Scoutmaster Podcast 282

I'm Owen Wilson and I'm a Scoutmaster with troop number 868 in Peoria, Arizona. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by Backers Like Me.

And now for you, Scoutmaster. The Buffalo family was seeing their son off to Scout Camp and Dad Buffalo patted him on the back and said: bison by bison, bison.

Okay, Wow, That was a reach, But we're known for that. And the Groners just keep on. Coming from Bill McFarland, who's a Scoutmaster up there in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, And I'll put you in touch with him if you'd like to comment.

Hey, this is podcast number 282.. Hey, Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green.

We had a lot of encore podcasts this summer so I'm still catching up. Here's some messages that have been in the mail bag for a while, but let's get them caught up here. Mac Barron is with Cub Scout Pack and Boy Scout Troop 75 in Swainsboro, Georgia And he said: I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed your blog and podcasts over the past year.

I enjoyed it so much I became a backer and I got a few of your books which are currently being passed around with my assistant Scoutmasters. My wife and I also have our own podcast we've produced for the last eight years called Catholic in a Small Town.

Well, thanks, Mac. I certainly appreciate that And I'll tell you. If you have a chance and an interest, you check out the podcast that Mac and his wife do. It's great, Great job. I'll put a link in the post that contains this podcast.

So in last week's podcast we talked about being a parent and a scouter. In answer to an email question that I received And Orin Noah had this comment.

He said: My proudest moment as a Scoutmaster was when, after a service project, the last scout was being picked up by his mom And I asked my son to get in the truck and the scout was kind of confused and worried And he asked my son his patrol leader: How do you know the Scoutmaster? He's my father. My son replied And the scout said really He'd been in the troop for at least a year and never noticed that his patrol leader was the Scoutmaster's son.

So I figure I did a pretty good job of being Scoutmaster and not dad. That's a great reflection on the job that you did, Orin, And good for you. Heard from Eric Fletcher, who is with Scout Troop 309 in Orange Ohio, Said I love the site and I'm finding many useful topics to train our youth leaders, And I appreciate your 15-minute patrol leader training.

Well thanks, Eric, I'm glad you're finding things useful. We had a couple of quieter chat sessions this week. We heard from William Schmidt, who's a Scoutmaster in Cary, North Carolina, and Michael McCormick, who is with Troop 48 in Berlin, New Jersey.

So a couple of little bits of business before we go too much farther. Summer is drawing to a close, It's the last day of August And now is the time to start thinking about summer 2016- if you haven't started thinking about it already- And I want to share an opportunity, just an incredible experience, And I want to invite you to join me next summer in spending a week at the International Scout Center in Condorsteg, Switzerland. The Scout Center has been there for 70 years And every summer, thousands of Scouts travel to Condorsteg from all over the world to enjoy adventure in the Alps, in this wonderful, world-class destination, and experience the world's fellowship of Scouting Condorsteg's in the Bernese Oberland, which is just an amazing, amazing place, And the number of places to visit and activities to pursue are almost unlimited.

If you want an idea of what we do when we go to Condorsteg and how you can join us. Go to scoutmastercgcom.

Right there at the top of the page is a big old picture And that's Link where you can sign up with your email address so that I can contact you with details about how to make all this happen. You know, for a long time I kind of watched other people do these types of trips and do the high-adventure trips and things like that And I always thought, wow, it's way too expensive.

And I'm really, you know boy, would I really want to take a group of Scouts overseas. That sounds really difficult to do. But listen, the way you end up getting to take your Scouts for this kind of once-in-a-lifetime experience is actually pretty simple. It starts very easily by somebody saying, hey, let's go.

And I want you to be that person and say, hey, you know, let's go and do this and get the ball rolling and make it happen. And if you want to come to Condorsteg with us next summer, that's fantastic. But honestly, it really doesn't matter where you go. You may drive two hours to a national park and go backpacking for a week. You may do what we do in some years and go up to Canada and go canoeing for a week You may go to the one of the high-adventure bases or something like that. It doesn't really matter to me.

To tell you the truth, What really matters is that somebody says, hey, let's go, Let's actually do this, Let's make it happen. So, once again, go to scoutmastercgcom. Look at the top of the page. There's a big picture right there of Condorsteg. Click on that and get some information about this and come and join me in 2016.. And I need to ask you to do one other thing for me.

