've kind of declared a yell-free zone with your patrol leader's counsel, then you may wanna make sure to share that with the scouts so that they all understand, And you wanna make sure to share that with the other adults. This is a yell-free zone. We're drawing a line Now.

If you make a bunch of rules, you'll have to break them, make an agreement right And then work within it to best serve each individual scout. Most of us have at least a couple of scouts who are gonna find it really difficult to stay focused And they may benefit from a little counseling now again, They may need a little more leeway as they start to get the handle on their ability to concentrate or follow. If you have a yelling problem in your troop, look at the situations that commonly cause people to yell. It may be that you're painting yourself into a corner right. Watch for situations where someone has to demand the intention of the entire troop. Scouting really doesn't work on that scale.

It's not designed to work on that scale. It works on the scale of the patrol. 90% of the time a scout should be under the direction of his patrol leader, not just another face in a larger crowd.

And, as I've said many times, we need to be careful about who dispenses discipline. Youth leaders refer scouts to the Scoutmaster for correction. They never punish, They don't yell at scouts, They don't apply any aggressive, authoritarian methods of discipline, because scouts are boys, and boys this age tend to go all Lord of the Flies pretty quickly.

And if you don't know what the Lord of the Flies is, well, Google it, Look it up. But no, it's basically a story told about a group of boys who end up shipwrecked on an island and things don't go very well. Minutes after you've declared a yell for your zone, somebody's gonna yell.

It's predictable, right? But don't jump all over them. Go back to square one and talk it through again and again, and again. Remember, we're looking for that voluntary obedience that is the mark of good, loyal citizenship.

It's a rare commodity, isn't it? In nearly every other situations, your scouts find themselves in their under of regime of rules and punishments. Volunteering obedience is something new. It requires a lot of thinking and some real maturity on their part. And remember, yelling gets you compliance, but it doesn't get you voluntary obedience right. You can raise your voice when you need to, but we're not gonna yell at our scouts.

["In the Mountain Greenery, Where God Beings the Seemery"]. In the mountain greenery, where God Beings the Seemery.

When it rains we'll have for the weather And if you're good, I'll search for wood So you can cook while I stand looking. We could find no cleanery treat from life's machinery And our mountain greenery it's our mountain greenery. Bless our mountain greenery home. Write me a letter, send it by name Email. That is folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. Hey, I heard from Bill Chapman, who is the Scoutmaster of Troop 736 in Rancho Santa Margarita, California, And he wrote in to ask me this question. I just sent out one of the weekly troop emails that parents and committee members tell me they really appreciate. It reminds them of the troop meeting, upcoming campout, other special events, things like that.

Now I'm feeling a little conflicted about doing this because I would really rather that the Scouts took care of this themselves and that they wanted to know and ask questions than me spoon-feeding them all this information through this newsletter. If I stop sending the newsletter, my committee is not going to be happy. I'll stop in arms already about the changes we're making And I'm looking for a little advice about this.

Well, Bill, I get what you're saying about the newsletter, but I don't think it's at cross purposes with developing what you want to see in your youth leaders. There's apples and oranges that we're dealing with here: keeping parents and committee members informed and having Scouts develop some leadership and discovery skills. Those are really kind of two separate things.

So as Scoutmasters we need to be rigidly flexible and not too dogmatic. One way to blend the apples and oranges in this situation is maybe involving the Patrol Leaders Council in helping you create that email newsletter. Right, But this is fraught with dangers because if you totally hand it off to them, it's going to become a writing assignment in their minds and it's not going to go very far.

If you're a Scouts or anything like mine, The best way, I think, is for you to collect their thoughts and plans and translate them for the adults, their parents and the committee members through your newsletter, which is probably what you're doing anyway. It takes a lot of effort for any of us to get a perspective on Scouting that allows youth leadership to actually have real responsibility, And once you have that perspective, you can help other people gain it by translating what you see your Scouts doing into something cogent for their families to understand.

Youth leaders, in my experience, do not make those translations as well as you can. They don't get into adult speak very well and it's kind of distracting to ask them to do so because they're busy doing other things.

