Scoutmaster Podcast 272

Hi, I'm John Webkey and I'm a Scoutmaster with 2.358 in Signsville, Indiana. This edition of the Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now for you, Scoutmaster. So we're out camping. Last weekend, Friday night, Scouts are setting up. One of my brand new, newly trained Scouters comes up to me.

He's holding a two liter bottle of soda in one hand and a shell in the other And he asks: do you think a foot is deep enough? And I look at him. I have no idea what he's talking about. And I said deep enough for what He said.

For the soda, of course, I figured, you know, burying it a foot deep was enough. Once again, I'm looking at him. I have no idea what you mean.

He said: well, you know, I just got done with training and they said at every overnight activity we have to have two liters deep. Is a foot deep enough? I kind of like that one. Your mileage may vary, but the creditor Blaine goes to Steve Jackson from Venture Crew 84 in Rollin, Missouri. Thanks, Steve.

Hey, this is podcast number 272.. Hey, Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clark Greene. Let's see here. Hey, it's June And I know like a lot of you are headed off to summer camp, or just got back from summer camp, or are at summer camp right now.

So you know, hey, let's, let's take it easy, Let's have an easy breezy podcast today. What do you say?

Well, first we'll start out by looking in the mailbag. I got this message from Dominic Carrigliano. He said: discovered your podcast just yesterday and I enjoy listening to them. I'm a little behind. I've only gotten up to number 13..

Well, that's pretty good in a day. Dominic, You need to go outside. Anyway, Dominic goes on to say: I was scouting for 32 years in New York. We moved to Florida.

After a number of years of being uninvolved, My wife encouraged me to get back involved, So I found a troupe, I'm a committee member and I'm pushing 61. So I'm not quite as active as I used to be. But your podcast reminded me of old scouting ways of the 1960s to the 1990s. And my wife has told our new scouts that I went to camp with Baden Powell.

So I show them a picture of Baden Powell. I tell him he was my bunk buddy at camp. But anyway, it's going to be a while before I catch up on the recent podcast, but thanks for rattling my memory once again.

Well, thank you, Dominic. It's always good to hear from folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast Heard from Steve Jackson, who I told you before. He's with Venture Crew 84 in Roland, Missouri, and he contributed the quote- joke unquote- that you heard just a minute ago.

So, like I said, you know credit or blame goes to Steve, But he had this to say. I've downloaded every episode of the podcast and started all the way back with episode number one. On a recent trip I became a member of the Centurion Club. In other words, I've listened to your first 100 podcasts.

So, yeah, the Centurion Club. I don't remember ever saying that there was a club, but that sounds good.

Steve, I think that's a good idea. If you want to be a member of the Centurion Club, get in touch with Steve.

There are so many great tips and resources on the podcast. It kind of got to be an expensive trip for me. I stopped at every scout shop that I could find to see if they carried the books that you and your guests talked about. I picked up the AMC Guide to Outdoor Leadership by Alex Kosoff, BP, The Two Lives of a Hero by Greenbar Bill and a lot of Council's shoulder patches. Yeah, it's dangerous to stop into too many scout shops there.

Steve, You know that now. Since I couldn't find Working the Patrol Method, I did order it online. Thank you for the tremendous resources and for all the great podcasts. Looking forward to listening to the other 172..

Well, good for you, Steve. Thanks for getting in touch. Thanks for the joke And I'm glad I can keep you entertained while you're out there driving around.

We have a couple live chat sessions this week, as we are want to do on weekday mornings. If you keep an eye on our Facebook feed and our Twitter feed, you will see when we're going to be on live at scoutmasterscgcom with a chat. I heard from Philip, who is in Houston, Texas, and he's a new transplant from the UK, just relocated to Houston. He's looking for an opportunity to get back and re-involved with scouts.

So if you're in Houston and you'd like Philip to come and give you a hand, get in touch with me and I'll make sure that he gets a message. I also heard from Eric, who is an assistant scoutmaster for Troop 33 in Laurel, Maryland, and there were tons of other folks who've been on the podcast before and I've called their names on past podcasts and we call them frequent flyers, So you know who you are. Thanks for being on the live chat with me this past week. Before I go any further, I'm going to ask you a simple favor. I need you to do something for me. If you're a regular reader and listener and if the resources that I've created have helped you and you haven't already, I'm asking you to return the favor by becoming a ScoutmasterCGcom backer.

