Scoutmaster Podcast 255

I'm Russell Altman and I'm an assistant scoutmaster with truth number 555 in Ridge Springs, South Carolina. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like us.

And now the old Scoutmaster. Hey, I saw a really impressive pioneering project the other day, something I've never seen before. These scouts pioneered together somehow a cannon. A cannon, believe it or not, a working cannon. It was really something.

As a matter of fact, it was big enough so that you could actually shoot a scout out of the cannon. Now I know what you're thinking. Right, This could not be safe. I thought the same thing, but it was okay. They couldn't find a scout of the right caliber anyway.

Hey, this is podcast number 255.. Hey, well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clark Greene. Let's see. Let's take a look at the mailbag.

Shall we? Carson Boone wrote in to ask: where do I find the songs used on the podcast?

Well, Carson, I make that as difficult as possible sometimes, don't I? But if you look at the archive page for the podcast, you'll see that there's a link to the podcast. But if you look at the archive page for the podcast, there's a widget there that has a lot of the music that I use on it And I am trying to get in the habit of making sure I include a link to the music used on each podcast in the post that contains that podcast.

So I'll get better at it. But thanks for getting in touch, Carson. We heard from Ken Greenberg, who's an assistant Scoutmaster with troop 30 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who asked this favor. He said as a part of my ticket for Wood Badge, I've been surveying troops in my district about their patrol practices In an effort to broaden my responses. I was hoping you'd be willing to circulate the survey. The survey is just one page long.

It's only 15 questions. Scouts who want to participate can email me the completed survey And I'll have the survey open until March 15th And I would be willing to share the results of the survey with anyone who answers. Any help you can give me as appreciated.

Well, Ken, we'll do our best here. So folks go to the post that contains this podcast on scoutmastercgcom. There is a PDF version of Ken's survey linked on that post. Go ahead, download it. His email address is on the PDF And you can go ahead and complete the survey and email it right back to Ken. Let's see On the blog.

This week we had a post about a 10 scout, a 10 scout No, a 10 point scout troop checkup And just 10 questions that result in kind of non-metric answers. We have the Journey to Excellence and other evaluation tools. These are mostly metrics.

These are mostly numbers: How many scouts are in the troop, How often do they go camping? What I did is came up with 10 non-metric questions, Things that aren't metrics but would point to our success in communicating and running the program. I heard from several people about that post. Randall Cox said these are good questions to be asking. A troop who expects to be viable in five years should be asking them. James Chaplin said the checklist is right in the mark.

I just asked most of these questions before your article was posted with the troop that I am now Scoutmaster for. They recruited me to fix their failing troop operation.

I cannot think that we were able to answer any of those questions in the positive. But the real question will be: is how we answer them in a year or less?

Well, this gives you something to work with, right? So I'm glad that you're finding that helpful. Bob M said: excellent questions, Very thought-provoking and eye-opening for me. Thanks for the counsel. Thanks for getting in touch. I'm glad they're useful to you.

Tim Georgie said: when I start to get complacent about how well I think our troop is doing, I inevitably read something like this. That blows that notion out of the water.

You've provided some really good thoughts on areas we can improve upon. We all get a little complacent from time to time. And those 10 questions in that post- it's the 10-point scout troop checkup And it's on scoutmastercgcom- just published it last week.

These should well they at least- give you something to think about. Right, During our chat sessions this week, talk to several new people. I know a lot of our frequent fliers checked in And you've heard their names many times on the last few podcasts.

So what I'm going to do? I want to mention the folks who checked in on the live chat for their first time.

Now, if you want to get in on one of the live chats- we're going to do these mostly on weekday mornings. You'll find an announcement about the live chat on the Facebook feed or the Twitter feed, So keep an eye on those. When you see that we're going to be on a live chat, go ahead. Go to scoutmastercgcom, sign in and join us. It's great fun, And this week Jackie Reese from Santa Rosa, California. He's on the district committee and he's an assistant scoutmaster.

