Scoutmaster Podcast 257

This is Andy McDonald and I am a Scoutmaster with Troop 196 in Winnersprings, Florida. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now for you, Scoutmaster. Well, a pony got lost and wandered into our campsite this past weekend.

Now the Scouts gathered around and they tried to talk to the pony, find out where he was from, maybe help him get home, But they couldn't understand anything the pony said because it was just a little horse. Hey, hey, oh, oh, if you have a better one, let me know.

Hey, this is podcast number 257.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look in the mailbag and see what we got. John is with Boy Scout Troop 160 in, of all places, Clark's Green, Pennsylvania. Yes, there is such a place, Clark's Green, And actually every time we're headed up to Canada, up to Algonquin Park, we drive past Clark's Green.

It's up near the border of Pennsylvania and the state of New York And I like to point it out to the boys. Tell them it's my town and that you know they can stop in. John is with Troop 160 in Clark's Green. He said I started your podcast at the beginning and I'm on podcast 64. I'll be catching up really soon.

Well, thanks for being in touch, John, And thanks for taking care of my town up there. I appreciate it. Daryl Oakley is with Troop 1 in Hopedale, Massachusetts. He says I'm deeply grateful for your web page, podcast, iPhone app and books. I'm a new to scouting and I've been buried deep in all the scouting resources for these past seven months. You've certainly decreased my learning curve with sharing your years of wisdom.

I'm an assistant scoutmaster and in training to be the next scoutmaster. I don't know how I became the anointed one. Perhaps I can fog a mirror. Yeah, Daryl, that sounds about right. That's the way it works. A lot of times I'm jumping into the volcano and not looking down.

Thank you so much for making the jump easier. Thank you, Daryl, for those kind words. Certainly do appreciate it.

Over on Amazon we got this review of the book so far so good And if you haven't been listening for long, so far so good is a fictional narrative of the first few months of being a new scoutmaster. I'm really happy that it's been helpful to people and it's been reasonably popular. But Gary said this is a great book. It will be a great help to anyone who's trying to implement the patrol method and a youth run troop. I highly recommend it as a must read part of your scout leader training.

Well, thanks, Gary. I appreciate it If you've read the book and you enjoyed it and you'd like to go over to Amazon and leave a review. That's always very helpful And I certainly do appreciate it. Andy Hall got in touch with us after listening to our last podcast and he said I had to immediately press pause and compose a reply to the email you got from the young man about to become a new scoutmaster. His story closely resembles my own.

I reconnected with my old troop after becoming an eagle scout and going to college And then within two years, I became the scoutmaster of my old troop. Just like you suggested, I had a very honest and frank conversation with the committee. I explained to them what they thought they were expecting of me. I explained what I expected of them and the other adults involved and that I expected them to follow my lead. They agreed and it was official and I was a 23 year old scoutmaster. I poured over all the material I could find and the first sentence of Baden Powell's AIDS to Scoutmaster ship And, by the way, I have the full text of that on the website at scoutmastercgcom.

Right in the menu below the header, there's a link to the scouting library and you'll find the full text of AIDS to Scoutmaster ship there. But anyway, as Andy was saying, the first sentence of it really hit home with me. The scoutmaster guides the boy in the spirit of an older brother.

As I think about it now, I think this one statement has done more to shape how I execute the scouting program more than anything else, And it really spoke to me because I was only six years older than my oldest scout at the time. For the most part it's worked. I've needed to keep parents in our corner of the camp out from time to time, but they respected my requests and my reasons.

I'm now a 34 year old commissioner in a different town and I look back on the time wearing the big hat with fondness. It was really some of the best experiences that I've had. To the young new scoutmaster who got in touch with you and you answered last week on the podcast: you're taking the first steps of a great adventure. My friend, Don't let Clark's volcano scare you. I don't know if it's my volcano, but yeah, I get what you're saying there, Andy, And in the same breath, let me tell you that I also heard from Bill Price, who is the scoutmaster of Troop 150 in Portland Oregon. He said I listened to the most recent podcast, 256..

The email from the soon to be 20-something scoutmaster was a topic near and dear to my heart. I was a 20-something scoutmaster. I earned my eagle with Troop 150 in the summer of 2000,, went away for college and returned and started working with my old Troop as an adult leader. Our scoutmaster of about 20 years handed me the job officially in 2010 when I was 28 years old. Hopefully, I can serve in the position of scoutmaster for many years to come Without having a child involved. I have managed to avoid the helicopter or coddling tendencies that some parents have to unlearn when they become scouters.