If you're a regular reader and listener and the resources that we've created have helped you, I'm asking you to return the favor by becoming a scoutmastercgcom backer. It's pretty simple: Go to scoutmastercgcom, Click the support link at the top of the page. You'll find out how you can financially support this work, and the funds that we get from backers go to cover all the expenses of producing and publishing everything you see at scoutmastercgcom, including to the podcast that you're listening to right now. Once again, very easy to do: Go to scoutmastercgcom, Click the support link at the top of the page.

And I want to thank Owen Wilson, who became a backer since our last podcast. So become a backer this week and I'll make sure to thank you personally during our next podcast This week. We're still in catch-up mode. I've got some 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. I heard from Darrell Oakley, who's an assistant scoutmaster with Troop 132 and Upton, Massachusetts, And he said: in past podcasts you've talked about how our weekly meetings work towards outings and the general way that this all works together. I'm interested in when and where the patrol leaders council meets. I know that you spoke about them meeting the first troop meeting night after an outing weekend. I'm curious to know what happens to the rest of the troop that's not part of the patrol leaders council On those nights. The new BSA troop leader guidebook suggests that when the patrol leaders council meets, scouts not in the patrol leaders council have a chance to catch up on advance advancement work.

So who do you think would be facilitating that advancement work? We have several older scouts who are not on the patrol leaders council and this seems to be a perfect job for them.

Or is this a time when it's appropriate to have assistant scoutmasters more involved with advancement? Well, Darrell, thanks for that question and there's some good questions there, but I'm going to push you around a little bit, okay, Because I want you to find answers a little differently than me just laying out a procedure for you. My habit is to ask what we're doing and why we're doing it over and over and over again from a scouts perspective. I asked that of myself, I asked that of my fellow adult volunteers and I asked that of my patrol leaders council.

It's really simple to get ourselves distracted by policy and procedure and their own motives, right? What we often do is we often forget to kind of keep it simple and we get distracted by policy and procedure and the motives that they intend. But all we really need to do is is to look at this from a scouts perspective and help them get stuff done.

Now, if you think of these things in terms of that basic perspective, what we do begins to make sense. So you mentioned, as I've repeated in the past, the reason that we're having weekly meetings is to get camping right, And the reason that we go camping is because that's something that scouts do, and when scouts go camping, they do all kinds of stuff, including things that satisfy advancement requirements.

So we're never really saying, oh, it's advancement time, We're always advancing, We're always working on something, because we're always doing what scouts do. And that's maybe a little bit of a different approach than saying, oh, we're going to put this time aside to do just advancement type stuff and to catch everybody up.

So from that perspective, how would you answer your own question? And Daryl got back to me and said: well, if I were to answer my own question I would probably repeat exactly what the senior patrol leader told me said: you know, while we're having our patrol leaders council meeting, let's have some of the older scouts who aren't in the patrol leaders council help the younger scouts, And that makes sense to me. But I was really generally interested in hearing what your troop did when the patrol leaders council met. Making these kinds of changes causes heartburn, mostly for the adults. Adults do get heartburn, but it's not necessarily about the changes. It's about kind of the frustration built into the process and I'll explain what that means Why.

Your question is pretty simple And I will. I will in a moment just tell you exactly what we do procedurally. My answer really is not about how things happen or the procedure that we follow as why they happen the way that they do.

So first of all let me explain how we did things. The procedure And again I'll mention the process behind deciding on how we do things is more important, but more about that later.

So procedurally right, our patrol leaders council meets before and after each weekly meeting for a few minutes and once a month for a longer session in the place of a troop meeting. So we don't have a troop meeting on that troop meeting night, We have a patrol leaders council meeting.

So when the patrol leaders council meets it's just them and nobody else. So the Scoutmaster and that is only the Scoutmaster.

So no committee members, no assistant Scoutmasters. He's the only adult who attends the patrol leaders council meeting and listens quietly most of the time, only speaking when spoken to with a couple of minutes for their thoughts and reflections.

At the end Darren wrote back and he said: well, I like the patrol leaders council meeting. During the first troop meeting night after a camp out I talked with this about it with our senior patrol there and Scoutmaster, but you still haven't told me what scouts who aren't involved with the patrol leaders council do that evening.

