Scoutmaster Podcast 287

I'm John Nelson and I am an assistant scoutmaster with Truth 947 in Westchester Ohio. This edition of the Scoutmasters podcast is sponsored by backers like me And now the old scoutmaster.

Hey, you know, when it's clear and sunny outside and you go set up a tent somewhere, that's just camping. Not terribly interesting, That's nice, It's fun. If you go set a tent up outside and the weather is interesting, that's scout camping, right.

Hey, this is podcast number 287.. Hey Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green.

So let's take a look at the mailbag. We heard from John Hunter via Facebook. He said I became a scoutmaster this week to a troop that's been adult-led for years. It's going to be a challenge, but I was referred to your podcast. Looks like I have a lot of listening to do.

Your book- So Far, So Good- is exactly the situation our troop is in. I read most of it last night. Our troop only has seven to 10 guys that show up regularly. I hope, once we start doing more and it becomes fun, that it will be easy to recruit some new scouts.

For now, would you suggest just having a senior patrol leader and the rest of the scouts be in a patrol, or would you split it up and have two patrols with each with a patrol leader. Well, John, I am going to answer a question dealing with that a little bit later on in this podcast, So stay tuned. We'll talk about the way that patrols work in small troops. Heard from Aaron Weissman, who is the scoutmaster of troop 1026 in Great Falls, Montana. Just a note to say how much I love the infographics in the Scoutmaster CG PDF package, And what Aaron's talking about is it's a package of over 50 infographics and other useful resources I put together that you can get over at scoutmastercgcom.

I think it'd be nice to have a book of them, like full color, oversized with laminated pages. It'd be a great resource for our troop meetings and our campouts.

Yeah, Aaron, that sounds like an interesting idea And I think it's one that you could do pretty easy. I'd take those files to a copy center, ask them to print them out and laminate them and, you know, maybe throw together your own binder or something out of a couple of chunks of plywood.

I think that would work. I don't think it would be very cost effective for me to offer it as a product, but you know, it's something you certainly make.

Hey, each week when we're available, when we can. We have a couple of live chat sessions, usually on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings between eight and noon Eastern time, And if you keep an eye on our Facebook feed and our Twitter feed, you'll see if we're live at scoutmastercgcom and we're chatting with scouters. In this past week, In addition to those folks that regularly check into our live chats, our frequent fliers, Joe Cap, who's the Scoutmaster of troop 290 in Ypsilanti, Michigan, checked in, as did Sean Bergman, He's the Scoutmaster of troop 55 in Grove, Pennsylvania, and Owen Wilson is a Scoutmaster in Peoria, Arizona, and Joe Riccatelli checked in too.

So thanks for adding to the discussion on the live chat. Like I said, keep an eye on the Facebook and Twitter feeds for scoutmastercgcom and come on over, join in.

We have a lot of fun on the chat. Hey, before we go on, let me take the time to ask you a favor, because I need your help. I started the blog in the podcast about 10 years ago and I had no idea what would happen when I started them. I hear from a lot of folks every week and it's very heartening to know I'm able to lend a hand to my fellow scouts.

So what I'm asking you to do in return is support the blog and the podcast by becoming a scoutmastercgcom backer. It's pretty easy to do. Go to scoutmastercgcom. There's a support link at the top of the page. Follow that link and you'll find a number of options on making kind of a voluntary one-time subscription payment to help keep things up and running and freely available to scouts all over the world.

I want to take a moment this week to personally thank Bob Adams, Bob Hughes, Jim Witt and Mason Turner, who became backers since our last podcast. So once again, go to scoutmastercgcom this week, Click that support link at the top of the page and become a backer, and I'll make sure to thank you personally on our next podcast. I got several email questions to answer this week 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 my name

Email, that is. Folks, and here's an answer to one of your emails. The sender of this email asked to remain anonymous and they said I became a backer earlier this summer.

My scout and I, from a volunteer leader perspective, are crossing over from Weeblows to Scouts this February and I wanted to get your thoughts on questions to ask adult volunteers in the troops that we visit so we can better assess the troop. There are some obvious questions to ask, but I'm wondering if you can suggest any others.

Well, thanks for getting in touch and thanks for your kind words. The adult volunteers of the troops that you're going to visit are going to tell you the way things are from their point of view. Anyway, They're going to be ready to talk to you and to describe what they think their troop is like and, honestly, I wouldn't have a whole lot of questions for them.

If I was visiting a troop and I really wanted to get an idea of what it was like to be in a scout in that troop, I think I would probably talk to the scouts, right? So think about this: See if you can talk to three different scouts, specifically one who joined the troop in the last year, one who's been around for a couple of years and then one of the oldest scouts in the troop.

