Scoutmaster Podcast 259

I am Daniel Desjardins, I'm Brian Bluin And I am a Scoutmaster. We threw four, two, six in london, there in new hamshire, And I am a cub master with pack three, two, eight, five out of rockford, michigan. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like us.

And now for you, Scoutmaster, Here's a little known bit of scouting history And it turns out it's also a little known piece of baseball history that I recently discovered, just after I made it up. The Bambino- Yes, Babe Ruth- was a Scoutmaster And he often took his scouts camping in the Great Smoky Mountains And he did this so they could pitch their tents high and outside. Oh yeah,

Come on now I put that one right over the plate. Hey, this is podcast number 259.. Hey, Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Wow, let's see here. Let's take a look in the mail bag.

We got some messages here. Liberty Bill left a five star review of the Scoutmaster podcast on iTunes.

Thank you so much, Bill. He's a new Scoutmaster, relatively new Scoutmaster, working towards a scout led troop, as are many of you, And we always appreciate reviews.

So you can review the podcast on iTunes or on Google Play And you know you can review the books on Amazon. Certainly do appreciate it when folks go to the trouble of doing that. Richard Withkowski is with troop 117 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, And Richard was on one of our recent chats. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. He said thanks for all you do.

We love the podcast and all the support you give scouts like us And you know Richard's right up the road for me in a troop that I have known for many, many years- Troop 117 up there in Coatesville- So it's great to make a connection there. Tyson got in touch and said: I'm on our district training committee And I was wondering if I could use your merit badge blue card infographic to print out and distribute during training. And, Tyson, you can certainly do that. This is a question I get very often And I like to mention on the podcast. Please use anything that we've created to further the cause of scouting. Where you are, Go right ahead and do it.

All's we ask is that you'll let people know where you found the resource. I mentioned our live chat. We had a two or three live chat sessions this past week. These usually happened during weekday mornings. You'll see an announcement in our Twitter feed and our Facebook feed that the live chat feature is is up on scoutmastercgcom. Come along and join us amongst all of our frequent flyers that check in.

We had some new folks check in this week. Zach Guerra is in Los Angeles where he's an assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 716.. Valerie Gibson in Ingenberg is a chartered org representation Representation is a chartered org representative in the Sagamore Council of Indiana. Scott Schaefer is in Des Moines, Iowa, where he's a Scoutmaster and a cub master. Matt Bearman is with Troop 971 and PAC 3971 in West Branch, Mississippi. Vince Hurley is a Scoutmaster with Troop 73 in Indianapolis, Indiana, And David Varyspey is an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 1776 in San Ramon, California.

All those folks checked in on the live chat Once again weekday mornings. Watch the Facebook and Twitter feeds for an announcement that there's a live chat and the times and come on in and join us. It's great fun. If you are a regular reader and listener and if the resources that we've created at ScoutMasterCGcom have helped you, you can return the favor by becoming a scoutmastercgcom backer. The funds we get from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing the blog posts and the podcasts and the videos and keeping all those resources accessible to scouts all over the world- and for freely accessible, I may add. It's an easy thing to do: Go to scoutmastercgcom and click the support link at the top of the page, right there in the top menu, and you can choose any level of support, and some of those entitle you to premiums, like autograph copies of my books.

So I want to take a moment to personally thank Raul Aracida, Buddy Broils and Rob Painter, who became backer since our last podcast. One more time: go to scoutmastercgcom, become a backer this week, and I'll be sure to thank you personally during our next podcast. Let's see a couple other bits of business to take care of here In 2016. We've got a great trip to Condersteg International Scout Center scheduled in July of 2016 and we'd love to have you come along. Go to scoutmastercgcom to check that out and I'll have a link to the trip details in the post that contains this podcast.

And I want to tell you that this past Thursday night, I was invited by a listener and reader, Bill Chapman, to lead a Boy Scout leader breakout session at the Saddleback District Roundtable in Lake Forest, California. It all turned out well. I did not travel to Lake Forest. I was speaking to them over Skype and we had a great time. I started out by introducing the idea of the patrol method.

We were basically looking at a self-assessment tool I created a few years ago. That's really just a way to start sparking discussions about the patrol method. If you haven't seen it and you're interested in it, I'll link to it in the post that contains this podcast.

But we introduced that and we talked about it a little bit and then we opened the floor for questions and thank goodness people had questions and I just didn't have to drone on and on and do a lecture, you know, and I want to thank Gary and Nancy and Lori and Carolyn and the others who asked questions during that session. I mentioned this for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I wanted to thank Bill Chapman, who set up the session and made it happen, and you know we had a pretty good time doing it. It seemed to be pretty useful and if it's helpful to you to have me come to your round table that way, I'd certainly welcome the opportunity.

So get in touch and let me know and we'll sort out how to make it happen. One of the other reasons I wanted to mention this was many.

