Scoutmaster Podcast 271

I'm Mitch Tansby. I'm the Scoutmaster from Troop 404 in Norman Beach, Florida. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by Backers Like Me.

And now for you, Scoutmaster, The other night we're talking about first aid And I asked the Scouts: I said: have any of you gotten a good example of where you used some of your first aid training? You've gotten in Scouts. And one of the guys raised his hand and, very excited, I said: yeah, my neighbor fell off his ladder and broke his leg And it was a compound fracture.

It was pretty messed up And I said: so tell us how you handled the situation. What did you do first?

I said: well, after being in Scouts and being at the scene of this kind of accident, I knew exactly what to do. So I sat down and I put my head between my knees so I wouldn't faint.

Hey, this is podcast number 271.. Hey, Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's see what did we pick out to put up here.

Beth and Kim got in touch with me this past week and said: thank you so much for all you do on the blog and any help you can give me on this. I'm a PhD candidate- PhD, As I remember that stands for post hole digger, But I probably have that wrong. But anyway, Beth Ann says I'm a PhD candidate in the Cub College for the University of Scouting in 2016..

Is there any chance you could help me with a little bit of research by asking your listeners and readers to respond to two questions: What are the biggest mistakes you've seen Cub Scout packs make And what is the best way to avoid them? Well, Beth Ann, I'd love to help you out. What I have done is set up a survey that is in the post that contains this podcast.

Go there, there's a form, set up, answer Beth Ann's two questions and it's set up so she'll be able to get the replies and you'll help her out with the research that she's doing for the University of Scouting. I had a couple of chat sessions last week. Jeff Giacomi from Los Alamedas, California, is the Scoutmaster Troop 671, checked in, As did DeFerrick, who's a committee chair in Minasha, Wisconsin, And all of the other folks. All of our other folks are frequent flyers. We're there too.

We have pretty lively chat sessions at scoutmastercgcom, So make sure to stop through, Most of the time on weekday mornings. Watch the Twitter feed and the Facebook feed for announcements on when we'll be doing a live chat, And you know we have a lot of fun In this podcast.

I've got a bunch of email questions saved up, But before we go any further, let me tell you something real quick. Everything at scoutmastercgcom is there to help you.

If you're a Scouter, that's what it's for, And I'm very pleased to tell you that I hear from Scouts from all over the world who do find what we're doing helpful, And the one thing I want to continue to do is to keep all of this freely available, And to do that I depend on people like you- Not the other people who are listening, but people like you- who become scoutmastercgcom backers. This whole backer thing is an unusual idea, So let me take a moment to explain how it works.

If, rather than a podcast and a website, I was publishing a real life newspaper or magazine, we'd, all you know, you'd say, okay, well, there are costs associated with that, because you need to pay printers and writers and you need to pay postage. So in the virtual world of podcasting and blogging and everything like that, there are still those kind of expenses, because somebody spends their time producing all this and incurs the expenses of publishing it online.

So my answer to the question of how do you make this viable- You know how do you cover the expenses- Started a couple of years ago and I asked people to make a kind of voluntary subscription payment, and you do this by becoming a scoutmastercgcom backer, And that payment covers the expense of producing and publishing what you find on scoutmastercgcom, including what you're listening to right now. So take a moment this week: go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you'll find a number of ways to become a scoutmastercgcom backer.

So this week I want to take a moment to personally thank Michael Miller, Gordon Bain and Darren Austin, who've all become backers since our last podcast. Thank you so very much. Go to scoutmastercgcom. This week You become a backer and I'll thank you during our next podcast.

Well, as I said a little earlier in this week's podcast, I've got a hat full of email questions to answer and that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast. So let's get started.

Shall we Write me a letter? Send it by name

Email, that is folks. And here's an answer to one of your emails. Ralph Osbog is the troop committee chair with troop 457 in Greenwood Village, Colorado, and he wrote in to say this. Our troop has a happy problem. We're in danger of becoming too large.

We have 40 active scouts organized into five patrols. Our scoutmaster stays very busy with scoutmaster conferences.

Our troop trailer is as large as it can be And if we get much larger I anticipate problems with finding places we can go camping and backpacking and other activities. In addition, I recall that Baden Powell stated that the maximum number for scouts in a troop was 32.. I find myself almost wanting to discourage scouts from joining and choose another one of the local troops, most of which are a bit smaller. Our couple in our council are gigantic. They have 85 or 90 scouts and I don't know how they manage. We always need to have some new scouts join each year, but I'm concerned about getting too large.

Do you have any suggestions? How big is too big And what should a troop do if it feels it's getting too big?

Well, Ralph, those are all very good questions. Let's start with what Baden Powell had to say.

