Scoutmaster Podcast 292

Hi, I'm Christopher Simone and I'm the Scoutmaster of Troop 71 in Plendome, New York. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now to you, Scoutmaster. I had a little gentleman's wager with my Scouts because I told them I could jump higher than any house And they said: there is absolutely no way that you could do that.

And I said: well, you know, if you want to have a little wager on that, that's fine. And they said, yep, okay, So if you win the next camping trip, we'll set up your tent, And if you don't win the next camping trip, you set up our tents. And I said that sounds good to me.

And they said, okay, so how are you gonna prove this? And I said: well, it's easy.

You go home this week and you measure how high your house can jump, Okay, And then come back next week And I guarantee you I'll be able to jump higher than your house does. Guess I

Don't have to set up my tent next camping trip. Hey, this is podcast number 292.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Thanks, Bill McFarlane, for the idea, for the joke. I suppose it was a joke at the head of the podcast.

Oh, let's see here. So hey, if it gets noisy in the background, we got some guys working on the house this week. Oh my goodness, If you live in an old house, who you better watch out, Because as soon as you start working on one part of it, an old house is kind of like a sweater: You start pulling on one thread and the whole thing comes unraveled.

So it might be a little noisy in the background this week, but don't worry about it, Everything's fine. Let's take a look in the mailbag. We heard from James Montigny is a Scoutmaster with Troop 1124 in Raymore, Missouri, And he wrote this: I wanted to take a moment to thank you for all the hard work that you put into enabling scouts and scouters.

My life scout and I listen to your podcast regularly and we share what we learn with our Troop So well. The older scouts and parents have started tuning in to the guidance. Encouragement that we get from people like you are exactly what I needed as a new Scoutmaster.

Your books- so far so good- maybe you feel a little less alone while trying to convince people that this was the way it was meant to be. Your PDF resources frequently find a way into my training sessions with both youth and adults, and district roundtable sessions. I'm pleased to report that in two short years of having a youth led troop, we're doing very well. We've grown from five to almost 40. Wow, James, that's pretty impressive numbers there, including many scouts who had previously left other programs and found renewed passion with scouting for us. They plant the scouts, plan and execute their own meetings, outings, courts of honor, service projects and even gather information in book event sites.

They greet Webelos, welcome them into the troop at blue and gold events and give me plenty of time on my rocking chair in the back of the room. They recently elected their senior patrol leader and he emceed a spectacular Eagle Court of Honor for one of his peers today, and I could not be more proud of my scouts. The concept has led over into the pack, where dent chiefs are taking leadership roles, managing activities and promoting the idea that youth have a say in deciding what they're going to do, and the scouts are having more fun and retention has been even higher. Recreating adult leadership has been easier, especially when they see that they have experienced scouts ready to take the lead. If that wasn't enough, we've even spawned a venturing crew, Our young men and young women in the crew quickly filled the leadership ranks and took charge of their unit of witness. Tremendous growth within those young people in six short months.

As a result, Imagine that boys who've been Eagles for four or five years still active in supporting the next generation of scouts, Girls- something new to scouting, some with silver and gold awards, getting involved and taking on leadership roles and having an absolute blast. Thank you, sir. I cannot express how much I appreciate what you've done and thank you, James. That's what we call a paycheck right there.

When you hear that people are making use of what you're doing, it just makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it? Speaking of so far, so good, and that's my book about being a new Scoutmaster. It's an easy read, It's pretty easy to get to. It's over on Amazon and I'll tell you how to get it from my website in just a moment.

But over on Amazon, Rick gave so far, so good a five star review. It said it's great for new Scoutmaster. Then I had this email from Tim Clark, who's an assistant Scoutmaster with Selma Troop 343, and he was writing about a republished post that I put on Facebook this past week called Doing What Scouts Do, and, incidentally, that's what we're going to be talking about in today's podcast. Tim had listened to last week's podcast and he wrote this: said amen. I listened to your podcast yesterday about a scouts dilemma, about not having enough time for scouting and the pressure to excel. Your message about doing what scouts do speaks volumes to exactly that situation.

My oldest son is currently working on his leadership project. I'm finding the trail of paperwork more challenging than his project, which is already challenging at his own choosing.

Well, Tim, I'm glad you found that useful. And really, enough with the Eagle paperwork, right? I mean enough already. There's enough paperwork for Eagle. Let's not, let's not add anymore.

Okay, Every week on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, usually we have a live chat session over at scoutmastercgcom and, in addition to all of the frequent fliers who checked in, this week we heard also from Matt Thompson, who's a member of a troop committee in Eureka, Kansas. So thanks for checking in with us, Matt. Look, before I go any further, everything at scoutmastercgcom and this podcast is there to help you as a scouter, and I hear from folks- actually believe it or not- all over the world who tell me that it manages to help them.

So to keep everything freely available for everyone. I depend on people like you to become backers.

It's an unusual idea, So let me explain. If I was sending you- I don't know- a paper magazine or a newsletter or something like that, you'd expect there to be costs associated with that. Right, I'd have to pay somebody to print it and I'd have to pay writers and postage. But what I'm doing is actually kind of similar, because somebody spends their time producing all of this and encourage the expenses of publishing it, and backers are the folks who make a one-time kind of voluntary subscription payment and that money goes to help me cover the expense of producing and publishing and creating everything that you find at scoutmastercgcom.