The answers that I had to the questions that were asked during that session were aimed at listening to Scouts, and I want to expand a little bit on that in this podcast. In Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less, which is probably going to go a little bit more than seven minutes because you know that's the way it works- I want to talk about listening to Scouts and then we've also got just a couple of quick email questions to answer, so that's going to take up

The remainder of the podcast. Let's get started then, shall we Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less?

So, as I said earlier, I was leading a roundtable discussion and, as I shared, many of my answers to the questions in that discussion were, in short, listen to your Scouts. And, serendipitously, this week's installment of BP's blog, Baden Powell's blog, features some thoughts from our founder, Sir Robert Baden Powell, on the subject of listening, and it's from an article in BP's Outlook, which is a collection of pieces that he wrote for the Scouter magazine, and this particular piece that I shared this week on BP's blog was written in 1922 and it's titled appropriately: Listen- Just a very good one word title. And in this article BP encouraged Scoutsers to consider listening rather than talking as the most effective tool to work with Scouts. In this article he said several things. He said that a Scoutmaster can save his brains by using his ears and to listen to what his boys are talking about and keep his own mouth shut.

Here's a great allegory he used in the article. He said: when in wartime a soldier scout is out at night and wants to gain information of the enemy's moves, he does so to a large extent by listening. Similarly, when a Scoutmaster is in the dark as to the inclination or the character of his boys, he can to a great extent get it by listening. In listening, he will gain a close insight into the character of each boy and a realization of the way in which he can best be interested. If Baden Powell went on to say: you make listening an observation your particular occupation, you will gain much more information from your Scouts than you can put into them by your own talk. Find out from them, by listening or questioning, which activities appeal most to them and see how far you can get these going.

So too, in giving instruction, it is better by far to get your boys to debate a point or to ask you questions than to preach information to them. There's a lot to be got by listening and observing.

So, with Bin Powell's advice in mind, let's talk about the idea of Socratic Scouting. Now, if you're not familiar with this Socratic Method, here's a great introduction that comes from the 1973 movie The Paper Chase, directed by James Bridges. In this little excerpt here, Professor Kingsfield is being played by actor John Hausman, and he is making his introduction to his course at Harvard Law School in the movie.

So listen to this. We use the Socratic Method here. I call on you: I'll ask you a question and you answer it.

Why don't I just give you a lecture? Because through my questions you learn to teach yourselves. Through this method of questioning, answering, questioning, answering. We seek to develop in you the ability to analyze that vast complex of facts that constitute the relationships of members within a given society. Questioning and answering: At times you may feel that you have found the correct answer. I assure you that this is a total delusion on your part.

You will never find the correct, absolute and final answer. In my classroom there is always another question, Another question to follow your answer. As you're on a treadmill, my little questions spin the tumblers of your mind. You're on an operating table.

My little questions are the fingers probing your brain? You do brain surgery here. You teach yourselves the law, but I train your mind. You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer.

I remember hearing this years and years and years ago and it really made a big impression on me. That's Socratic Method: Listening, asking questions, hearing the answers and asking more questions is really just this wonderful, practical and versatile tool for Scouters.

It's a tool we can apply to developing youth leaders, to instruction, to training, to counseling, to mentoring, and it's an incredibly powerful way for us to achieve the aims of Scouting. Using Socratic Scouting, We're really teaching Scouts the crucial skill of learning how to learn, by appealing to their national inquisitiveness and inspiring them to work things out for themselves. I've also seen this method called Guided Discovery, and Guided Discovery is not making statements or lecturing, but asking questions that encourage Scouts to figure things out.

In the roundtable discussion that I mentioned earlier, there was a lot of talk about how patrols are arranged or how you make certain decisions about the way Scouts are going to do things, and my continuous encouragement to everybody was: well you know, sit down and talk to the patrol leaders. Sit down and talk to your senior patrol leaders. Sit down and talk to the patrol leaders council. Ask them how they think they're going to solve this. You already have a solution, you already have a strategy and you could just tell them what to do. But the real magic moment in Scouting is when we get into this Socratic Method and we start asking them questions and they can come up with some amazing things.

They can come up with some amazing strategies and plans and answers on their own if we're listening to their answers. Now, if we lecture Scouts, we echo what they have done in school a thousand times and I think a lot of times they react accordingly. Their attentiveness is going to be brief.

They'll show little appreciation or understanding for what's being said and they'll retain very little of what we're offering because they just kind of switch goes off and they say: an adult is speaking now and well, you know, I'll listen. I guess. Yep, this is what adults say all the time. I've heard it a hundred times.

I wonder if anybody's texted me recently, you know what I mean. So let's remember: Scouting promises engaging, active things, not sitting and listening. Who can blame Scouts, who come to Scouting with this promise of engagement and activity and they find themselves in another classroom situation and they feel a little bit like they've been cheated out of something. This Socratic Scouting, or Guided Discovery, transforms the role of the Scout from a passive learner to an active participant in what's going on.