Jackie checked in. Matt Thompson from Eureka, Kansas, where he's a member of both PAC and troop committees. Marty Medovic from Wheeling, West Virginia, who's been a scoutmaster for the last 10 years, was part of our chat, as was Lawrence Ratner, who's an assistant scoutmaster with troop 88, from Fairfield, Connecticut. Paul Farley is in Peachtree Corners, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta there with PAC 525 and Paul's a Weebelos Den Leader. Merrick Fonsbeck is in Lehigh, Utah, with troop 581 and he's their advancement chair. And Steve Cerudi from Oceanside, California, who is working with his third Weebelos Den, was also a part of our chat.

So, once again, watch the Facebook feed, watch the Twitter feed, look for the live chats. Go to scoutmastercgcom, sign in and join us. If you're a regular reader and listener and the resources we've created have helped you, I'm going to ask you to return the favor by becoming a scoutmastercgcom backer. The funds we get from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing everything that we do- the posts, the podcast and all of those other resources- and making them accessible for everyone.

So it's an easy thing to do. Go to scoutmastercgcom, look for the support link up at the top of the page, and there are several levels of support that you can take advantage of, and some of them entitle you to premiums like autograph copies of my books.

Now I want to take a moment to personally thank George Morrison, Jill Blantz, Randy Farmer, Robert Hedrick and Josh Nepper, who have become backers since last week's podcast. Go to scoutmastercgcom, become a backer this week and I'll be sure to thank you during our next podcast.

I can't tell you how much this support means to me, and I don't like talking about money anymore than you do, but that's what it takes to keep things up and running, so I really, really appreciate your help everyone. Hey, I want to add that beginning tomorrow, Tuesday, I'm going to have a series of five posts that are directed at Cub Leaders Now.

I spent several years as a Cub Master and Assistant Cub Master, a Den Leader for Wolf Bearer and Weebel as Den's, so I have some experience with the Cub Program and I want to offer some observations that I hope will help you out if you're working with Cubs Now. I'm not going to be talking about specific program schedules and specific things about advancement or craft ideas or anything like that. There are lots of people out there who have wonderful resources on those things. What I'm going to concentrate on are some of the things that helped me when I was working with Cubs and that I hope will help you.

So that'll begin tomorrow, Tuesday, and go for five days, and I would be really interested to hear your comments on that series of posts. So go to scoutmastercgcom and check them out.

Well, this week, in Scoutmastership- in seven minutes or less- we're going to talk about High Adventure a little bit, and then we've got some email questions to answer, and that's going to constitute the remainder of this particular podcast. So let's get started, shall we?

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. Well, here's the message: You must go, You have to go right.

How are your plans for your next High Adventure trip coming along? You know that it's a great experience.

You know that it'll do more for your Scouts than you can imagine, but most of us, you know- let's face facts- we don't get started, do we? We think it's either too expensive or we're doubt we're going to have the time, or we lack the skills or confidence to get the ball rolling. The open secret, though, is that High Adventure does not have to be expensive or difficult or complex, right. Many troops and crews make their own plans and offer High Adventure experiences to their Scouts on a regular basis.

We want to talk for a moment about putting together a High Adventure program suited to the ambitions and abilities of your Scouts. It's not as expensive or difficult or time-consuming as you might think.

For the past 10 years, we have alternated between going for two years up to Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada, for a canoe trip and going over to Condersteg International Scout Center for the third year. We started the canoe trips 10 years ago. We started doing the rotation through Condersteg four years ago. I also want to mention that I would love to take you and your Scouts to Condersteg in the summer of 2016..

I have some details about how that's going to happen over on ScoutmasterCGcom, so make sure to check that out and if you're interested, let's get going. We'll get that put together so that in 2016, you can take a group of Scouts to Condersteg in Switzerland. But that's a pretty big trip. It's going to cost some money. These other trips that you can do, these other high-adventure experiences that you can make happen for your Scouts, are not too expensive. A perfectly great high-adventure trip doesn't have to cost a lot of money.

We've done backpacking trips of five days for less than $200.. You know, you can set up the trip with the ability of your Scouts to participate in it. Financially. It'll work. I can tell you that it will work. We're going to talk about specifically how that will work just a little later on.