I think some troops have boards of review that night, so it doesn't interfere with regular troop meetings the rest of the month. Well, Darren, yes, When the patrol leader council meets, okay, it's not a troop meeting at all, It's a patrol leaders council meeting. It's held the same night as a troop meeting after the weekend camp out. We do have boards of review and Scoutmaster conferences. I mean, they're available if scouts need them. Our troop quarter master will take the time to work with his patrol quarter masters to check in all the gear that was used during the camping trip on that evening.

And scouts who aren't otherwise involved with any of those activities don't show up on that night. They just don't come to that meeting.

Now I think the idea that older scouts could catch up on advancement where the younger scouts has some merit, okay, It's not a bad idea objectively. But it begs a number of questions that the Scoutmaster can ask the patrol leaders council, And this furthers what I'm trying to communicate, which is process rather than procedurally oriented.

So what would the Scoutmaster ask if the patrol leaders council suggested, hey, let's have all the scouts come and work on advancement with the older scouts? Well, what I would ask is: if the older scouts are there to help younger scouts, what are they working on specifically And who plans and decides what they'll be doing?

And not only who plans and decides that, but how will they be planning and carrying out that aspect of that particular night? Do the older scouts have a current position of responsibility at all?

Do they need one to advance? Are they going to be asked or assigned to carry out this idea?

Has anybody asked them if they even want to do it? And what happens if we just have a general invitation, all the scouts show up and a few of them have no advancement to catch up on?

And why are we doing advancement in a separate thing like this instead of as part of our regular program? Does that mean that we need to be paying more attention to advancement in the regular program, Or are we already adequately addressing that?

So that's a lot of questions And I can tell you what we do in our troop. But the point isn't really how we do things, but why we ended up doing them right And the engagement of the youth leadership in making those things happen.

So that list of questions that I would ask, if the senior patrol leader suggested this as an idea. We'll have some answers and those answers will provide me with the opportunity to ask more questions, And it's really kind of an endless cycle of questions and answers, and then more questions and more answers until they go through that process and they begin to develop an idea of how they're going to accomplish whatever it is that we're talking about.

So we aren't looking for the answer right In a set of procedures or policies or practices that we can adopt that somebody else did. What we're looking for is engaging our scouts in a process of finding their answers, And if that answer turned out to look exactly like what I do, well, you know, maybe that means that I'm very smart or just that you know, we had a case where people arrived at the same conclusions. The process involved in arriving at our decisions with the patrol leaders council is really more important than the decisions themselves, because procedures and practices and policies- they change all the time and they really aren't all that important. The process of how you develop a practice or a procedure is where all of the growth and development happens for our scouts and the aim of our work.

So Darren asked me a pretty simple question: How do you run these meetings. Okay, my answer was: well, it's not really important about how I run these meetings. What's important is the basic logic behind what we're up to right, Which is scouts join scouting to do the things that scouts do, which is to go camping with their buddies. And when they go camping with their buddies, they got to do all this stuff.

They have to build fires and set up tents and decide on campsites, and what does that sound like? Well, those are advancement requirements, right?

So we're doing those in the natural course of the activities that we're pursuing, and so it kind of begs the question for me: why do you have to have a separate time for advancement? This should be happening right As we're doing things, and I can understand having some time set aside- especially if it's a larger troop- for older scouts to sit down and to sign requirements off for younger scouts or something like that.

But again, you know, my question would be: well, why isn't this happening just in the natural course of what we're doing? But I repeat myself again, the most important thing is engaging our youth leadership in this process of looking at the basic logic of scouting, answering a lot of questions and to beginning to develop their own resolutions and answers and procedures and practices, because that's really the work that we're aimed at. That's really what develops character and leadership and responsibility in our scouts.

So I hope that's not too confusing. Scouting is not easy to get sometimes, because it's all about what we're really aimed at and not necessarily the practices and procedures we use to get there. Once you understand the aim, once you understand what's really important, then all the other pieces fall into place pretty naturally. I heard from Ty Williams in Clarkston, Washington.

Clarkston- What a lovely name for a town, Wouldn't you say? Huh. Anyway, Ty wrote in to ask me this question. He says I'm going to be Scoutmaster for a young troop and really we're working with the charter organization to get the troop up and running again. It's been dormant for a while. We'll have six youth when the charter is signed.

Five of them will be Weebelow's crossovers. So how do we adult volunteers guide these youth in the patrol method when they're so young? I do have one scout that is 17 who's volunteered to participate with the troop as a senior scout and help out.

