Scoutmaster Podcast 263

I'm John Coleman and I am an assistant Scoutmaster with troop number 56 in Coyerville, Tennessee. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me And now the old Scoutmaster.

So the wise old scouter was speaking to a scout who just couldn't fall asleep, was really having a problem when they were out camping, and he said: well, you know what I do, I just listened to the symphony, the sweet lullaby of the wild, and I drift off to sleep. And the scout looks at him and says: well, I'll give it a try, but those stupid crickets are so loud I really can't hear anything else.

Hey, this is podcast number 263.. Hey, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. We're gonna take a look at the mailbag here. We heard from Matt Hickman who wrote with this little story. He says I was driving along in the car with my Cub Scout and my Boy Scout sons and I was talking about scouts and I asked the Cub Scout if he would join the troop if I signed up to be a leader.

And my Boy Scout son corrected me with no hesitation. He said: you're crazy, dad, you can't be a leader of the troop, you're an adult. And Matt said. That's right. Your senior patrol leader is in charge of the troop. From the perspective of a second-class scout, the patrol method is working Well.

Thanks for that, Matt. That's a great story. Dave LaVenter is the Scoutmaster of troop 301 in Temecula, California, and he wrote in to say in 2013: I emailed you about my son's experiences as a Webelos visiting local Boy Scouts troops. You read it on your podcast and made a blog post out of it, and I will have a link to that blog post from 2013 that Dave mentions here. There'll be a link in the post that contains this podcast, But Dave goes on to say what's been going on since.

Well, in the two years since my older son crossed over into the Boy Scouts, he's become a life scout and assistant senior patrol leader. My younger son was a bear back then and now he's a scout in the same troop. When the other Webelos- two parents- asked me about troops, I knew that once they visited our troop, our scouts would sell the Webelos on the idea of joining our troop themselves, And I was right. Our pack has three Webelos dens and nearly a hundred percent crossed over into the troop.

Add to that another six or so scouts that crossed over from other packs. Our troop maintains the fun, inclusive environment that attracted us to it in the first place, and the scouts in the troop are naturally like this. I became a Scoutmaster right after the crossover last month. It's an honor, It's a privilege and I'm told it will only take an hour a week.

Well, thanks for that, Dave. Yeah, I remember hearing from you in 2013.. It's great to hear things are still going well. And let me note this, though: You say that the scouts in your troop are just naturally inclusive and and considerate of the younger scouts and things like that.

Well, I agree to a point, but I don't think any scouts are naturally like that. I think scouts are led in that direction and reflect the kind of culture of the unit, and that starts with the adults who are involved.

So, good on you. Good on you for being a Scoutmaster.

Once you've listened to the podcast, you can take 20 minutes or so off of your hour a week and use that time that's left to do your Scoutmaster stuff, And if you need more time, let me know, okay? Hey, we heard from Craig Dixon, who is with a troop- 682 in Poe, California. He said I just became a backer. Thank you, Craig.

I'm an Eagle Scout from 1980 and I've been a scouter now for 11 years and for that whole time I've used the web as a resource, with mixed results. But your philosophy of scouting mirrors my experience in scouting as a youth and what I'm trying to achieve with my troop.

I miss the live chats that you have because I'm not on Facebook so I don't get the notification, and they're also awfully early here on the left coast. Well, let's talk about that for a moment.

Craig, I want to fix both of those things. Usually, I'm having the live chats on a weekday morning and I know the the west coast is going to be just getting up and getting going for the day probably, as we're closing the chat down here around 11- 11- 30 and since you're not on Facebook, you're not getting the notifications.

So let's fix both of those things, okay. First of all, if you'll get in touch with me and you're on the left coast and you want to participate in a chat, well, I'll figure out how to schedule one in the afternoon or the evening. And secondly, go to the post that contains this podcast and you'll see where you can sign up to get a text message when I have a live chat.