The other objection is: a lot of people say I really don't have the time to put into a high-adventure trip. No, you don't if it's going to be two weeks long. But there's nothing that says a high-adventure trip has to be any certain number of days. A high-adventure trip can be three or four days, It can be 14 days, It can be 21 days, It can be five or six days. You make up your mind how much time you're going to have to spend. I know vacation days are precious when you have a family and you can't invest them all in a Scout trip.

So, three days of vacation: If you leave on a Wednesday, that means you've got Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Then you have Saturday and Sunday. Back at work on Monday.

So you have a five-day trip that you can do. Now if you're the parent of a Scout and you want to do high-adventure with them.

You've got a limited window of opportunity to be able to do that, So you've got to make it happen Now. Maybe you think you don't have the skills or confidence to set up a trip like this and to make sure that it's safe and that it's going to work for your Scouts.

Well, most people don't have the skills and confidence to do anything like this. One of the best parts of the high-adventure trip are the months that you spend planning and learning and practicing skills. I've seen a lot of back-country groups who were really experienced and ill-prepared, Yet they managed to survive. If not really enjoy themselves, they did manage to survive.

You're going to be more prepared than most of them, alright, So select a modest goal and be the spark plug to make this happen and start planning now. You'll do more for your troop and the patrols and the Scouts than you can imagine. Don't make it too complicated. Make it accessible, financially and time-wise, and just start making it happen. Everybody knows about Fillmont and Seabase and Northern Tier.

There are three most familiar high-adventure bases and there are dozens of council-based programs too. Thousands of Scouts participate and enjoy those big three high-adventure bases every year, and I guess we need to add the summit in, so we'll call it Big Four, and I have colleagues in Scouting who recommend all of these places highly. But at the other end of the spectrum are the ones that you can actually get to and your Scouts can actually get to and you can explore a little less known territory that way.

So my rationale for building your whole high-adventure program, other than what we've already spoken about, is that you know most of the national programs. As wonderful as they are, they're pre-prand preset programs that involve a minimum amount of flexibility.

The dates, the activities involved, the equipment and the routes are pretty well set up. There's also a good deal of competition to get in to some of those places. I mean, it's a two or three-year process just to be able to get to a lot of them. But where you go and what you do for your high-adventure program is limited. It's just about anywhere and you can do just about anything.

Maybe it's a week of backpacking or canoeing or touring or cycling or boating, You know, whatever your Scouts think, that would be great. Fun is something that you can put together and you don't need to travel very far, You don't need to get on a plane, You don't need to drive eight hours. Look what's in a two or three-hour circle of where you are right now. I'll bet there's a state within that two or three-hour circle with a great trail where you can spend three or four days backpacking. I'll bet within that two or three-hour circle there is a council-based high-adventure program at a scout camp somewhere. I'll bet there's a river that you can do a three or four day canoe trip on.

So once you've got an idea, a basic idea of what's accessible, somebody has to say: this looks like a great place, so let's go and then show everybody that it's actually possible. Now this can be a little more challenging than you think, especially with the first time out of the box on a trip like this. It may be difficult to get everybody to think that it's even possible. But you can do it. It needs a little vision and a little leadership. Troop-based trips are going to be full of details.

Preparation may take as many hours as the trip itself. But, like I said, that's half the fun. The work you put into planning pays big dividends. Research the activity location thoroughly and plan the preparations to complete that adventure safely.

So you're going to make a commitment to training and skill development- The leaders, advisors and participants are going to need to commit time to training and learning the applicable skills to safely carry out the trip plan, And that's going to mean making sure that you're up to date on things like CPR and wilderness first aid. Although those things wouldn't necessarily be strictly required in a program that you create yourself, I highly recommend them.

You want to check out your weather skills? If it's a backpacking trip, you want to hone your backpacking skills. If it's a canoe trip, you need to hone those skills, but you need to make a commitment to carrying that out.

And then you also need to consider the financial end of it. Who's going to be collecting money?

You know how much is all this going to cost, But it's very, very doable. There's lots of resources at ScoutmasterCGcom about planning, And I lay out in a series of posts exactly how we do our high adventure canoe trips, And that should give you some information that you can apply to just about any high adventure trip.

So we know how all of this begins. Somebody says this is going to be possible. These are our alternatives. Let's choose one and let's get going, And that's someone minus.