Why would he say something like 32 is the maximum size for a troop? Well, if you read Baden Powell's stuff, he was really adamant about two aspects of scale in scouting, And those two things were the patrol and the individual scout.

Now, according to the Baden Powell, the Scoutmaster is a really important influence on the lives of individual scouts, And I think this is true today. But the Scoutmaster role has morphed and changed a little bit since Baden Powell's time.

I would say that it continues to be really important that the Scoutmaster knows his scouts well enough so that so that he can work with them individually to mentor and counsel them on an ongoing basis. And we know that the real effects of scouting, the aims and scouting, are reached in the patrol. The largest part of a scout's experience is what he is doing in his patrol.

So patrols are the real focus. Troops are just a handy way of handling patrols right, They're just an administrative method.

Now, more often than not today, those two things about scale kind of get lost And we work with scouts in big herds- And that is a term that I borrow from Baden Powell- the herd. He talked about the herd frequently And a lot of times patrols don't function at a very high level, They're not autonomous, And we've created other mechanisms and approaches that dull the patrol emphasis And we tend to treat scouts in a big herd or kind of like widgets on a production line. Like you, I've seen some really large troops.

You know where. You have 80, 90, 100 scouts. Every once in a while you hear about one that's 110, 120.

Now, if you come from one of those big, giant, mega troops, I've just raised your hackles a little bit. But I'm not condemning the idea of having that many scouts in a troop. But the dysfunction of troops, whether they're large or small, is usually abandoning the scale of the individual and how important that individual scout is, And usually abandoning the emphasis on the patrol system for easier administrative models. It's just a lot easier to get all the scouts together in a big herd and deal with them as a herd.

Okay, it's a little bit more difficult to deal with them as patrols And it's a little more difficult to look at them as individuals. Now, I don't think people do this consciously.

I don't think people say: Well, you know, we're just lazy, so we're not going to bother, right? I don't think that they understand the importance of the scale of the patrol and the scale of dealing with an individual scout.

So they don't, they don't tend to focus on them Now. At the same time, it would be a real shame to deny any boy who wanted to be a scout, membership in the troop of their choice, because we said an arbitrary number and said: Oh, you know, we've already got 32, 33 scouts- is not going to work. We've already got 40, 48 scouts- isn't going to work. We've already got 100, 120 isn't going to work.

Now, that's a very poor excuse for a boy not being able to become a scout. The door should always be open and we'll deal with whatever number we get.

Now, faced with the kind of growth that you project, I would say it's time to start discussing, innovating the way you do things, rather than telling boys that they can't join. And I don't think you're prepared to do that.

I think you're just trying to figure out: Hey, we're 40 now, And what happens when we get 20 other guys? So you have to ask yourself the question: are you focusing on what's important?

Do you have an effective patrol system that scales can go from five patrols to eight patrols without changing the experience for the scouts significantly? Do you have an emphasis on youth empowerment and youth leadership? Because, as I say all the time, the youth leaders are going to be the first stop in answering this question.

They're: you know, guys, we've got X number of scouts. Now We've got 20 more guys who want to join the troop.

I want to know what you think we ought to do, because they're going to have some ideas about how that should work. And scaling up is always a challenge And I have no doubt that it can be done. But how it is done and why you're doing it is what's important, And it's a challenging process And you may have to abandon some organizational imperatives. You mentioned that you have a trailer and maybe the trailer doesn't accommodate that many scouts.

Well, you know what. What's more important, right?

The trailer or the scouts? Well, that's an easy answer, And you may have to unsettle a number of assumptions and practices that you have in place right now to serve a bigger number of scouts.

But that's what's really important, isn't it? Now I'd need a closer understanding of what you're doing right now. To be more specific than that.

This is not so much telling you how to do things, as much as sharing the principles that affect your decisions, And those principles are: scouting has a scale. Baden Powell talked about it. He said it was 32..

I'm not going to necessarily agree or disagree with that, But the idea that hey, there is a point that we can pass. That begins to impinge on the experience of a scout, And Baden Powell was adamant about dealing with scouts on an individual basis and that they be an active autonomous patrols, because that's where the real aims of scouting are met. Those are the principles to apply Now.

We got to a point in our troop of several years ago where we were anticipating some really big growth. That didn't end up happening, But in anticipation of that we said: you know, when we hit this number, we need to seriously look at becoming two troops, because the way we do things is not going to scale up past this number And it's going to be more beneficial for the scouts that we're serving for us to be in two troops, And I just offer that as one possible plan.