It could be challenging being the youngest adult in the room, but don't let it get you down. You can actually learn a lot from parents who are half a generation older if you will listen.

I think it might be fun to get a young scoutmaster's group together. I think it could be really helpful. My hope is that we really aren't as rare as we sometimes feel like we are. Keep up the fabulous work, Clark. We really appreciate it.

Well, Bill, I think that's a great idea. If you want to be part of that young scoutmaster's group- and let's call young scoutmasters anybody who's in their 20s- okay, That seems to be about right- Get in touch with me, Send me an email at Clark at scoutmastercgcom, and I'll put together a little email group and let you guys get in communication with one another. Being a young scoutmaster like that does have its own set of challenges and triumphs.

I think it's a great idea, Bill, for you guys to be able to get together and chat a little bit. Speaking of chat, this past week we had a couple of live chat sessions.

Now, these happen mostly on weekday mornings. Look at our Facebook feed and our Twitter feed for announcements when the live chat will be up at scoutmastercgcom and come on in and check in and say hello. And this past week, in addition to all of our frequent fliers, we heard from Scott Schaefer, who's a scoutmaster and a cubmaster in Iowa. Jason Nalt checked in from Newfoundland in Canada. Rob Kerrigan is in Portland, Maine, where he's an assistant scoutmaster and a cubleader. Stephen Jarvis is in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

He's an assistant scoutmaster with Troop 102.. Brian Erler is a troop committee chair from Mansfield, Texas, with Troop 1703.. Gary Miller is out in Idaho and when Gary checked in, he said: I am the new scoutmaster.

Tonight will be my first meeting, So I hope that worked out for you. Gary Ray Britton is in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and he's the scoutmaster of Troop 42.. Doi Shipman is the advancement coordinator for Troop 102 and Oak Mulgee, Oklahoma, And Jeff is an assistant scoutmaster for Troop in Omaha.

So all those folks checked in during the chat. We have a good time when that's up Once again. Watch the Facebook feed and the Twitter feed for announcements of this, usually on a weekday morning.

Now, before we go any further, let me remind you of two things. First of all, I want you to come to Condorsteg, Switzerland, with me in the summer of 2016.. Go to ScoutmasterCGcom. Right there at the top of the page, You'll see a banner inviting you on that trip. If you'll click on that, you'll get some details about how all that's happening.

The second thing I want to remind you of is that if you are a regular reader and listener and the resources we've created have helped you, you can return the favor by becoming a ScoutmasterCGcom backer. It's very easy to do.

Go to ScoutmasterCGcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you can become a backer, And the funds that we get from our backer program go towards the expenses of producing and publishing the blog posts, the podcasts, the videos, everything that has become a valuable resource And we want to keep those freely accessible. That's why we have the backer program And since our last podcast, I want to take a moment to personally thank Jeff Byerman, Rick Ayers, Paul Fife and William Bill Price, who've become backers since our last podcast. Once again, go to ScoutmasterCGcom, click 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.

In this week's podcast up next- Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less- we're going to talk about the Scoutmasters role in leading the other adults, And then I have some email questions to answer. So let's get started, shall we?

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. So one thing you've heard me repeat several times on the podcast, if you've been listening for a while, is that the Scoutmaster will guide and mentor and work with Scouts and help them discover their roles in leadership, help them discover what to do.

But the Scoutmaster will direct and lead his fellow adult volunteers, his assistant Scoutmasters and anyone from the committee who takes an active role in being involved with the Scouts, And we have to coordinate our approach with other adults, And that is the Scoutmasters responsibility. It's a good idea to agree on who's going to talk to the senior patrol leader and when they're going to talk to them and what they're going to say to them.

We want to have some coordinated approach to that because otherwise we run the risk of running the poor senior patrol leader ragged by getting conflicting advice or directions from several different adults. Now, there's really no list of rules about how to make this happen, It's just common sense. The Scoutmaster leads and directs his assistant Scoutmasters. They can't just be free agents who want to speak up and instruct or direct youth leaders without the Scoutmasters knowledge and permission, And that includes emails or just things.

Hey, you know what? I can help this patrol leader out.

I have some advice for them, or I want to tell them how to do something. Well, that really needs to be coordinated, doesn't it? Otherwise, like I said, we are liable to give out some very confusing messages to our youth leadership.