The funds that I get from backers go to cover the expenses of producing and publishing everything at ScoutmasterCGcom, including what you're listening to right now. So go to ScoutmasterCGcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you can choose from a number of options to help support this work. We like to keep it free. We like everybody to be able to get everything that we create, and we do that through the backer program.

I want to take a moment to personally thank Robert Steele and John Booth, who became backers since our last podcast. Once again, go to ScoutmasterCGcom, become a backer this week and I'll make sure to thank you during our next podcast. Like I said a bit ago, it's an easy, breezy summertime- Everybody's at Summer Camp podcast.

So the remainder of the podcast is going to be taken up with some email questions that I've received over the past week and that's going to about do it. So let's get started, shall we? Scouts music, Scouts music, Scouts music, Scouts music, Scouts music, Scouts music, Scouts music. We think it's a salute. Oh, there's no doubt about it. When I drop my mask, we've been shot.

And talking to the uniform. Cause, baby, I was born to be a scout. Cause baby, I was born to be a. Here comes the Scoutmaster. Drive a drive to Scoutville a little faster. Stick on the gas.

Are we there yet? I want to build a bridge for my ego. I need a letter. Send it by name

Email. That is, folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. Hey, Bill Chapman is the Scoutmaster of Troop 736 in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. He said we seem to have a perennial problem with rowdy troop meetings. It's kind of like it was the best of times and the worst of times scenario. For example, at a recent troop meeting there was no pre-opening plan. The Scouts did their opening as usual and skill instruction was really just the senior patrol leader talking to Scouts about how to succeed a camp for about 15 minutes.

It would have taken him five minutes to do, but he had to continually stop and wait while everybody quit talking. The patrol meetings that evening were actually focused on one really rowdy patrol and our other two patrols just kind of floundered because there wasn't any plan for anything. Right after the troop meeting, the patrol leaders council met for about a half hour and they enthusiastically addressed problems like rowdiness, which is a frequent topic of discussion at our patrol leaders council meetings. At times I thought the whole evening was a total disaster. The Scouts are all talking and yelling at once. There's no respect given to the senior patrol leader.

I wanted to jump in and say stop the noise and chaos, but I knew that that might just make things worse. And after that evening a committee member said that they have actually visited other troops that are really well behaved and said something like: you know, we need to learn how to do that.

As I drove home I thought about it and I have to question whether or not the troops that are really well behaved are actually youth led or not. I know adults think that Scouts ought to sit and behave and listen attentively, but I don't know if that's the way boys naturally behave if they're running things.

Can you train youth leaders to get the troop to be revered and respectful, or is that just not in the carts? Does it come with practice in patients, or am I just wishing for something that I don't want?

Well, Bill, you know this is one of the things that I could talk about on every podcast, and in one way or another, I guess that I do, but a lot of this is a trick of perspective. I think we need to remember that Scouts simply do not see and experience things as adults because they're not adults.

And I know that sounds very simple and pedantic and I don't mean it to sound snide or cynical, but you know, that's the one thing that I have to remind myself of all the time. My Scouts don't experience the world as adults because they're not Pretty simple, huh.

So, Bill, there's a couple of things that tell me maybe this doesn't need to be fixed. And to get an idea whether or not it does need to be fixed, talk to your youth leadership and a few younger Scouts, you know, and give them some big, open-ended questions like: how did the meeting go?

What do you think of tonight's meeting? How did things go for you?

And just see what they have to say, because if they have something that's bothering them, they're going to tell you and then you have something to work with. But the standard response usually is: yeah, it was fun, you know, and that's about it. From a Scout that's a thumbs up right, And they might not be able to explain why it was fun, but they had a good time. Maybe they learned a few things, but they got to do the work of Scouting because they were there with their patrol, with their troop.

So ask those questions. Don't try and tell them anything. Don't tell them the way you feel or what you saw. Ask them what they experienced. Then you'll have an idea if there's anything really to fix. But, like I said, there's a couple of things that indicate to me that there's nothing necessarily that you need to fix here.