Guide them through the discovery process and then translate their conclusions into the newsletter. Now, at the same time, I would offer to include anything that they would like to write, but I wouldn't necessarily make that an assignment.

You'll probably end up discovering a Scout who shows some talent for this, So you encourage it and capitalize on it. I've had Scouts who were very, very good at writing- you know- information for the newsletter or emails and who really enjoyed doing that. But sometimes they don't and that's a great thing to capitalize on.

So, in the end, keep sending out the newsletter- It's a great idea. Keep encouraging your youth leaders to ask questions and find things out for themselves, But remember that keeping parents informed, keeping your committee informed and having your Scouts really value that discovery process- they can be two different things. Bill had another question in that email He said I just had a committee member question my idea that we do some backpacking because the Scouts will have to buy new, expensive equipment.

Well, on backpacking, Bill, I would begin by shaping the experience to what the Scouts have now. Don't aim at backpacking trips that require a lot of specialized gear.

At this point, You know, do a two or three mile hike in and camp and build off of that. If they don't have real, honest to goodness, backpacking backpacks, ask around a little bit and see if you can find a few- because I know from experience there are plenty sitting in attics and garages out there that never get used- And see if you can get things rolling that way. The idea is shaping the experience. That's easy, fun and encouraging for the first few times out on a backpacking trip.

Now, if they really get into it, if they really like the idea of backpacking, you can start developing the whole thing incrementally. I look at it this way: If you gave somebody a six foot piece of bamboo with a hook and a line tied on the end and you go fishing for sunnies in the local creek with a can of corn, you can get them interested in fishing. If you start with a thousand dollar fly fishing outfit, you get them interested in fishing gear rather than fishing. Understand, If you're going to go backpacking, go backpacking.

Use what you got, Be adaptive and make it a short hike, Get the guys interested in it and then the gear follows And not really the other way around. I had this email and I am keeping the sender anonymous. I'm a district advancement chair and assist with eagle boards of review. Some of the folks I regularly call on to help with boards declined to be on the board for one eagle candidate. They tell me his parents were over-involved in his project and that they probably wrote his paperwork, that he's rude to the other scouts and leaders in his troop. Knowing this information is only secondhand.

I appreciate any advice you have on going to the board of review. It sounds like he didn't really do very much for eagle and that his parents were really over-involved in the whole process.

So when we're talking about questions like this, we talk about the guide to advancement 2013.. Make sure you look at the guide to advancement 2013 and read all it has to say about eagle boards of review, Especially those directions that it gives when a scout can't get a fair hearing from his unit and the steps for what happens next if you have a board of review and he doesn't pass that board. As for the embryo surrounding the scout himself, if you're a district advancement chair, you're going to hear about things like this from time to time. Let's think through this for a moment. First of all, there's only one way to earn eagle and that's to complete the requirements. The issue of exactly how the scout completed the requirements is one of the things the board is going to judge.

Rumor and innuendos unsupported by any evidence ought to not to be discussed by any board of review. Otherwise, how could you give the scout a fairer and objective hearing? If some people refuse to sit on the board, then ask other people. You only need three total right. There are two points that make this demonstrably clearly not the scout's fault.

First of all, how did he get to the point where he's going to have an eagle board of review and get past the dozens of opportunities to express concerns and take actions about the things that you've told me? If he's ready for an eagle board of review, he's completed eagle application and he's completed his eagle project and that means he's already secured all of the required signatures that indicate probably the very people are complaining about him have already approved of his work.

So let's think about this. He's had a Scoutmaster's conference for the rank of eagle and somebody had to sign off on that conference. It probably was the Scoutmaster. His service in a position of responsibility was already approved. Somebody had to sign off on that. He proposed, executed and completed and reported on an eagle scout project.

