Scoutmaster Podcast 249

I'm Paul Farley and I'm a Webelos leader with PAC 525 in Peach Tree Corners, Georgia. This edition of Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by Backers Like Us.

And now for you, Scoutmaster. So one of our scouts showed up at the troop meeting the other night and I stopped him going in the door because I saw that he was wearing a pair of jumper cables around his neck.

And I said: what are you doing wearing jumper cables? And he says: well, we got in the car. I left my neckerchief at home.

I didn't have anything else, so I thought I would put these on, you know. And I looked at him and I said: well, I suppose that's all right, just don't start anything.

Okay,

Hey, this is podcast number 249.. And now, ladies and gentlemen, a multifaceted man of many spigots, a human soup bean, and they give him on his own time. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green.

We've been away for the past couple of weeks and boy do we have a lot to catch up on. So let's take a look.

I've got a few things in the mail bag and there are plenty more for future podcasts. We heard from Dave Leventer who said: hopefully you're enjoying some downtime during the holiday season. I wanted to take a moment to wish you a merry and happy holiday season and thank you for the fine work you do for the scouting community. All the best.

Well, thank you, Dave. I always appreciate it when people get in touch. Gary Brazell is a new Scoutmaster with Troop 114 in Everett Washington And he wrote in to say thanks for the new Scoutmaster series. I really appreciate the intent and the message. Keep up the great work. I can't help but wonder how long you've been watching our Troop and taking notes.

Well, Gary, I have agents everywhere keeping in touch and telling me exactly what's happening in your Troop. So Jeff Farbacher wrote in to say: might I share the story you told in Podcast 248?? I thought it would make a light Scoutmaster minute. At our meeting before Christmas- And, if you'll remember, in our last podcast we had a little adaptation of Clement Moore's The Night Before Christmas And I'll take the opportunity with that question to say: everything that we create is there for you to use.

So you feel free to use it And we appreciate you telling folks where you found it. Bill Meliska and boy Bill- I hope I got that last name right- is the Cubmaster of PAC 157 in Herndon, Virginia. Thanks, kindly and kudos on the podcast and site. I've been learning about leadership from your blog and podcast.

Well, Bill, we're always happy to hear that people are getting something out of what we're doing. Thanks so much for getting in touch And thanks for those kind words. Let's see, It's been a couple of weeks since we had the live chat feature on, but since the last podcast we've talked with Todd Lund from Little Egg Harbor in New Jersey, Dave Klein from Lake Forest in California, RJ Witt from Coatesville, Pennsylvania, El Comey, who is a Scoutmaster in Guatemala, and Steve Cottrell, Ed Bruce from Falmouth, Massachusetts, Dennis Unger from Watumka, Alabama, and Tom Curley from Central New Jersey, Ken Davis from McKinney, Texas, Bill McFarland from Massachusetts, Mike Manager and Danny Van Pelt from Hernando, Mississippi.

So we get to talk to people from all over. Keep an eye on the Facebook feed and the Twitter feed and I'll be announcing when we're going to have the chat feature live And it'll go back live, hopefully a couple mornings this week.

So we're back after a two-week hiatus and we've been busy during those two weeks. Most of you will have read the series a new Scoutmaster I started publishing this fall. It's the one that I referred to a moment. Let's see it was Gary who mentioned that in the mailbag. I really appreciated the overwhelming positive response I got to that story.

So I expanded the story a little bit and I had originally planned on 12 chapters to be published online and the last chapter was number 14 that we put online just before the holidays. I spent some time during the past few weeks editing and rewriting and expanding on the existing chapters, writing some more chapters, and I am really pleased to say that the result is in my new book that is titled So Far, So Good, A New Scoutmaster Story, And the title kind of came naturally to me because for every single year of the 30 years I spent as Scoutmaster, I'm pretty sure that at least once a week that was in my head: so far, so good.