Well be you, because every Scout should have a high adventure experience. They should have the advantage of being able to do that and you're the person who can make it happen.

I had this email from Nick Paulson, who said: I am in my third year as Scoutmaster and I'm very happy with what we're doing. The Scouts and I regularly plan activities and outings And I'm very happy with what we're doing. The Scouts and I regularly plan activities and outings And I'm very happy with what we're doing. The Scouts and I regularly plan activities and outings, but I'm constantly battling things like sports schedules. They plan a camp out, for example. Parents are notified and we're signing guys up until the Sunday, before the outing on Friday.

Then all of a sudden, motocross races appear and football and baseball and basketball games appear and we end up losing several of our Scouts. Then the others find out their friends aren't going and they decide not to go.

One Scout is going and then that's hardly worth making it happen. It's really frustrating and I don't have a clue about how to combat it, combat this.

Do you have any suggestions? Well, Nick, you know, I think everybody understands exactly what you're saying.

I know that we've had that problem as well And I wish I knew one easy bit of advice to give you about how to fix it. But let me talk about some alternatives.

You know, it may be that trying to schedule one troop camping trip every month and expecting a critical mass of Scouts to get to it, that time may be past. I really don't know, but that's kind of the feeling that I have sometimes. Logically, there are two alternatives to this problem.

We can either alter the behavior of the Scouts and their families or we can alter the schedule of the program. I think we need to probably end up doing a little bit of both. Just trying to alter everyone's behavior is not going to be a winning option.

I think, right that if you announce far enough ahead of time what the dates are going to be and parents understand that these are important- and having a critical mass of Scouts going along is important not only just, you know, to the viability of the trip logistically, but for Scouting to happen we need, like this, critical mass. You would hope that they would understand that.

So if they don't, maybe we need to explain what we're doing a little bit better. Maybe we need to help them value what's happening better, because I know that the sports schedules they're not made the week before they're out for a long time.

So families, a lot of times, you know, they just need to kind of step up and coordinate those calendars better and we need to explain that to them and help them out by making our expectations very clear. But you know, those calendars, those family calendars, are very, very complex and nine times out of ten our Scouts aren't making the decision whether or not they're going to go on a camping trip based on whether or not they want to go. It's pretty much dictated by a schedule.

As you know, one guy doesn't go and his friends all bail out and that's kind of discouraging. But the demands of a Scout age boys schedule are pretty stunning sometimes and most of the other activities that they're involved in compel their attendance.

You have to be at the game, you have to be at the practice, you have to be at the play rehearsal, you must do these things, which I think you know is kind of unfair to our youth because if we want them involved in lots of different things we all have to give and take a little bit. I have found that a lot of times if a Scout will go and talk to a coach or the director of a player or something, explain what they're doing, say I really I have some responsibility to my Scout troop and I need to go on this particular camping trip and that means I'm going to miss a practice or a game or something that the coach or the play director or whatever is perfectly fine with that. Just getting the Scouts to the point where they're going to go and talk to these people is what it can be- a bit of a challenge.

So what about our schedule? How about looking at our schedule?

I think altering our schedule can be maybe part of the part of the answer. I know what we're looking at.

Right now we have one trip every quarter. You know that for years have been very, very well attended- and then we usually have two trips every quarter that are not so well attended. We don't really end up seeing a whole lot of Scouts out on those.

So we're really considering changing the schedule so that we have only one quarterly outing where we're expecting the entire troop to show up, and then we what we'd like to see happen the other two months is have patrols, plan an individual outing or activity. That's going to better fit the schedule. If you try to get 30 people to one thing every month, that is a big challenge nowadays if you try to get eight and they can decide on the date. That makes it a little bit simpler.

Now we get reasonably good attendance at our weekly troop meetings, but I'd like to create even more opportunities for participation. So we're looking at having open activity days every Saturday. There wouldn't these wouldn't necessarily be overnight, it's just a few hours to get together for skill development and fun, kind of like a sports team schedule, kind of like a practice schedule.

We're fortunate in that our meeting place has plenty of outdoor space and we can walk to a local park with even more space. So this may be a very good possibility for us. But in the end the situation you describe isn't uncommon. It's not necessarily that anybody's doing anything wrong.