And finally, let's remind ourselves that our organizational imperatives- you know they're not as important as the fact that we're serving anybody who wants to become a scout. That's what's really, really important. Jeff Willett is with Boy Scout Troop 527 in Ashboro, Pennsylvania, And he wrote in with this question. This is an interesting question, Jeff.

How long do you hold on to scout records? We have a file folder for each scout with all of their advancement records in it, as well as a physical form and whatever other paperwork that gets generated. I'm in a quandary of what to do with those files if a scout drops out or turns 18 or moves away.

Can you offer any thoughts about how long we ought to be retaining this information? Well, Jeff, all of the advancement records right should be duplicated in the national advancement database.

So what you're holding on to is redundant, but it's still worth holding on to. I suppose I can't imagine a really practical reason why the troop would need to keep them once a scout is either aged out or decided that he's not going to be in scouts anymore. And I can tell you we've done the same thing.

I think a lot of people do this. You have a file folder. It has the scout's name on it.

Any paper that gets generated goes into the file folder And after holding on to those file folders for many years and looking at them as we were cleaning out our stuff a couple of years ago, we said, look, do we have any reason to keep these? And we tried to remember any time we had needed those records to go back to and look at. We had a couple of file cabinet drawers full of them, We decided that it was safe to get rid of them.

And that's exactly what we did With sensitive personal information like physicals or something like that. We made sure that we shredded that. The rest of it just went into the recycling bin.

And now you know, we still maintain that file And you know, since we keep a lot of our stuff electronically, that file folder is not quite as important as it used to be. But if a scout leaves the troop, if he ages out, he drops out whatever we hand him the file folder and he can decide what to do with it.

So, Jeff, that's the best answer I have for you, But that works for us. I had this email. This was kind of an interesting email and it'll remain anonymous.

Can you do a podcast on following up on scouts and the quality of their leadership? Our scout manager will only listen to you and ignores us, And I'm not quite sure who us is, because this person didn't identify themselves by saying they were either a volunteer or a parent or whatever. Our troop and meetings are really suffering because our Scoutmaster believes that anything the scouts do, regardless of the quality of what they do, is acceptable. For example, we went on a trip and instead of the three safety stations we would normally have for this activity, there was just a five minute talk And I don't think that was anywhere near as thorough. Many scouts and parents are getting ready to leave this troop.

We want more accountability on what these youth leaders are doing. Well, from a distance and with only what you have told me, which is one side of the story, I wouldn't want to judge what's happening in your troop specifically as either being right or wrong. You said that the Scoutmaster only listens to me and ignores you.

Well, my guess is that he's heard you, So he's actually is listening, but it's likely he or she does not agree with your advice. I do know that if a Scoutmaster is empowering their youth leaders to make decisions and run their own program, there's always going to be some chaos and disorganization and some challenges, but that's to be accepted and even welcome. The quality of the kind of program that youth leaders put on is going to be all over the map, because they're learning to work together in an active process. I doubt many of their efforts would equal what adults are capable of doing, but that's really not the aim of our work in scouting. The aim is not presenting a slick adult run program to a group of boys, but helping young people discover how to do things for themselves, And it may be hard to see what's going on from where you sit.

So let me share this perspective that I find helpful personally, because somewhere all of us have a scribbly little bit of paper or a lopsided lump of clay that our child proudly presented to us. It's a little bit of artwork that they did and they gave to us with a big smile on their face.

And you know what? That scribbly bit of paper, that lump of clay?

It ain't the Mona Lisa, but it's priceless in the eyes of a parent, right? That's how I've learned to look at what my youth leaders do. It's usually a little rough around the edges and sometimes it's a total mess, but the value in it is not objective, It's subject. The value is that they're doing something for themselves. They are creating something for themselves by themselves.

Now, all that being said, scouts certainly need guidance when it comes to the safety and propriety of their activities, and a five minute talk Sounds about right for the safety of the activity you told me about, And three stations that take up 45 minutes sounds like a lot. It sounds like things went fine on the camping trip because I take it there were no injuries or accidents. They were successful in making sure that they kept their fellow scouts safe. They just didn't do it in a way that you particularly liked. If none of what I've written seems to help you, the only thing I can tell you is what I tell everybody else, and that is, if you're a parent or a volunteer and you're in a troupe with a Scoutmaster who's not meeting your expectations and you've made some suggestions or you've offered your help and they are not interested in that, then the best thing to do is to find another troupe where the Scoutmaster more closely meets your expectations, And that's. I'm not trying to be snide.

If you really aren't seeing eye to eye well, don't torture the Scoutmaster and don't torture yourself. Find another solution.