So the book is about 150 pages long, 24 chapters. It takes us through the first four or five months of our new Scoutmasters adventure and really the story is my answer to the question: well, what if I had the chance to start all over again?

What would I do as a Scoutmaster? What if I knew then what I know now?

And I think that story format is a pretty useful way to illustrate some of the advice that I've given out over the years. People ask me questions.

I do my best to advise them, but the story format seems to work really well doing that And we'll see. You know, maybe there's more of the story to tell, but we've got the first few months down in the book.

So Far, So Good. So it's going to be a week or so before I have actual physical copies of the book in hand. Everything is ready to go. I've ordered them from the publisher And for the next couple of weeks I'm offering them to you if you'll join me by becoming a backer to help me keep things up and running in 2015.. Started the whole idea of having backers last year and several hundred of you responded in 2014.. And if you're a regular reader and the listener and if the resources we've created have helped you, you can return the favor by becoming a ScoutmasterCGcom backer.

It's a pretty modest contribution. You get a signed copy of the new book And if you go to ScoutmasterCGcom, follow the support link at the top of the page, You'll see that I have several different premiums: set up: The new book, my other two books, combinations thereof- And really appreciate your generosity, especially around the first of the year, because some of the big bills come due this time of year in keeping the website up and being able to make this happen, And that's exactly what happens with the funds from backers. It goes towards the expenses of producing and publishing the blog posts and the podcasts and the videos and every all the other resources that are freely available to Scouters.

So, one more time, it's very easy to do: Go to ScoutmasterCGcom, click the support link at the top of the page And there you'll see the different levels of support and how to get an autograph copy of the new book. Now, if you're listening to the podcast and you're a backer from 2014,, I've already notified you about this opportunity And, wow, I have a long list of names to read who've taken me up on that and are getting an autograph copy of so far so good in return for their support.

But I want to take a moment to personally thank Wesley Fish, Tom Gillard Jr, John Collins, Ray Crouch, James Keefe, Robert Little, Dave Pessek, Rob Glazier, Mark Engel, Chuck Green, David Levesque, Gerald Dosh, Ed Bruce, Robin Bridges, Def Person and Mike Marty, who've signed on to be backers since the last podcast. Thank you so much. That is what really keeps everything up and running And I really do appreciate your support.

So in the remainder of this podcast I'm going to start chipping away at a very large backlog of email questions that I've answered since our last podcast And that's going to take up the rest of our time today. So let's get started, shall we? Yeah, you are all in. From the beat boy, beat boy, I'll hang it in the sweet boy, sweet boy. We will dance into the beat boy, beat boy. Yeah, feel my favorite all time boy scout.

Feel my favorite all time boy scout. He's my favorite all time boy scout.

Paul Flarely is with Cub Scout Pack 525 in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, And he read into: say: like to love the podcast, like the perspective of feeling connected to a much larger world of scouting. As Weeblows leader and a pack trainer, I think in Cub Scouts we tend to lose the larger picture of scouting because we end up devoting all of our time to behavior control and planning and doing activities. Sometimes I feel like we're buying time before the quote- real, unquote- scouting begins.

So what I'm curious to know is what you think we can do in Cubs. That will help set the right focus and lead not just to getting the Cubs to cross over into Boy Scouts but increase the chances that they're going to stay with the program. I'd also like any advice you might have about the program changes at both the Cub and Boy Scout levels that are coming this year and any thoughts about how to successfully implement them. Thanks for all you do. I really get a lot out of the podcast.

Keep it up Well, Paul, thank you for getting in touch. I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast and you know I share the same feeling with you. This is our connection to the broader world of scouting. We kind of find out that we're not all alone.

So the answers to the questions you have don't begin with specifics but kind of generalities. We tend to train our volunteers in procedural and activity based skills rather than the broader principles that inform everything we do.