So that means his unit leader, the troop committee chair, the district advancement chair, the project beneficiary have been following this all along. They've had to sign his eagle workbook and that signifies their approval of his work. If you want to go back a little further, he's had previous Scoutmaster conferences and boards: a review for tender foot, second class, first class star and life, And for those last two he had to complete leadership tenure for both of those ranks. And the only way that happens is if somebody signs off their approval of all that work. And let's remember he also has the signatures of a minimum of 21 merit badge counselors certifying his completion of the work required to earn the merit badges he needs for eagle.

So how could it possibly be anything but a travesty of unfairness to ambush him at his border review with questions that should have been addressed when people were signing off his work before right? These folks who have grave concerns now should have brought them up at the proper time rather than signing off on his paperwork. They've lost any opportunity to object and it's absolutely patently unfair for them to ambush him at his border review.

So if you're going to conduct the border review, I would do it as you would do any other. I would make sure that you're not poisoning the well by sharing any of these rumors or innuendos or making the slightest indication to the other board members. You invite that there's anything out of the ordinary. The judgment of the board is based on what's in the normal paperwork and the board's discussion with the scout during the review.

Now if, in the course of conducting the board, concerns arise, then you deal with them when they come up, but don't be the source of innuendo and rumor. That would make it impossible to give this scout a fair hearing. And the most important thing here is the interest of the individual scout in question.

Now let's suppose that all these rumors and innuendos that you've heard are true. Let's suppose his parents were over involved in everything that he ever did in scouts. Let's suppose that he's ill-behaved and he hasn't satisfactorily fulfilled his positions of responsibility, even though people have signed them off.

Let's just assume the worst-case scenario, right, If his parents were actually over-involved, how is this the scout's fault? Is it within his power to overrule his parents?

And the answer is always no. You can't save scouts from their parents.

So what needs to happen is he needs to have a border review and a fair hearing that is not colored by a bunch of rumors and innuendos. If the members of that border review discuss things with the scout and that raises concerns, you're going to cross that bridge when you get to it. Your job as a district advancement chairman is assuring that he has a fair, objective review. If anybody wants to make a case about this, then just politely ask them to point out to you in the Guide to Advancement the provisions that permit them to make waves. They won't be able to find anything because it's just not fair for the reasons that I've explained.

So we heard from Rob Kerrigan, who is an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 1 in the Pine Tree Council in Portland, Maine, And Rob has a seasonal question for us. A Salvation Army board member asked our scouts to help with bell ringing.

They're usually short on volunteers this time of year, and so he reached out to our troop. I checked the BSA rules and regulations about this and it says youth members shall not be permitted to serve as solicitors of money for their chartered organization, for the local council or in support of other organizations. Adult and youth members shall not be permitted to serve as solicitors of money in support of personal or unit participation in local, national or international events. For example, Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts and leaders should not identify themselves as Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts or, as a troop or pack, participate in the Salvation Army's Christmas Bell ringing program. This would be raising money for another organization. At no time are units permitted to solicit contributions for unit programs.

So my question Rob asked: can I still ask the scouts if they want to be involved in this individually? If they did volunteer their time to be bell ringers, would this count towards their community service for advancement?

Well, Rob, I should think that offering your scouts the opportunity to serve as bell ringers would be fine, so long as they aren't wearing uniforms or in any way representing the BSA scouting or their troop. They're there to help the Salvation Army and they're doing that as a good-hearted volunteer, just like many of the other volunteer opportunities that are open to them, and I would think that that type of service would definitely qualify towards community service for rank advancement. The principle involved here is: scouts are never asking for people to give them a cash contribution, and the same goes for adult leaders. We are not permitted to solicit cash contributions.

We can, and we certainly do, volunteer our time to other organizations where we may be soliciting cash donations, like the Salvation Army bell ringing program, which would be fine to do, so long as it's not representing the BSA. Now, with that advice in mind, run it past your district executive first, just to make sure that I've got it right.

As with any advice I give about policies or procedures for a specific scouting organization, I'm doing my best to figure it out, but you check with the authorities and you check and make sure that the resources that we have available to us back up my conclusions. And if you have a difference of opinion, get in touch with me. Or if you have another question that you'd like to have me answered, you can get in touch with me, and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.