I would ask the scout who joined last year what he thinks of things so far. How has he advanced?

What was his favorite camping trip? What's his patrol name?

Who's his patrol leader? Who cooks when they go camping?

What's the Scoutmaster's name and what kind of person does that scout think that he or she is? And if you ask those questions, you're going to get a really good idea if there are patrols and if the patrols are functioning, because the scout's going to know his patrol leader's name and the patrol name.

The question about who cooks when they go camping is important because are the scouts cooking or are the adults cooking for them? Are the patrols cooking on their own or do they just all throw in as a troop? And that gives you some idea of the autonomy of the patrols and the youth leaders.

I would ask the scout who's been around for a couple of years what rank he's at right now, what his plan is to get to the next one and about his aspirations and experience as a youth leader, because I'm going to expect if he's been around for a couple of years, he has some position of responsibility. I would also ask him what it was like to be a brand new scout in that troop, specifically what part of that experience was good and what part of that experience maybe wasn't so good.

And then the oldest scout should be able to tell you when the patrol leaders council meets, because he's probably serving on the patrol leaders council or has in the past, who's sitting at the table when the patrol leaders council meets, what he's doing as a youth leader and how well he relates to the adult volunteers in his troop. I would also ask him what it was like to be a brand new scout in his troop, what was good, what needed improvement, how he felt.

And then I'd be careful to observe the dynamic between the younger scouts and the older scouts, between the older scouts and the adults. Is there a lot of tension there or is it kind of a fun, convivial atmosphere?

How are the older scouts treating the younger scouts? How are the adults treating the older scouts and the younger scouts?

Just, you know, kind of be a fly on the wall and listen carefully, observe what's going on. If possible, I'd talk to a parent who's had a son in the troop for a year or two and really isn't connected with the committee or is not volunteering as an adult in the troop and I'd ask how that troop does with communicating to families and what their son's experience has been like. And everybody you talk to- the scouts and the parent and the adult volunteers- you're going to have a discussion with them anyway.

I would ask them what they would like to change about the way their troop works right now and see if those answers help you kind of fill out a picture of what it would be like to be a scout in that troop. If you aim at talking to scouts, you're going to have a pretty good picture of the way the troop functions when you're finished talking with the youngest scout and the rest of the answers will probably just confirm what you heard from that younger scout. That's what I would do and that's the way we've actually set up the visits that we've had from Weebelos dens in the past.

We get the adults there to accompany them in another room for a little while and we have them talk to those three scouts. We get a younger scout, a scout that's been around for a couple years, and one of the older guys, usually the senior patrol leader, and we just put them in that room and let the adults ask them questions, and I think that's a much better way of getting a picture of what it's like to be a scout in our troop than sitting and talking to the scout. Master Jim Witt is with troop 316 in Champaign, Illinois, and he wrote in to say thanks for providing the resources at scoutmastercgcom. They've been very useful in our quest to do our best as adult scout leaders in our troop.

What adjustments would you recommend to the program or organization of the troop, based on troop size? We have a troop of nine scouts. All are relatively active and come to most meetings and outings.

We have historically operated as one patrol with no patrol meetings, but on paper we've had two patrols and probably too many youth leaders: a senior patrol leader, assistant senior patrol leader, two patrol leaders ascribe, etc. I've recently become the Scoutmaster and I'm trying to make the patrol leader position more meaningful. I introduce patrol meetings to our troop meeting and reduce the youth leadership to three positions, with a senior patrol leader and two patrol leaders. I'm concerned that occasionally we may not quite have enough scouts on an outing or a meeting to make patrols work. I often get questions about the way a smaller troop operates, For example the one that I mentioned earlier on in this podcast from John Hunter.

So to find an answer for that, let's pretend from a we've forgotten everything we know about scouts and let's see if we can build a logical approach to the way that a smaller troop works. So the first question would would be.

Why do boys become scouts? Well, they do it to do fun stuff and go camping with their friends, and boys of scout age naturally form small groups of six to maybe ten buddies to do most things, and scouting leverages this important idea into a group just that size. That's called a patrol. The idea of self-determination is really important to boys and it also happens to be important to are achieving the aims of scouting.

So a leader is selected to guide their patrol cooperatively with the other guys in the patrol, and there are specific responsibilities in each patrol, because somebody has to look after their records and their gear and somebody has to cook when they go camping. So there are positions of responsibility within each patrol.

Right Now, when we have more than one patrol, that it makes sense to have something called a patrol leaders council with the patrol leaders serving on it so they can coordinate and they are led by their senior patrol leader, right? So if we just look at the logic of that structure for a moment, when a group of scouts grows to a certain size, past that kind of critical mass of a single patrol, well, now we add another patrol and then we add, as needed, the positions associated with the patrol leaders council.