One question follows another, like a path of breadcrumbs, just like we heard Professor Kingsfield saying- and then the Scouts discover what they need to know, and when they discover things this way, the light comes on, so it's almost a physical phenomena. They brighten up. More than just learning the right answers to things or learning how to do something they have learned for themselves. They've learned to seek these things out and teach themselves.

So suppose we want our Scouts to learn how to safely handle and maintain a pocket knife. It's a pretty common thing, right?

Well, we could sit them down and talk to them and we could explain everything to them. Or we could lay out some pocket knives and things on the table and we could, and we could engage them in this Socratic Scouting method, right?

What are the things on this table? Well, some pocket knives and stuff.

Well, how do you use them? How can you find out how they're used.

Why isn't important? We learn to use them correctly. And one question leads to the next. Scouts are actively involved in supplying the answers, rather than simply recording information. They're going to pick up the knives, they're going to use them and they learn more with their hands than with their ears.

So we make sure they start working with their hands right away. We move away from the table in a very few minutes and the Scouts start practicing and trying out things they've discovered. They can coach each other in these skills and ask us questions. They're active and engaged and happy and, as I said before, Socratic Scouting right. The, the guided discovery methods are not limited to instruction.

We can employ it to counsel and to train and to mentor our Scouts. So when we're talking with the Patrol Leaders Council, what do you think?

What's your plan for handling this particular thing? What should we do next?

How are you going to go about doing that? Can you explain it to me in very simple, step-by-step method, how exactly you're going to do that?

When we're sitting down and having a Scoutmaster's conference and we're looking at things like scout spirit and participation and things like that, how about we ask the scout about it instead of substituting our own judgment for theirs? How about we call upon that developing standard of the scout oath and law inside them and say: well, you know what, I have my own opinions about scout spirit, but I'm much more interested in hearing yours.

Why don't you tell me what you think it means? Why don't you tell me if you think you fulfilled this requirement? And once we start doing that, we're just unlocking all these many doors and we're really working at achieving the aims of scouting, which is the development of character right.

So once we get the hang of guiding and discovery and we use this Socratic Scouting method rather than preaching or teaching or lecturing, we'll find that it's one of the most useful tools in your kit. It'll make your scouts engaged and active and it will advance the aims of scouting.

And here's an answer to one of your emails- Hey, just a couple of quick email questions. This week Rick Williamson uh got in touch. He says I'm a new Scoutmaster for troop 131 in Scottsdale, Arizona. I listened to your podcast. The information you provide has helped me. Uh.

Recently a scout brought me three completed blue cards from a merit badge clinic. The guide to advancement requires that a scout talk to the unit leader for approval before the scout starts working with a merit badge counselor. The blue cards that I received from the merit badge clinic from three different merit badge counselors were issued without having my signature on them first, indicating that I'd spoke them with the scout.

Now I don't think we should penalize the scout for the error that these merit badge counselors made, but I don't exactly know what to do next. Well, Rick, thanks for listening and thanks for getting in touch. This is an easy question because it's not my opinion. It's all spelled out very clearly in the guide to advancement. You're correct in that we wouldn't ever want to ding a scout for something they can't control, and the way that the counselors handle this is not strictly as they should have. We're not going to make the scouts suffer because the counselor didn't understand something.

What we want to do in a situation like this is to get in touch with the counselor district advancement committee, because these are the folks who approve merit badge counselors and we want to let them know what happened, and it's up to them to tell the counselors in question that they may have made a mistake by accepting a blue card without a unit leader's signature, or to explain to you why that wasn't required in this particular situation. They may have set something up for a merit badge clinic or something. I really don't know now. This is a pretty common thing where people have concerns about the way merit badges are being cancelled.

So there's a form in the guide to advancement 2013. I'll have a link to the guide. Uh, you'll find the form. It's called reporting merit badge counseling concerns on page 81 of the guide, and that's a way to keep the people who are registering merit badge counselors aware. If there are any concerns or problems, and they'll they'll, they'll make sure to correct them. I had this email from Kathy, who asked who else other than the Scoutmaster can conduct Scoutmaster conferences.

Well, Kathy, that's a really good question and all of the resources I've checked. So that's the Scoutmaster's handbook and and things like that describe the conferences between the Scoutmaster or the unit leader and the scout. There is no specific prohibition about others conducting the conference, but it is called a Scoutmaster conference and I wouldn't advise anyone but the Scoutmaster conduct that conference. In the guide to advancement, it will talk about the unit leader because- and that includes Scoutmasters and and varsity scouting leaders and and for venturers too, but it's very specific that it is the unit leader and while there is no, like I said, express prohibition against it, it is pretty clear exactly what's intended there.

So, Kathy, I hope that helps. Hey, if you have a question, you'd like to get in touch with me? It's pretty easy to do and I'd love to hear from you.

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