So let's talk about those for a moment. No matter what age, their Scouts are right, whether they're Cubs or Venturers or Scouts or whatever. Scouters need to understand the place of their work in that continuum of scouting and scouting itself. Right. Our work is positively affecting the lives of children, with a scouting program full stop and the rest of it is all window dressing. If we're positively affecting the lives of children with scouting, we're doing our job.

Now we do this by applying the principles of scouting in an age-appropriate context. Cubs are doing real scouting. You're not like in this holding pattern, waiting for real scouting to begin. No, they're doing real stuff. Tiger Cubs are doing real scouting. Wolf Cubs are doing real scouting.

Bears are doing real scouting. Webelos one and two- They're doing real scouting. They're just doing it at a level appropriate to their age. Cub Scouts are not junior Boy Scouts, They're Cub Scouts. And Scouts aren't senior Cub Scouts, They're Boy Scouts. As they grow older, the activities that they're doing may change Our responsive leadership changes, but we're using exactly the same building blocks with Tiger Cubs as we are with Venturers.

There is one difficulty and that is the way that we have arranged age divisions into separate units. We have an inordinate amount of trouble maintaining the continuum and making transitions between age divisions.

Sometimes, because of this separation And, I think, without the perspective afforded by a close association with all the other age divisions, our volunteers kind of get stove piped into focusing on what's in front of them at the moment and they don't really have a vision of what comes next or what's happening before the age division that they're working with, And I think generally, as you say, Paul, this causes a little bit of frustration. So my advice is that you do your best as a Scouter to zoom out, no matter where you are.

Okay, whether you're a Cub Scout leader, Boy Scout leader, a Venture Crew leader, doesn't matter. What we need to do is zoom out and understand the building blocks common to every age of Scouting and then you'll begin to see how they're applied to the program and that understanding informs your work.

So when you understand, when you're working with Tiger Cubs, what Ventures do and what Scouts do and what's in coming ahead, you can kind of go okay. Well, now it makes sense to do age appropriate things with them.

You know the program's pretty well written and it works really, really well. I'm going to follow that and that's what I'm going to do. And I know in years to come, the activities that they're going to do and the challenges that they're going to face are going to be appropriate to their age.

My leadership style is going to change to respond to their development as we go along. But if you don't understand what that continuum is like I said, it tends to kind of get you a little frustrated and stove piped into what's happening right in front of you.

And the other thing you asked, Paul, was about the changes that are coming in 2015.. There's some changes to the Cub Scout program, Boy Scout program that are rolling out over the next couple of years. Don't let them worry you. I've been through a couple of these program resets And while there's going to be some procedural administrative things that may change, those aren't all that challenging to incorporate because the building blocks, the broad underlying principles that I'm encouraging everybody zoom out, study those, understand them. Those don't change. It's just some of the administrative things.

Some of the activity suggestions and plans are going to change a little bit, But don't let that throw you. You know, just read it, understand it. If everything that you're doing has a really solid basis in the principles of scouting, you're going to be fine. Program changes and the activity changes, the administrative changes- all those things will begin to make sense as long as you're focused on the big picture. Bobby got in touch. He said: I've been a Cub master for four years and I'll soon be a Scoutmaster for a new troop.

We're starting with a group of six Webelos. What's our best start off activity?

I know we need to work on tender foot requirements, or should the Scout start working on their annual plan? I want our first meeting to be productive and fun and motivating. I love hearing your podcast and I've been learning a lot about the patrol method and leadership.

Well, Bobby, you're in a great place. You get to start kind of with a blank page And with six Webelos, you have a patrol right now, So you don't need to worry about imposing a troop structure over it.

Very naturally, they will elect a patrol leader and then each one of them will have some kind of job or responsibility in making things happen for their patrol. Now, with a smaller, younger group of Scouts, you're going to be building on things one step at a time, And much of the advice I share is based on a larger troop with older Scouts. But you're in a kind of special situation and it's a great situation to be in actually.