Well, Ty, it sounds like you have a great thing going and it may seem small and the scouts may seem young. But these are not barriers, These are your strengths.

Okay, And you're going to give them a wonderful experience because with that many guys, you have a patrol, So there's no need for a senior patrol leader or patrol leaders council or anything like that. Don't get distracted by those things. If I was in your shoes, what I would do is I would sit down with that older scout and tell him he's going to be the patrol leader for the next three months and that he has these three goals. The first is to plan and execute three monthly activities, with at least two of them being camping overnight.

You know, accepting that you're getting up and getting moving and getting rolling, I think getting two campouts in in the next three or four months is a pretty good goal. So to prepare for those activities, he'll need to do some planning right And he'll need to plan the patrol meetings that you're going to have every week to train and prepare his scouts to go camping and to do whatever they've planned.

So the second goal is, in three months' time he'll have trained all of his scouts to take over his job as patrol leader and they'll have an election and they'll choose the next patrol leader. And the third goal is that he'll get all his scouts to advance at least one rank in those three months.

Now, from there, you can open up a conversation that's going to go on while he's the patrol leader, right, He can start telling you what he'll need from you. You'll make it a point to discuss how things are going often and you'll be there if he has any questions. But you'll begin asking questions.

So how are you going to make these goals work? What are your three monthly activities?

What do your meeting plans look like? Do you need help putting those together?

How are your scouts doing on advancement? What do you need to do with them?

Is that part of your activity plan? Is that part of your meeting plan?

How are you going to get all these guys to scout rank or to tender foot within this next three months? So it sounds like a big challenge and it is, but keep an open dialogue and you're going to be amazed at how things go. If you have an older scout who's really interested in doing this- and having that amount of responsibility seems to motivate him- you're good to go and I'll be really interested to hear how things happen. Here's an anonymous question: Is there an official BSA policy on asking registered adults to leave the troop.

Hmm, we have a pair of parents who continue to attend troop meetings and committee meetings after their sons have moved on, They've graduated from high school and they've gone on to college, and neither of these people have any position in the troop and they intend to be disruptive and divisive and difficult. How do we get them out of our hair?

Well, there's no official policy or procedure I've ever found that outlines exactly how to do this. It's a pretty simple thing to do, though.

Now I will say this: it's a pretty rare thing that we need to ask somebody to step away from a volunteer position, but these folks don't have a position. I guess they're just staying registered with the troop for one reason or another. But if they're being disruptive and difficult, you can try and play nice and you can try and talk to them and you can try to resolve things, but sometimes that just doesn't work.

So what do you do next? Well, the chartered organization representative and the committee chairman put their heads together and they send a letter- and this is a real paper snail mail letter in an envelope, right, And they can hand deliver a copy. They can put it in the mail however they want to handle it. But it's a real letter, not an email, and I'll talk about that in a second.

So the letter states very clearly that these folks are not allowed to attend meetings, committee meetings or any function of the unit, and in this letter you don't have to state causes. This is not like firing an employee or you're telling a volunteer that their involvement is no longer necessary.

So let me give you an idea of what I would put in a letter like that. It would be: you know, Dear Mr and Mrs X, as representative of the chartering organization of our troop, this letter serves as notification that you are not to attend any function or meetings of the troop in any capacity. I'm taking this action on behalf of our chartering organization after receiving complaints about undue interference with the troops volunteers. This decision is final. There will be no further discussion.

Now that all sounds really harsh and mean, but if you've worked to try and resolve this and they're not working along with you, they're not really going to take a hint. You have to spell this out pretty carefully and it's almost certain you aren't going to win them over with kindness.

I want to reiterate: don't email this notice, because email takes on a life of its own. The best course is to either mail the letter or hand deliver it, and hand delivery, I think, would probably be the option that I would take now. There'll likely be a reaction, and it may be a very ugly reaction, but there is no recourse through the council or the district because charter organizations have the absolute authority to choose who volunteers and to fire volunteers at any time, for cause or no cause at all.

Now your scout executive and your district executive would probably appreciate a copy of the letter, but you don't really need their approval or permission as long as you have the permission and approval of the charter organization to take this course of action. Nobody likes situations like this. They come up from time to time.