So when we're talking about a smaller troop with 10 or fewer scouts or right around that number, right, it's likely that functioning as a patrol is going to best serve the interests of the main aim of scouting. That's the point right. We're focused on serving the individual scout by helping him achieve our main aim and that's the development of character, of a compassionate, contributing human being, and the various leadership structures that we employ to do that have to be scaled to that individual interest.

So if you have a smaller troop with 10 or fewer scouts, it's likely that functioning as a patrol is going to best serve the interests of that main aim. And the reason I suggest that you forget everything that you know here is because what we've been trained to do is trained to look at groups of boys as a troop. But if you think about it, a troop is just a group of patrols and all the stuff that really is important to that individual scout is happening not at the troop level but at the patrol level.

And when there are a couple of patrols meeting together on a regular basis, well then you have a troop and that means it becomes logical to have a patrol leader's council. You see what I'm saying.

So instead of starting with the organization chart and thinking that we have to fill in all the blanks, let's start with the interest of the individual scout. Instead of starting with the organizational imperatives that seem to be important, let's look at the individual scouts that we're serving and do what's going to be important and best serve achieving the main aim on an individual basis.

And when you start discussing things like this- well, now you're talking about positions of responsibility and there are defined lists for rank advancement and if we have more scouts who require a position of responsibility to advance, then positions of responsibility that make sense- then what I find usually happens is people just start filling out the organization chart so that each scout will have a position of responsibility somewhere, and the scouts know that that's kind of phony and you know that it's kind of phony. And I know that it's kind of phony right, because there's really not a whole lot for them to do in a troop of 10 scouts with. There's no reason to have a senior patrol leader, assistant, senior patrol leader, scribe and quartermaster because you got 10 scouts right. They would likely be better arranged into a patrol with a patrol leader and a patrol quartermaster and a patrol scribe and if you want to call them senior patrol leader, troop scribe and troop quartermaster, for the reasons of advancement, I have no problem with that. I don't think anybody has a problem with that. But let's not just glom on positions of responsibility just for advancement's sake.

I think scouts understand when they have something that's just a paper tiger. I was invited to do a presentation last year to big scout thing and I was pleased to do it.

But what I found out? I was just rounding out the schedule. I was a paper tiger. Nobody was truly interested in what I was going to say.

They just had an open time and they needed to fill it, and that's never a good feeling, right? So being in a position of responsibility that has really no actual purpose, that's that's pretty bad feeling. And we missed the boat if we try and impose a large group organizational imperative on a small group and we end up with positions of responsibility with actually no real responsibilities attached to it.

So again, I say, just as a thought experiment: if you forget everything that you know, you go back and you say, well, why are these guys in scouts? So this is why, how do they function?

Well, this is how they function. Now, oh, now things start to make sense.

Right now I see: oh, this group is going to be much better served and we're going to better serve the aims of scouting for them individually if we function more like a patrol than a troop and the rest of the rest of it is just names. Right, it's just the way that we describe things. Another anonymous email. I've been asked by a number of scouts if our fundraisers count towards service hours.

In the past this has been so, but we have been thinking that maybe they shouldn't. What do you think?

Well, if fundraisers are conducted for the benefit of the troop, then they are basically for the benefit of the scouts themselves, right? So there's a distinction about what we do in the course of our normal responsibilities to our families, our fellow scouts, our troop and our patrol and service we render, to quote others, unquote. If you were to do a fundraiser and let's say, your parking cars and you're getting consideration from that, you're getting a share of the money that's coming from parking cars.

Well then, I would call that fundraiser a job okay, because I'm doing work, I'm getting consideration for it. That's a job okay and that's self-serving, even though I'm helping out with.

You know this thing where I'm parking cars, I'm serving others in one respect, but I'm getting compensated for it. So to me that's the definition of a job.

Now, if I was to do exactly the same thing but I got no compensation for it, then I could see that as being rendering service to others and I would think, yes, that qualifies as a service project because no compensation involved. So it's not a job and I am volunteering my time. I'm not being compensated for my time.

So the rule of thumb here, I think personally, is that for consideration as a fulfillment of the service- our requirement for any rank- the test would be, if I'm serving myself because I'm trading my time for money, basically spending it on myself, that wouldn't qualify because fundraising is just a normal expectation of what a scout does, just like the chores he does at home or cooking on a camping trip. That I'm volunteering my time for no compensation and it is beyond the normal expectations of what a scout does, right, then I'm doing service to others. If you have a question, you can get in touch with me and I'll do my best to give me an answer, and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.