This is kind of like a beta idea, okay, so let's, let's give it a try. What you'll do is you'll follow a link and you'll sign up with a with a service that I'm using, and you'll make sure to put your cell phone number and your profile on that service.

I will send you a text whenever I'm going to have a live chat and that's the only time I will send you a text, okay, and your number naturally doesn't go to anybody else or anything like that, But that's in a link in the post that contains this podcast. If you're interested in that, that's good. If you're on the west coast and you want additional live chat time, let me know. Get in touch with me at Clark at scoutmastercgcom and we'll sort it out. And on the live chat, this week we had a lot of our old friends, our good old frequent fliers, join in. We also heard from Jay Cohen in New Hampshire, who's an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 22, and Julio from Bogota, Columbia, signed on, and we had a great chat with Julio too.

So keep an eye on the Facebook and the Twitter feeds and, like I said, if you want a text announcement, go ahead and check out the service that I'm using like, and it's, once again, it's just a beta idea, so we'll give it a shot, see how it goes. Before I continue, let me say this: if the resources that I've created at scoutmastercgcom have helped you, I need you to help me out in return, because what the idea is is to keep all these resources coming and keep them freely available to scouts all over the world, just like you.

So go to scoutmastercgcom today, click on the support link at the top of the page and you'll learn exactly how this works. What'll happen is you'll become a backer, and that means you'll make one-time voluntary kind of subscription payment, and there are some levels of support that even get premiums, like autographed copies of my books.

So, once again, go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page and become a backer, and I want to thank Mac Barron and Craig Dixon and Brian Earler, who have all become backers since our last podcast. Become a backer this week at scoutmastercgcom and I'll be sure to thank you personally during our next podcast.

Well, in the remainder of this podcast, we got some e-mail questions to answer, and that's going to do it for this week. So let's get started, shall we? The cat came back the very next morning. Yet the cat came back the very next day. The cat came back. They thought it wasn't gonna, but the cat came back.

It just couldn't stay away. Away, away, away.

Email that is folks. And here's an answer to one of your emails. Ron Troson is the scoutmaster of Troop 381 in Howell, Michigan, and Ron wrote in to say: I love the podcast. You inspired me to stop doing things because of that kind of tribal knowledge and that's the way we've always done it. Reasoning for an Eagle Scout who's been involved for 30 plus years in scouting, that means kind of a lot of untraining.

So I have this question for you. In the guide to safe scouting I read: depending on the event or planned activity, it may be required that at least two adults or youth- though three or four more is preferable- in each touring group have current training in wilderness first aid and CPR, know how and when to put this knowledge to use and thoroughly understand the limitation of their knowledge.

So Ron is asking, since it says, depending on the event or activity planned, it may be required, who's going to make the decision that it is actually required? On the tour plan form it states that wilderness first aid is recommended for all backcountry tours.

So how do we know if it's actually required of us? Because we have a backcountry trip planned and before I'm asking all of our adult leaders to spend the money and the time to get wilderness first aid trained, I want to make sure it's absolutely required now. We value first aid training in our adults attend CPR training- but not necessarily wilderness first aid.

Well, Ron, uh, first of all, thanks for listening to the podcast and I'm glad you're enjoying it and getting untrained, hopefully in the very best possible sense of that idea. Now, the key to an answer for your question are terms like highly recommended and required.

Okay, the, the bsa, is almost always consistent with what is absolutely required and what is not, and their language that they use in policies and procedures usually reflects this. Now, wilderness first aid, as you've discovered in the guide to safe scouting, is not absolutely required. It may be, but the guide to safe scouting doesn't really tell you when exactly it's going to be required. The only instance that I have found where it's absolutely required is when you're attending one of the bsa national high adventure bases. If you're doing your own backcountry trip or your own high adventure outside of one of those bases, then it looks to me like wilderness first aid is highly recommended.