So if you tell the Scouts if you're leading right, if you're providing all the leadership, and you tell them what happens next, what you're going to find is, five years down the road, they're still going to be waiting for you to tell them exactly what happens next. So what I want to encourage you to do right from the get-go is to create the opportunity for them to discover things for themselves. You'll watch them build on their own self-confidence that way, one step at a time.

So ask yourself: why are these guys choosing to be Scouts? Do they want to do fun stuff with their friends? That's the most important thing to them.

So what do Scouts do with their friends? Well, they go camping and hiking and they explore different areas of interest.

They get outside, they build fires, cook meals- you know stuff like that. Your job is making it possible for them to do what Scouts do. That's your highest priority. If you're successful in doing that, they're going to advance as a natural result. Don't pay too much attention to that list of requirements. Pay attention to doing what Scouts do Now.

If you make that list of requirements your highest priority, you'll be doing requirements rather than just naturally doing what Scouts do. Now, does all this make sense so far?

So you're going to plan a camping trip with activities that naturally correspond to the requirements, because that's what happens when we go camping. Right, We do stuff Scouts do If you plan this camping trip, so they are naturally challenged to do these things. They're going to need to know what to do next, And this is where your reaction to that is really, really important. Instead of telling them what to do next, you begin asking them questions. You resist the temptation. Tell them anything.

So you need to set up a tent. Well, how do you do that?

Have you looked in the scouting handbook? You need to set up a tarp.

Do you need rope to do that? But wait a minute. Look, the ends are fraying on this rope.

How do you prevent that? Do you think that may be in the scout handbook?

Can somebody look it up? We need to cook lunch, so we need to start a fire.

Now, how does that work? How exactly do you start a fire, guys?

Is it in the handbook? What does it say?

So you provide the opportunity. So you're talking about younger Scouts. They're not really going to be in the position to start planning annual calendars and things like that.

Get them out camping, Make that happen for them, Give them the opportunity to do the things that Scouts do and then help them discover how to do those things. Not by telling them, but by asking them questions. Ask them leading questions and see what they can come up with.

So ideally, what will happen is you'll go through a couple of campouts like that at first, and they will go right to the handbook. When a question comes up, They'll put their heads together and start solving the problems before they even come to you, before you even have to start asking questions.

And that's exactly what we want them to do. With younger guys, you're going to be planning and leading more now than you will a year from now.

You'll have to model what a patrol leader does and then hand those responsibilities off a little as time as they grow capable of taking them on. The key is putting the initiative on your Scouts. Guide them to the answers they need, Don't just tell them what to do next. They'll catch on pretty fast and a year or two things will be very different And as the younger Scouts are coming in, these Scouts will be a couple of years older. They'll be very familiar with how to discover things and how to make things happen. They're naturally going to pick up some leadership skills along the way.

They're going to naturally pick up some planning skills along the way, But for those first few months, what's vitally important is giving them plenty of opportunity to do the things that Scouts do. Don't make them plan it, Don't make them try and come up with it, Just give them the opportunity. Then get them in the process of discovering how to do these things And you're kind of setting an example for the future in how everything's going to happen. Brian Snyder is an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 91 in St Paul, Minnesota, And he writes to say thanks for all you do for scouting. I hope you don't get tired of hearing that You're a magnificent source of knowledge and inspiration.

Well, thank you, Brian. I don't get tired of hearing that, Thank you. I've recently turned to Scouts because I have three sons, Two Boy Scouts and one Cub Scout, who keep me busy as an assistant Scoutmaster and den leader. Your recent series on the patrol method prompts some questions on starting or restarting and reviving the patrol method. In our Troop We pride ourselves on being youth led. However, I feel we're failing working on the patrol method.