Okay, Patrick Albano is the Scoutmaster of troupe 152 in Jackson, New Jersey, And he wrote to say: I am the proud new Scoutmaster of a new troupe. All the info on your site has kept my troupe moving forward. My question is: with such a young troupe and really no older youth to lead, where do you draw the line as far as what adult volunteers are doing.

How can I keep the program fresh and exciting, especially in today's electronic world, And how can you put responsibility into the scout's hands without them being bored by it or considering it to be work? Well, Patrick, I hope I can be of assistance.

Congratulations on being a Scoutmaster, And I'm assuming you have a son and that they're old enough to have learned to ride a two-wheeler, And I want you to think about what happened during that process. What was your role to begin with in him learning how to ride a bike, and how did it evolve?

Now it's unlikely, but let's pretend your son never saw anybody ride a bike, So you'd first probably show him how to ride a bike yourself by getting on the bike and pedaling it for a little while and saying, Hey, see how it works. And you'd only stand the bike long enough for him to understand what it looked like to ride a bike.

When he was on the bike for the first time, where were you? You were probably nearby, holding on, giving some instructions and plenty of encouragement, And as he gained a little confidence, you walked alongside And then at some point you let go of the bike. He pedaled a little away and he fell over.

Now, when he fell over, hopefully you didn't get angry and take the bike away. You didn't berate your son's abilities and wish that he'd done better. You helped him up, patterned him on the back, dusted him off and said: Hey, let's try again, because you'll get it. Everybody falls down, but get back on the bike and let's try again. Some children learn to ride a bike in a few minutes. Some take a couple of hours and some take days and days of practice.

They all eventually get there, though, if whoever's showing them how to ride the bike is patient and kind and supportive. Patrick, you figured out where I was headed when I started talking about riding a bike, right? I don't have to explain this metaphor to you. This is exactly the way that you're going to begin to see your scouts, no matter what their age, take over the reins of leadership for their truth.

Now, the only thing that's different here, perhaps, is that you haven't- quote: ridden the bike, unquote. Right, You're learning about what it's like to be a Scoutmaster with empowered youth leaders at the same time as they are, So you're going to want to try and stay a few steps ahead of them. Get the principles of empowering youth leaders down in your mind and in the mind of the adults who are working with you, and things will go much better.

Now my assumption is is, like most people, you think that this youth leadership idea simply won't work because you haven't really seen it work before. I've seen it work over and over again and trust me, it will work. Age is not your problem. A 12 year old can be a great youth leader. He may not have all the capabilities he'll develop within a couple of years, but he can still surprise you. Don't worry about their age.

Work with what they can do rather than with what they can. Now you asked about how do you get youth leaders to take on responsibilities without them getting bored by it or feeling like it's work.

Well, there's work in scouting, but don't ever tell the scouts that it's work, because they're looking at it just fun. And even when it's challenging, they're looking at it as having fun. And if you keep the right spirit about it and you encourage them and you're always patient and you work hard to empower them to lead, they're always going to look at it as being fun.

So let's go back to the bike for a moment. You put your son on the bike. You told him a few helpful things and he started pedaling right Before you put him on the bike. You didn't sit him down with a lecture on physics or get out a PowerPoint presentation on the parts of a bike.

So don't do either of those things to your youth leaders. Don't tell them much of anything And, for having sakes, don't try to train them. Just ask them questions and give them some resources and help them find their own answers.

Get a copy of the senior patrol leaders handbook, put it on the table at your next patrol leaders council meeting and start asking questions like: hey, how does the scout troop work? How does this actually happen? I'm pretty new to this and I'm interested in what you think.

How do we make up patrols? How should we do that?

Can you tell me, like step one, two, three, how we should do that? How do we decide who's going to be a patrol leader?

You know, and if you keep asking these questions, one of the scouts around that table is going to get the idea and look in the book and then you're off to the races And once they start finding answers and discovering how that process works, good luck keeping up. Okay, And there was another question. You asked about keeping things fresh and exciting.

And you know, listen, if your scouts are leading their troop, it's not too likely you'll ever have to worry about jazzing up the program or keeping it fresh or making it exciting. They will know how to do that better than you. Hand them everything that they can take on and be relentlessly encouraging. Accelerate every small victory. Minimize failures. Listen to them very carefully.

Don't tell them much. Let them have the joy of doing this for themselves. After I sent that answer to Patrick, he wrote back.

He said: thanks so much. That helps significantly. I really was looking for some reassurance I wasn't doing too much or too little. Keep up the awesome work. It's calming to know that I'm not alone and it's great to get answers based on solid experience.

Well, Patrick, thank you for those kind words And I was happy to try and help you answer those questions. And if you have a question, like Patrick or the other folks that have written in this week, you can get in touch with me and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.