Now, if it was absolutely required, you'd be asked to provide certification when you file a tour plan. And, like you said on the tour plan, wilderness first aid is recommended but not required for all backcountry tours.

I think we've kind of untangled the policy statements right. So what about wilderness first aid?

Is it worth getting everybody certified and wilderness first aid if you're going on an extended backcountry trip? Well, my answer is probably okay.

You know, I would think you get as many people certified as is practicable and then you make sure the people who are certified share their knowledge with everybody else. If you go to a wilderness first aid course, you're going to learn advanced diagnostic and stabilization techniques for injuries or illnesses when emergency response is going to be delayed. I mean, this is not rocket science.

Okay, it's very, very useful information, but you're not intubating people or stitching up wounds or trying to maintain somebody for you know, three or four days or something like that or doing anything, anything really beyond basic first aid. Wilderness first aid is highly defined diagnostic method and, of course, to notify emergency services and help facilitate getting a sick or injured person out.

The American Red Cross has published two things I think you'll find useful and it kind of give you a jumpstart on this. This is not to substitute for wilderness first aid training, but if you're interested to get an idea of exactly what's going to happen in wilderness first aid training, the Red Cross has a pocket guide to wilderness first aid and a reference guide to wilderness first aid. Both our pdf documents and both I will have linked in the post that contain this podcast.

So this has been a little complicated. Let's just go back and look over exactly what we're talking about. The bsa highly recommends wilderness first aid for backcountry trips. To my knowledge, it is only absolutely required if you're attending a national high adventure base. That's as best I can tell.

So from a policy standpoint, not absolutely required. From common sense standpoint I would say yes, absolutely. Go get wilderness first aid certified if you're going to do backcountry trips.

It takes a little time and a little money to do, but it's it's time and money well spent and naturally, if you're doing a long backcountry trip, you will have all of your scouts and scouters trained in the applicable skills like safety afloat and safe swim, defense and hike on safely and weather hazards and all of that and a lot of that training is available online. I had this question from a reader and a listener. I understand the importance of the class a and class b uniforms.

When we have to wear heavier clothing because of the weather, nobody can see our uniforms. So I suggested that we get sweatshirts or something like that with our troop number or logo on them, and the reply I got back was that this would not be an official part of the uniform, so we're not going to get them.

So my question is: is it possible to purchase sweatshirts with our logo even though it's not an official scout uniform? Well, the short answer is yes and the longer answer is: there's a number of really persistent urban legends and all kinds of other things that happen around uniforms and the wearing of patches.

So let me- let me just take the time to see if we can unwind a couple of those. First of all, there's no class a or class b uniform. It's a common scouting reference. People use it all the time, but you won't find it in any official scouting resources, at least none that I have seen. If you do, let me know. There's only the uniform, and exactly what that is is laid out in the uniform inspection sheets, and I'll have a link to those in the post that contains this podcast.

The second legend is: is that uniforms are ever required by national policy? They're not. If you go to the guide to awards and insignia- again, I'll have a link to it in the post that contains this podcast- you'll find this statement: while wearing the uniform is not mandatory is not mandatory, it is highly encouraged. The leaders of scouting, both volunteer and professional, promote the wearing of the correct and complete uniform on all suitable occasions.

Now when folks start arguing about uniforms and the placement of patches, I'm reminded of something that Baden Powell once wrote: it is almost beyond belief that grown up- or nearly grown up- men can take little matters so seriously and so narrowly as some do. So if there's some kind of friction being created around uniforms, we can- you can usually resolve those arguments pretty quickly by referencing the uniform inspection sheets and taking a look in the guide to awards and insignia. If it's not there, it's not a policy.

Okay, it's very, very simple. Now, if you want visibility while you're out working on projects or camping, wearing a troop sweatshirt or a t-shirt is certainly not restricted in anything. I've read, with very, very few exceptions.