We have around two dozen boys and three patrols. At the moment. There's not much intermingling between the older Scouts and the younger Scouts, which leads to a little animosity from the younger Scouts- I'm being barked at by the older Scouts- and some aloofness from the older Scouts who don't want to play with the little kids. Quote unquote: I understand the pitfalls of having the adults dictate who's going to be in what patrol, But I don't know how to encourage the boys to take a critical look at the patrol method and how the patrol method will help them get the most out of scouting. They seem to be happy with the status quo. It seems to me that we subscribe more to the idea that patrols are just kind of an administrative way to break up the boys in the Troop into manageable pieces, instead of the patrols being actual vital functional units of scouting.

The patrol leaders council for the most part follows the script and tends to fill in the blanks on the calendar with the same events and campouts. I'm sure he challenges them to think outside the box, though I, on the other hand, am the type of person who constantly asks why do we do it this way and feel that because it's always been done this way is not a good enough answer.

There's a younger scout patrol and most of them have been together since Tiger Cubs, so they're pretty tight. The next patrol is a little older and has also been together since Tigers, and there's the third patrol is all older Scouts.

Again, it seems to me that we should change things around and the older boys should be distributed with the younger. I wholly embrace that. This needs to come from the Scouts, but with the help of the adults and not the adults regardless of what they think.

Well, Brian, I've got a few things that may be helpful for you. I'll say first, it's important to understand that the Scoutmaster is the adult in charge of the adults and is the adult position empowered to make meaningful changes.

Instead of looking at the way your patrols are made up now as being the source of the frustration you may be feeling, or you may be seeing a different way to rearrange it, Let's look at larger issues. Let's say you went ahead and made the changes that you would like to make in the patrols. You mixed up the older and the younger boys and everything like that.

Well, just shuffling around isn't going to help. You can't affect this sort of thing by reorganizing the patrol chart. If there's hard feelings between older Scouts and younger Scouts, older Scouts are barking at younger Scouts. You know.

Rearranging the chart is not going to help The fundamental way that youth leadership develops and the way Scouts experience the program is really what you want to be aiming at? The answer always comes back to Scouts having real responsibility for their program. That's the real focus that gets things moving and starts to solve some of the difficulties that you're looking at. If you have this kind of antagonism going on, there's something missing in the attitude of the older Scouts that you need to be paying attention to, Their ideal of service and their following. The Scout oath and law probably needs a little bit of work. Once older Scouts are instilled with that, they stop barking at younger Scouts, They stop being antagonistic towards them.

I had this letter from. I had this email from Bill.

He says I'm copying my assistant Scoutmasters, hoping you'll reply, all so that we are all hearing the same thing when we follow up and discuss this amongst ourselves. I've been listening to your podcasts and reading your blog posts and other materials the last few months and it's become one of my favorite pastimes, and I just finished reading your book, The Scouting Journey, and I really liked it. I took over as Scoutmaster last spring. We elected a senior patrol leader and I pretty much spoon fed that senior patrol leader everything. He had some ideas of his own and we certainly let him run with those. However, looking back he was more like a puppet doing what I told him to do.

Our new senior patrol leader is much more independent and our last camp out was much more scout led but also a little bit less organized. Our new senior patrol leader announced he was going to have a patrol leaders council meeting at his home. He didn't invite any of the adults, but the next day he emailed me an agenda for the troop meeting with all the assignments listed and a pretty good plan. At the troop meeting all the Scouts forgot their assignments, but they managed to improvise and everybody seemed to have fun, even though the meeting turned out to be a little chaotic.

During the portion of the meeting we would usually hold patrol meetings, The senior patrol leader announced we were going to reorganize patrols, with no prior warning or notice to me. They were going to elect patrol leaders first and then the Scouts would choose the patrol they wanted to be in. The way he ran the election was something I'd never seen before. He called for nominations, had five nominees standing in front of the troop and had a series of votes to narrow it down to two patrol leaders. At that point the Scouts excitedly ran over to the patrol leader that they wanted to be in a patrol, with A few of them shifted back and forth before settling on which patrol they wanted to be in, and to my amazement- and, I know, to the amazement of my assistant scoutmasters- the patrols ended up being evenly balanced in both numbers, age and experience. I was really worried about hurt feelings, but there was a lot of positive energy in the room and I didn't want to stop what was happening.