Thankfully, they're not very common, and because they're so uncommon, we sometimes aren't quite sure what to do, and I offer my advice. I have never been able to find a specific policy statement or procedure about how to get rid of a volunteer, and my advice is premised on the assumption that you've already talked this around and you tried to resolve this with them and it just ain't gonna work okay.

So if you know of policies or procedures that do affect this and would shed some light on the question. Please do get in touch with me. While we're talking about difficult stuff, here's an email that came to me from a youth member and I'll mention very quickly. I'm happy to receive communication from youth members. I always tell them to please include a parent in any future emails. I follow the BSA policy of always making sure there's somebody else- and preferably that's the child's parent- is a party to the conversation I'm gonna have via email with a youth member.

But anyway, let's get back to this question. We have a scout in our troop who has probably some mental health issues and he's usually a very good scout, but sometimes he'll kind of go off on either me or my father, the Scoutmaster.

We have a true policy that I've written and submitted to the patrol leaders council, as I am a patrol leader. This policy has discussed behavioral issues such as scouts breaking the scout oath and law. I sure do not hope that we will have to ask this scout to leave, but I also don't want him to physically harm anybody. You really don't need a policy or a set of rules because you already have them and this is the scout oath and law. You do not want or need anything else, and I'll explain why. In my answer, I also want to make sure that it's understood that I do not think it is a good idea for youth leaders to try and manage difficult behavior on their own.

This is why adults volunteer for scouting to help you handle these types of things. This is one for the adults.

Okay, so let's just talk about misbehavior in general. Scout misbehaves causes a problem.

The next step is: is he's going to sit down and talk to the Scoutmaster? The Scoutmaster is going to discuss this with him and hopefully arrive at a resolution, and that's what will happen nine out of ten times. Maybe somebody got angry, maybe somebody got out of line or went off, like you said, and they need to make some apologies, patch things up, and it's very easy to do that way.

I want to add right here for the adult scouters who are listening in: let's remember, as scouters we don't ever use corrective punishment. Sometimes there's proportionate consequences to an action. If they made a mess or they broke something, they have to clean up the mess or fix something. Maybe they have to apologize to somebody. But we never use punishment and we especially never allow our youth leaders to use any kind of punishment whatsoever. We do not punish.

That is a parent's job. Back to what I was saying: if there is an instance of misbehavior, the scout's going to sit down and talk to the Scoutmaster. And exactly what happens when the Scoutmaster talks to the scout is not something I can absolutely define for you, because every instance of bad behavior needs to be addressed on its own. Every person and every interaction they have with other people it's going to be different in one way or another, and that's why you don't want specific policies, procedures and rules to be written about things like this, because you have to deal with these on an individual basis.

So there's some very simple, logical things that happen when the Scoutmaster and the scout are talking to each other. If they can, as I said, resolve the problem then and there- and this happens most of the times because you know scouts are usually pretty good and misbehavior isn't usually all that bad- then we're done. If it's a pattern of misbehavior- if the same thing happens more than once, that's a pattern- then it's usually time to involve the scout's parents- and I say usually because it all depends on those individual elements that I was speaking about- and when the scout's parents get involved. The message to them is simple: your son is misbehaving and he can't participate in scouts until you can assure us corrected that misbehavior and he will be able to observe the scout oath and law while he's here with us.

So take him home, work this out and when you're sure he can behave according to the scout oath and law, bring him back. It's pretty simple that way.

So that's why you only want the oath and law as your guide to conduct and behavior, and the only other thing you need then that is a Scoutmaster who is kind and interested in helping his scouts. If you make a set of rules and policies, you end up being a police officer and a judge. If you rely on the oath and law as the standard for behavior, you're able to be a counselor and to work with scouts individually and resolve whatever difficulties they're having.

Now, from what you're telling me about this particular scout, I would suggest that the Scoutmaster sit down with his parents, tell them they have some work to do and that the scout really can't participate until they can assure the Scoutmaster he will not misbehave. If he's been physically threatening, that would be the next thing I would do about this situation and the message I would send to the scout at the same time is: look, you know you've got a problem that you need to resolve. I can't resolve it for you.

I'm here to help you and to talk about it as much as possible, but this is a job for you and your parents to do and we really hope that you resolve it quickly so you can come back and be with us again. If you have a comment about what you've heard on the podcast today, or you'd like to get in touch with me with your own question, you can do that. It's pretty easy and I'm going to tell you how to make that happen in just a moment.