So this week I would appreciate it if you could go and become a backer. It's really easy to do. Go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you'll find a number of options that will make you a scoutmastercgcom backer.

And this week I want to personally thank Steve Quinones, Tim Grimmie, John Keeler, Christopher Simone and Michael Land, who all became backers since our last podcast. Once again, really easy to do. Go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link, become a backer this week and I'll thank you during our next podcast.

Well, in the remainder of this week's podcast I am going to describe something that is the answer to every question that I've ever had as a scouter, The answer to every question that I've ever gotten by email since I started writing scoutmastercgcom 10 years ago. It's the Silver Bullet, It's the idea of the base principle that takes care of just about everything we encounter as scouters And that is going to take up the remainder of the podcast.

So let's get started, shall we? Oh, I'm in love with the man who loves to camp. He camps when it's sunny, he camps when it's damp. All he needs is a tent, a sleeping roll, a package of hot dogs and a sack of charcoal. He camps in the desert. He camps in the snow.

He says: baby, come with me.

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. So imagine this for a moment.

Okay, Let's imagine there's nothing called scouting. There's no program, no troops, no councils, no districts, no uniforms, no badges. But somebody comes up with this idea of helping young people develop character by getting outdoors and going camping.

And then they share this idea with young people who get pretty excited about it, and they get their buddies together and they decide they'd really like the whole idea and they organize a camping trip, And the whole idea is built on a set of shared ideals that encourages everyone to treat each other decently and helps everybody work together. So as they share this idea and as they go camping, other young people get pretty excited about it. They get their buddies together, they decide they really like the idea and they go on a camping trip. And this just happens over and over and over again.

And in order for everybody to go camping comfortably, there are a number of new skills that they need to develop And there is a way to recognize being proficient in those skills. There's a structured set of responsibilities that are aimed at coordinating and completing the chores of planning and carrying out a camping trip, And there aren't really many forms or paperwork. There's enough to keep track of things and to assist planning and and communicating, And the young people come up against a lot of challenges, but they resolve them by applying the ideals that this whole idea is braced on. Things aren't always organized. No, they're not. Sometimes it's kind of a mess.

There's plenty of room for improvement in just about everything, but the young people involved love what they're doing, because what they're doing is they're doing what scouts do. Now, if we focus on doing what scouts do, we'll always do the right thing.

If we get ourselves caught up in the thicket of policies and procedures and logistics and traditions and people saying, well, this is the way that we always done it, And the idea that, well, getting recognition for this is what's really important, And the idea of sweeping together as many merit badges as you possibly can, and the idea of achievement over everything else, If we get ourselves caught in all of that, what we're doing really is we're coming at the whole thing from the wrong direction. Things like policies, procedures, planning, advancement, awards, programs- they only make sense when we do what scouts do. When scouts get to do the things scouts do, all of that other stuff happens as an after effect. They advance as an after effect. When scouts do requirements, they check things off in a book, right. A true breakthrough for all of us as scouts is to understand doing requirements is nothing to do with scouting.

Completing requirements are an after effect of doing what What scouts do right. And when we do what scouts do, our scouts have real breakthroughs. They really understand the concepts and the skills And that's worth doing a thousand requirements.

So our concentration ought to be doing what scouts do. That's the secret, right, That's the secret to the entire thing, because that's how we started out And then a lot of things got overlaid on it- Big organizations and different levels of management and administration of those organizations- But when it comes down to it, scouting is all about what scouts do. And when they do the things that scouts do, what happens is we build character. That happens pretty naturally and they advance pretty naturally. Think about a camping trip. Scouts go camping and while they're camping, they cook the food that they selected, purchased and packed right.

They light camp fires, they set up tents and tarps. They build things with sticks and string. They learn how to experience the natural world without leaving a trace. They learn how to use edge tools safely.

You know, when scouts go swimming and boating, doing the things that scouts do, they learn how to swim better. They learn how to paddle canoe or row a row boat. They learn about safety in and on the water. They learn how to aid people and distress on the water. When they're participating citizens and serving their communities, they learn about their community and the way it's governed. They serve in various ways.

They learn how to be responsible and to use resources and technology responsibly, how to act and to react with others with decency and character. They learn about their nation and community and families, history and traditions. When scouts go on hikes, they learn to read and follow maps, to use compasses and GPS units, to learn and practice safe hiking skills. When they help other people, they render first aid, they respond to emergencies, they support the needy- I mean, I could go on and on and on. It's about doing what scouts do. Everything else about scouting, everything else, is just window dressing.

It's just there. It's not as important. It follows when you do what scouts do. But it's not why we're doing scouting.

We're not doing scouting so scouts advance. We're not doing scouting.

We're not doing scouting so scouts earn merit badges or even learn special skills and things like that. We're doing scouting so that they can do what scouts do, because when scouts do what scouts do, everything else works. Everything else happens. It's pretty simple, but that's really the secret of the whole thing.