I felt a mixture of excitement and seeing the senior patrol leader take over the troop, but worried that he may be creating problems. In the end, the whole process of electing patrol leaders and setting up new patrols was over in about 10 minutes. It was absolutely amazing.

Then they went right into picking their patrol names and there was lots of excitement and noise. When the youth leaders reviewed that troop meeting, they were generally more critical of themselves than I believe that the Scouts would be Now for the question.

If left to themselves, I believe our troop meetings and campouts will definitely be less organized and doing less learning of skills than if the adult scouters were involved in making the plans. Personally, I get the feeling that we should go as far as possible, letting the Scouts run their troop.

But I also wonder how much direction and training we should be giving in what form? Well, hello, Bill and Bill's assistant scoutmasters I got to tell you it sounds like to me things are going really, really well.

I understand that you may be both amazed and concerned at the same time, but you've got a senior patrol leader who seems to understand what he wants to do and so far seems to have come up with really good strategies on making that happen. So let's take a new perspective on what's going on.

You're saying, hey, you know, if we're not involved, they're not going to be doing scout skills and everything like that. But what you described to me in that meeting is exactly what we want to see happening in Scouts. That's real scouting. That's Scouts doing what Scouts do. They've taken their fate in their own hands. They've made some decisions.

They're figuring things out on their own. That's what we really, really want to see happening.

So let's take that perspective first. If you think about what they're getting out of their participation in the activities as you describe them you know, look past the requirements and the skills to what specific areas of character are being developed. Do you see the ideals of the scout oath and law being practiced and being active in what the Scouts are doing. I certainly do You express some concern that they'll drift away from the broader context of why they're Scouts, and this is a common concern. But I talk about doing what Scouts do as the context or the rules of the game.

Now we don't want to take all those wonderful, active, vital things and just fragment them into a list of requirements that adults teach to Scouts. No, we don't want that kind of disconnected deal going on. Remember Baden Powell said that- that the acquisition of skills in scouting is like getting a suntan: a natural result of having fun in the outdoors.

Your Scouts will need some help here and there to understand the game and to stay in context, but a wise scoutmaster and wise assistant scoutmasters will be observing and be encouraging them in the right directions. And I think what's really most important about what the adults involved in this whole thing are doing is that you have the single most important attribute to making yourselves into great Scouts and that is the desire to study and learn your work, to examine, to question. You're aware that you might get things wrong, which seems simple, but a lot of Scouts seem to accept the idea academically that they might be wrong, but then they don't want to do the heavy lifting of changing what they do.

I think it's great. I think what's going on is great and I think also, at the same time, every Scouter should be slightly dissatisfied with ourselves as Scouter and seek to do the best work possible, And a lot of times that work is observing and asking questions and giving hints and ideas and directions to Scouts on a much less active basis than we first think we're going to be doing Now.

Right now you've got a Senior Petroleum with tons of initiative, who's got great strategies, is really working hard to make things happen. That's fantastic.

So respond to that by backing away, helping him stay in context, asking him questions, being there to help him out when he needs help and accepting that things may be a little chaotic. They may not be as nice and neat if adults were doing everything, but to me you're really hitting on all eight cylinders of Scouting in the situation that you describe And once you've made peace with the chaos and the constant changing landscape, you kind of begin to appreciate its beauty.

Now there will be a time in the future you're going to have a Senior Petroleum or a group of Scouts with positions of responsibility, who don't have quite the initiative that you have right now, who are going to be looking at things a little differently and your responsive role as a Scouter is going to change that way. And you know, we never arrive. We're always traveling towards that goal and the travel is joyful in itself.

So good on you for asking the questions and good on your fellow Scouts for being involved in an active discussion that helps you become better Scouts. Hey, well, if you have a question for me, you can get in touch and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.