You had a bunch of Scouts at a meeting- That indicates that they want to be there, And you had your patrol leaders council get together and they spent a half hour enthusiastically- your word- discussing things. That sounds like a big win to me, And I'm not saying we shouldn't have high expectations of our Scouts, but what you explained to me, I think, is to be expected. It's a little chaotic, It's very loud. Scouts are not necessarily very respectful of their peers when their peers are standing up and talking And when they're in a big herd like that. They're almost never going to become highly organized and efficient at a troop level or in the big herd like that, because the troop isn't really all that important. Everything important happens in the patrol.

Patrols do get things done and they are loud and messy at doing them. Sometimes it doesn't look like much. You do have to look hard at what goes on to see what is happening. But if you train your eye and you train your perspective you get pretty good at seeing the positive things that are going on.

And you know you're right. Ideally, from an adult perspective, we would like to see the Scouts sitting with their hands folded neatly in their laps, respectfully listening to the senior patrol leader, like a garden club listening to someone telling them how to prune their roses.

But that would be very strange because you know for the most part people the age of our Scouts. They're boisterous and rowdy and they want to talk at the same time And you know they're going to figure this out and the senior patrol leader is going to get the message across. But it's not going to be nice and neat like a garden club meeting.

And the other thing is we can't see what they're like when we aren't watching, because there's an observer effect. Your Scouts are just like you when you were a kid and that can be a comforting or terrifying thought depending on how you- what you were like as a kid.

So let's face it, we were all kids once. It was a long time ago.

But you know what? Basically, things haven't changed all that much.

We knew how to appear, to pay attention, to be polite and respectful, even when we weren't, When we were just kind of hanging out with our friends. We did not act like adults because we weren't adults, We were just kids. Our Scouts spend a huge percentage of their lives sitting and paying attention respectfully. They're capable of doing it and they get to practice doing that for hours and hours every day at school. It would be a shame if they didn't have an opportunity, like Scouting, to do something a little bit different, To get into the maelstrom and the chaos and the noise of doing an activity that isn't administered by adults but is led by their peers And that's always going to be exciting and engaging and fun for Scouts. It's going to look like chaos to us, But the thing to do is to begin to train your eye and adopt a perspective where you can see Scouting at work even in the midst of all that.

I got this question this past week and, of course, due to the nature of the question it's, the center will remain anonymous. We discovered recently that we had made a mistake, crediting a Scout with a position of responsibility that didn't actually qualify for the rank. Somehow we missed this, both at the Scoutmaster Conference and the Board of Review, and went on to award the rank to the Scout. We discovered the mistake after that.

Now what do we do? Before I tell you what to do or what not to do, let me tell you something that I know almost for a dead certainty.

Okay, Of all the people listening to this podcast, when they heard that you made a mistake by crediting a Scout in a position of responsibility that didn't actually qualify for the rank, they nodded their heads and they said, yep, been there before. They probably have made a similar type of mistake.

So, most important thing, you made a mistake. You're not alone. This happens from time to time.

So you discover you've made a mistake in advancing a Scout like this, and now what do you do? Well, the golden rule here, according to me, is avoiding penalizing Scouts for the mistakes of adults.

There was nothing about what happened that was within the Scout's control, so the Scout should not be affected by the mistake that an adult made. And what do you do next?

Well, I don't know that. I would necessarily even tell the Scout a mistake was made and I certainly wouldn't penalize him for the mistake that I made in any way, shape or form. This is a different story if somebody was willfully or knowingly trying to skirt a requirement. But that's not the case here. It was a simple error.

But this is a really good opportunity to sit down with the adults involved and say: look, you know what, make sure that that doesn't happen again. And that's the way I would handle it.

I'm sure there would be differing opinions as to why I would do that, but the concept of not penalizing Scouts for the mistakes adults make- I think if you go to the Guide to Advancement and you read ready, Here we go- 7.0.4.7,, which is entitled The Limited Recourse for Unearned Merit Badges, You get the spirit of what I'm saying. Let's not penalize Scouts for our mistakes. As with anything, policy, procedure, advancement wise- what you're hearing is my best advice, based on my experience and my understanding. Go to the resources, talk to people, make sure that you get it right. Don't just take my word for anything. Get it sorted out for yourself too.

And I did hear back from the folks that sent me the email and they said thanks for the advice. We were able to work with our advancement committee and we agreed that the Scouts shouldn't be penalized.