Now, I understand that Assistant Scoutmasters want to help, but you also have to understand that adult involvement is coordinated through the Scoutmaster. From time to time I hear from Scoutmasters who are having this problem where their Assistant Scoutmasters are kind of acting as free agents, They're muddying the water, They're kind of overstepping their bounds, And this is all done normally out of the desire to be helpful. But an uncoordinated approach is not going to be that helpful.

And if you find yourself in kind of a fix about this, let me suggest this to you: Get all of the Assistant Scoutmasters or anybody on the committee who has a direct working relationship with any of the Scouts in the troop together and say: look, I appreciate everybody has a lot to offer in the way of ideas and advice for our youth leadership, but we need to discuss our roles and how we communicate with them. So it's my job to make this clear.

I want to make sure that we all understand that from this point forward, any communication- now that includes email or any directions or discussions at meetings or camping trips- any communication with our youth leaders needs to go through me as the Scoutmaster. My concern is is: if we aren't coordinating our efforts, we're going to end up giving conflicting advice or directions.

So with that in mind, please make sure that we have discussed any ideas or advice before you discuss them with any youth leaders. It's my job as the Scoutmaster to make sure that we're all on the same page. This does not mean that if you see something that requires an adult to step in, like something dangerous or improper or inappropriate going on, that you need to come and find me. No, you can step in and do that. I would like to know about it as soon as it happens. But what I'm talking about is the tendency for us just to buttonhole a patrol leader or assistant patrol leader and give them the benefit of our advice or something like that.

I understand that you're trying to help, but we all need to make sure that we coordinate what is being said to our youth leadership. Now I think hopefully you know that kind of a message. That should be pretty clear.

It's a pretty common sense approach And then you have to work at that. It's going to take a little bit of work to get everybody on the same page and understanding that. It's not necessarily that the Scoutmaster is desiring to exert his hierarchical control over everybody, but you're kind of what you're doing is you're kind of making yourself the gateway to protecting interests and the effectiveness of your youth leadership.

I know some people will rankle at that, but I think if you explain it to them and you reason with them a bit, they're going to come to see how important that is. A scout is dressed with an oiled, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, gentle, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. A scout is dressed with an oiled, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. A clean and reverent

Email. That is folks, And here's an answer to one of your emails.

So let's take a look at emails. I heard from Ed Graytricks, who said: your infographic on blue cards states that the effort towards a merit badge can only start after the blue card is signed by the unit leader.

Doesn't this kind of fly in the face of the concept that a scout can begin work on advancement from the start of being a scout? Before I answer that question, what Ed is referring to is an infographic I did a while back about the way we use blue cards And I will make sure to have a link to that infographic in the post that contains this podcast.

So let me answer that question, And I think the best way to answer it is to go to the applicable section of the Guide to Advancement 2013.. And that's section seven. And to note that the unit leader's signature is required on the merit badge application before the scout begins working with a counselor.

And it's described in this way And it's pencils up: Are we ready? 7.0.0.3 in the Guide to Advancement 2013, titled the scout, the blue card and the unit leader, And it reads like this quote: before he begins working with a merit badge counselor, However, he is to have a discussion with his unit leader. That a discussion has been held is indicated by the unit leaders signature on the application for the merit badge, commonly called the blue card.

So the signature is required to assure that the scout is working with a registered counselor. And Ed wrote back and said: okay, I got that.

What about work done before the scout meets with the counselor? Does it count or not?

Well, again, in the Guide to Advancement, right in that section seven, and it's 7.0.0.2- it reads this quote: while a boy may begin working on a merit badge at any time after he's registered, it is the counselor's decision whether to accept work or activities completed prior to the issuing of the signed blue card. Common sense should prevail, However. For example, Knights already camped as a Boy Scout, or coins or stamps collected would count toward their respective badges. Unquote.

So if it makes sense for the counselor to accept the work, the counselor can certainly accept it. At the same time, there's nothing that demands the counselor must accept any prior work.

And Ed wrote back and said: well, thank you for that. I'm becoming Scoutmaster, or a troop of 60 scouts during summer camp this year. If it wasn't for your books and podcasts, I'd be more, even I'd be even more terrified than I am now. You've taken the edge off. For that I'm exceedingly grateful and that's why I became a backer.

Well, thank you, Ed, for becoming a backer, happy to help kind of take the edge off the terror. Oh my, be a Scoutmaster. It's a lot of fun, it's not all that terrifying.