I don't dictate what my scouts wear, so long as what they're wearing is appropriate to the activity, and those exceptions are usually because somebody else has created a rule where they have to wear a uniform when we go to summer camp or something like that. Now, of course, I promote and encourage the wearing of the correct complete uniform and I wear it myself on all suitable occasions, but that's a choice each individual scout makes for themselves and I really end up taking little notice of what they choose to do.

In that regard, Jim Boggs wrote in to say I am already the Scoutmaster for a troop that's a little over a year old now, and I've just became the committee chair for our newly formed crew. While I understand and struggle to keep the patrol method going in the troop, I am wondering how crews are organized. The only reference I have seen about venturing patrols is when they're a part of a troop.

Do crews divide into patrols within themselves and if not, how does a large crew of 30 or 40 function? Well, Jim, I think the answer is pretty is pretty easy. It might just be switching terms around a little bit.

Well, the unit is called a venturing crew. There can be separate crews within the unit. You're going to have it broken down into some kind of small groups.

I think the answer is asking the youth involved to define the way they want to organize themselves. Now I know in our venture crew what we find is is that that our youth members organize themselves around activities rather than a set organizational structure. That's just kind of constant. Our venture crew forms into sub crews or less formal groups depending on what they're doing.

For example, we're going to Canada, go canoeing this summer, so the participants are divided into two crews to train and prepare for that trip, and after the trip those crews will dissolve and will reform for whatever the next activity is. So, Jim, I hope that helps. I heard from Kevin Smith who said my son's Eagle border review is this Thursday and we wanted to know if the border review date is the date that he's considered an eagle or if it's the date of his court of honor. Thanks for all your hard work. I pass your website and podcast on to every scouter I meet.

Well, thank you, Kevin. This one's an easy answer.

If we go to the guide to advancement in, are we ready? Everyone pencils up 8.0.1.5, titled after the review. If the members of the border review agree a scout is ready to advance, he's called in and congratulated. The border review date, not that of the subsequent court of honor, becomes the ranks effective date. This is true for all boards of review, but in 8.0.3.0 there are some particulars for the eagle scout rank and, quoting the eagle scout, metal or patch must not be sold or otherwise provided to any unit or to the scout. Nor should the court of honor be scheduled until after the certificate is received at the council service center from the national advancement team.

So let me be clear about this: the border review date is the effective date of every rank, including eagle. But the only thing particular about eagle: after the border review all the paperwork is going to be submitted and until the certificates receive the council service center, you can't give the scout any recognition and you don't schedule the court of honor until that certificate is taken care of.

Because we know that as soon as the border review is over and as soon as we have the rank badges for any other rank but eagle, we want to present them to the scout as soon as possible. As soon as you get the certificate back from national with an eagle, you can get him a badge and you can present it to him as soon as possible and then, like every other rank, you recognize them formally at the court of honor.

So Kevin wrote back and said: well, thanks, Clark, that's what I figured. It's similar to any other rank advancement.

I remember you had a podcast that stated: once a border review is completed, the scout's entitled to wear the rank. Well, that doesn't.

You know that doesn't. Is that's not affected by the podcast, right? That's just kind of black and white policy that that anybody can find in the guide to advancement. Kevin goes on to say: after hearing that podcast, we bought it to the scouts who like the idea. Rank advancement was then awarded to the scouts at the next meeting and they are also recognized at the court of honor and the scouts like that way much more.

Well, Kevin, I think it's great that you, uh the, involve the scouts in that change and that that is not a negative thing to do at all. But let me say this: this really isn't just some kind of optional way of doing things, just clear policy, not my idea, it's just there in black and white in the guide to advancement and I just want to say that that kind of policy stuff that's not subject to whether the scouts like it or not, or whether you have a vote on it, or whether committee likes it or not. It's right there.

That's the way things work, so it really isn't a decision to be made or an optional approach. It's pretty, you know. It's pretty much just hardwired into the program.

So if you have a question for me and you'd like to get in touch, it's pretty easy to do and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.