So we're moving forward, and that was great to hear. So I have one other email this week from Danny, who's the Scoutmaster Troop 41, and he wrote in to say what happens to Scouts who quote eagle out, unquote, the ones who can't wait to get their eagle and run.

If a Scoutmaster knows this is about to happen, what can he do? I mean, we do want the rank of eagle to mean something besides its time to go, And it means a lot to us as adults.

So why don't Scouts seem to get it? We just had the first guy advance to Eagle since I've been Scoutmaster And I don't really know if there's a question in here that can be answered, but it's been on my mind for a few weeks.

Well, Dan, I understand the feeling, because we all want the rank of eagle to mean something, And I think that causes us to get a little overheated sometimes and talk about: oh, this is really, really meaningful and you really need to pay attention to it and you really need to understand what's going on. And we really want Eagle Scouts to act certain ways and hold certain attitudes.

We really want to hand them that badge and have a total transformation happen in their lives, because we want the rank of eagle to mean something. And I know exactly how you feel, Dan, because I got befuzzled by this for a long time. I wanted to see something more from my Eagle Scouts. Basically, I really wanted them to act like adults and to understand what I felt and what I understood. But I got over it because I came to understand two basic things. There's only one standard for becoming an Eagle Scout and that's the requirements.

Getting the requirements for Eagle done is challenging, but it's fairly simple and straightforward. There is no continuing qualification for being an Eagle Scout once you've completed the requirements.

And the second thing that helped me get over this was understanding that anybody who becomes an Eagle Scout once they get the badge, they spend the rest of their lives becoming an Eagle Scout- Our Scouts who earn Eagle and their teenagers. They haven't really finished anything but a set of requirements. They're really just beginning. The important thing to realize is that once a Scout earns Eagle rank, he begins the lifelong process of becoming an Eagle Scout. Rather than trying to make them understand something or projecting obligations on them, ask them about what they already understand. See what they have been thinking about, And it may surprise you.

I learned that I would always be disappointed in Eagle Scouts if I think that the award comes with a bunch of strings attached, because it doesn't, and that's a good thing. Eagle Scouts get to live their own lives. Very few Scout-age boys think like mature adults, because they aren't. They have, hopefully, a long life ahead of them to figure things out, just like you had and just like I had.

If we've done our work well as Scouters, if they did, to become an Eagle Scout, we'll inspire them to go on and become good people. So I'm going to get up on my soapbox for a moment, please.

And, Danny, this isn't intended for you, This is for everybody, and I don't think you're an old groany complaining guy, but you brought this subject up, so I want to preach for a moment Now listen, this whole thing about quote eagling out. Unquote is just another one of these stupid little phrases that somebody started using ages ago and has perpetuated itself and gives old people like me something to sit and grumble about while we're at a picnic table at summer camp.

Well, you know, they just eagle out These boys just anymore. They get the eagle badge and then they leave and Look, I've been around Scouting now for about 35 years as an adult. 35 years ago people were saying that.

60 years ago people were saying that Let's get over ourselves here, So let's stop using stupid terms like that and let's talk to our Scouts on an individual basis and find out what they understand. You're going to be surprised by what they understand. They understand a lot.

And if you sit around and complain and grouse about your Scouts, well they're not going to talk to you, because really, who wants to talk to a person like that? Okay, back down off of the soapbox. And once again, Danny, that wasn't intended for you, But I did hear back from Danny.

He said: you know what I think I get it. The badge is really just a beginning. It's a springboard. It's the start of a lifelong process And I've never liked the term eagle doubt.

And Danny says I think it diminishes the Scout in the award And maybe they're just kids, Maybe they're just boys trying to become men and they have to figure it out as they go. I think you're right, Dan.

I think that's the key right Is understanding that anything that we hand a boy in the way of an award is a beginning. They're not fully cooked yet And once you've had the benefit- as I have- of watching them grow up and become adults, you get to understand that the influences that they had in Scouting remain important to them and have helped shape them into the people that they become.

You may not see it when they're 15 or 16 as clearly as you would like, but hey, hang on, talk to them, ask them what they understand and then watch as they become adults. You'll see that understanding demonstrated.

Wow, deep subjects, huh? Hey, listen. If you have a comment or a question for me, you can get in touch. It's pretty easy to do And you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.