I got an email from Marianne who said I have two questions: Is a Weebelow allowed to wear a sash with the patches he's earned and, if so, can his sash and badges be worn when he becomes a scout? These answers are in the guide to awards and insignia and I'll have a link to where you can find that as a PDF document in the post that contains this podcast. And your first question is: is a Weebelow allowed to wear a sash And, by the way, whether it's plural or singular, it's always Weebelows because the name is Will Be Loyal Scouts.

Weebelows is not plural, so we say a Weebelows den, and when we talk about an individual boy, we call him a Weebelows. So thank you for letting me be persnickety there for a moment. What we find on page 31 of the guide to awards and insignia is that Meribadges- Sashes- are worn only by Boy Scouts and Venturers who are earning Boy Scout Advancement.

So that kind of eliminates the second question, because Weebelows can't wear sashes. However, what I would guide you to look at is what is said about excess insignia and, quoting from page 10 of the of the guide, it says: with the exception of the Cub Scout Badges, of Rank and Arrow Points, members only wear the insignia that show their present status in the movement. Members should make every effort to keep their uniforms neat and uncluttered. Previously earned badges and insignia not representing present status make a fine display on a BSA red patch vest, on a trophy, hide or blanket, exhibited in the home of the recipients or at functions where such a display is invited.

So what you can do for a Weebelows is make a vest or make a display or put all those patches on a blanket, which is really a great thing to have if you around a campfire and to take camping with you. Some of my Scouts have their old patches or ones they can't wear on their shirts, on a fleece jacket.

But you know you can't outgrow a blanket but you can outgrow a fleece jacket. But you know there's lots of different ways to use that. What what the guide calls excess insignia- that is no longer represents your current status in scouting. It could be put in a lot of different places. I got this email from Andrew Turner who said, during a discussion with my fellow assistant Scoutmasters, I mentioned that our Scouts need to be meeting as patrol outside our official meeting.

I was met with a resounding no that there must be too deep leadership for these meetings and so forth and it would just be too much trouble. I disagree, I feel as long as the boys are meeting at one of their houses or at the park, no adult leader needs to be present.

What say you? Well, it's an easy answer, Andrew, because it's right there in the guide to safe scouting. It's not my opinion or my read of the situation. It's actually in very plain language.

So in the guide to safe scouting where it speaks about too deep leadership. It says this quote: two registered adult leaders, or one registered leader and the parent of a participating scout or other adult, one of whom must be 21 years of age or older, are required for all trips and outings. There are a few instances, such as patrol activities, where the presence of adult leaders is not required and adult leadership may be limited to training and guidance of the patrol leadership. With the proper training, guidance and approval of the troop leaders, the patrol can conduct day hikes and service projects. Appropriate adult leadership must be present for all overnight scouting activities.

So, Andrew, the answer is pretty clear. There are a few instances, such as patrol activities- you know, day activities, meeting at the park, meeting at somebody's house, doing a service project, when the presence of adult leaders is not required. And I'll repeat exactly what it said: with the proper training, guidance and approval of the troop leaders, the patrol can conduct day hikes and service projects, things like that. I will note, even though it's not clear in the guide to safe scouting, in the section that I read: while a patrol can go out and do these kind of day activities without an adult leader present if an adult is going to be present.

We always want to have two present, not just one, so hopefully that gives you somewhere to start with making some decisions about how patrol activities like this are going to be taken care of. So three emails and three key resources that every scouter should have and read and understand.

Now you don't have to memorize them, of course, but you should look through them all and be familiar, how to reference them and know where to find answers to these questions, because these are all pretty common questions. So the three resources are the guide to advancement 2013, the guide to awards and insignia and the guide to safe scouting. Each one of them is available as a PDF document and also a print document.

I'll have links to the PDF versions in the post that contains this podcast and I want to note, especially when we're dealing with matters of official policy and procedure, I do my best to get it right. I go to the resources, I look up and see what's going on.

I try and read direct quotes from these resources to be clear that this is simply not my opinion or the way that I think things should go, but you know pretty clearly expressed policy in the resources that were given. Anytime, anytime.

Anytime you hear the answer to one of these questions, you need to make sure that I've got it right, and it's a good exercise, because you go to the resources yourself, look at them and become familiar with how to use them, and then, when these questions come up in your own unit, you'll be able to find answers. And when you can find answers, that means that you're presenting a quality program and you're benefiting those scouts that you're serving.

So if you have a question or a concern that you're looking for answers to, you can get in touch with me. It's a pretty easy thing to do, and you'll find out how to do that in just a moment.