We just need to look at what's going on and see if we can innovate a solution and catch up with the way Scouts lives are ordered now, because what worked a decade or two ago isn't going to cut it for everybody, and I'd be very interested to hear everyone's thoughts on this particular thing because I know it's a pretty common problem. I heard from Kelly Tansy who wrote in to say I wrote you a couple months ago about my frustrations with the troop my son joined after we moved to a small town. I listened to a podcast after sending that email and your answer to me was basically that as a parent I was not really in a position to affect change in the way that the troop operates. My options were to stick it out with this troop and follow the lead of the Scoutmaster in the committee or switch my son to another troop.

Well, a few weeks after writing you, I attended a district training about chartered organization representatives and I had a heart to heart with our committee chair. She decided to switch roles to the chartered organization representative and I've become the committee chair. I've been doing lots of reading and listening and following your example of going to the resources for information. I've been familiarizing myself with the official BSA troop committee guidebook. I am glad to be in the position to take action and not just be a concerned parent anymore. Last night was our first committee meeting with me as the chair and the first troop meeting where our senior patrol leader was actually running the meeting.

It was really a great night for our troop. At the committee meeting, parents stepped up to fill all the committee positions but one.

I kept to the agenda I prepared and there was no adult bickering. I felt pretty good about it. My first goals were to have an agenda for the meeting, to fill in the positions and get at least one camp out on the schedule next month. And I've got to say, except for one empty position, mission accomplished.

Well, good for you, Kelly. That's pretty encouraging story there. Kelly goes on to say even more exciting was watching our new senior patrol leader and assistant senior patrol leader pretty much lead their own meeting.

They weren't really prepped to do so beforehand and they were kind of winging it, but they did a great job. It was so awesome to see. After the troop meeting. We happen to be having a border review for both of them and we adults must have congratulated them several times on their excellent job.

The senior patrol leader has a patrol leaders council meeting next week, the first one I think this troop has ever had, and he really seems to be on the ball. We all have much to learn, but it's just so exciting to see the troop going in the right direction.

So what's your advice for the committee chair of a troop in transition? Thanks again for all the information you've gathered in one place and for the podcast. I cannot begin to tell you how helpful it is.

Well, wow, Kelly, you did it. Good for you. Since you asked for some advice, I'll give you a little bit. My advice is to keep on doing what you're doing. Sounds like you have things rolling in the right direction. Keep asking questions, look at those resources and just continue to make things happen.

Now I will add one thing that may not be readily apparent, and that is that scouts have a lot of what it takes to run the show already. As you described, they'll step right up and they'll start doing things. Where they're going to need some help is getting the schedule worked out and developing the habits of planning and preparing their activities. There are three distinct things: planning, preparing and doing.

Okay, I've talked to scouts about this all the time. Planning is easy.

Preparation is usually where things get a little dicey, so you'll want to be working with the Scoutmaster and the senior patrol leader, helping scouts learn to prepare by first making sure there's a distinction between planning and preparing. Scouts plan at the speed of thought, right, they can sit down and come up with a list of things that they want to do, they can put them on a calendar and they think, well, we're done until that thing rolls around. What they miss is preparing what they have planned.

So we want to help them work their way through exactly what needs to be prepared, and they'll catch on pretty quickly. So what I mean specifically is actually working through what they've planned, with an eye to what they will need to make whatever they've planned happen, and rehearsing how they're going to do that. They'll need to think through how they will also get the scouts they are serving in their troop and patrols prepared for whatever it is they have planned.

What skills and knowledge do the scouts need to carry out their plan? What kind of gear will they need?

Does everybody know how to use the gear? There are lots and lots of questions to be asked and answered. I tell our scouts that planning is 10% of the effort, preparing is 60% of the effort and doing- actually doing what you've planned- is 30% of the effort, and this kind of helps them visualize how important the preparation stage is. I have an article that describes the components that I've mentioned here and that I'll link to in a post that contains this podcast. But once again, good for you, Kelly. Thanks for getting involved in making things happen for your scouts.

If you have a question, you can get in touch with me and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.