Scoutmaster Podcast 3

And now, for you, Scoutmasters.

Hello, and welcome to the Scoutmasters podcast. This is Clarke Green. So, I was thinking about this. Whoever first said, where there's smoke, there's fire.

There is very little chance that that person was a Scoutmaster. Right? I mean, think about it for a moment. Yeah. Yeah, very little chance. Hey, this is podcast number three.

Hello, and welcome back. Good to have you. Thanks for listening, and thanks for sending me comments. I've gotten several since the first couple episodes of the podcast through Twitter and on the blog as comments. And I sure do appreciate that, and we'll have more information on how you can join in at the end of the podcast. This week, if you have a chance, I'd like you to go over and check out The Dump.

No, not that dump. It's an online resource that some wonderful person up in Scouts Canada has set up. Now, they call themselves the Grumpy Ogre. What they've done is they've put together a site called The Dump, and it's thedump.scoutscan.com.

And if you'll go check it out, what you'll find is just decades' worth of scouting booklets that were published by Scouts Canada and by the British Scouting Association, to name two, that have been laboriously scanned in and made into very readable PDF documents and are gathered together in this wonderful virtual library.

And it's especially valuable to us in the States because, you know, these little booklets didn't get a lot of distribution in the United States. So we have all that information now at our fingertips, and thank you, Grumpy Ogre. There'll be a link to The Dump on the blog, by the way. This episode, we are going to talk about, in Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less, we're going to talk about an approach to national policy.

Then our third installment in our discussion of instructional methods for scouts. Oh, in between there, I have a story about a fellow Scoutmaster I think you'll enjoy. We'll wind up with a little moment of serendipity, especially when we think that our troop or our pack or our crew is just a terrible mess.

Because we have all been there. Today is February 8, 2010, and everybody knows what happens today. Is that right? Does everybody know? That looks great.

It's the centenary of the Boy Scouts of America. Boy Scouts of America, 100 years old today. It all began very simply with an old war horse of a British soldier named Sir Robert Baden-Powell, who said, I mean, this idea is so simple, and just so direct and so adaptable that it would soon spread around the world and find its way into every corner of the world and nearly every country in the world because anybody could apply the principles of it.

Baden-Powell also said, to an outsider, scouting must at first appear to be a very complex matter, and many a man is probably put off from becoming a Scoutmaster because of the enormous number and variety of things that he thinks he would have to know in order to teach his boys.

But it need not be so if the man will only realize the following points. This is how simple it is. There's three things. The aim of scouting is quite a simple one.

The Scoutmaster gives to the boy the ambition and desire to learn for himself by suggesting to him activities which attract him and which he pursues till he, by experience, does them right. Such activities are suggested in the book Scouting for Boys.

And number three, the Scoutmaster works through his patrol leaders. Both of these things, both of those little quotes are from Baden-Powell's aides to Scoutmastership, by the way.

W.D. Boyce, a publisher and a businessman, discovered scouting, you know, quite by accident when he visited London and he brought it to the United States in 1910. And his newly minted Boy Scouts of America found a very eager following and quickly spread throughout the country.

And a hundred years later, our future depends on an ever-renewed sense of relevance. And this is going to be one of those questions that we're going to hear asked many more than a hundred times over the coming year. Is the Boy Scouts of America still relevant? Is scouting still relevant in this day and age?

Well, our Chief Scout Executive, Bob Mazzucca, said this. He said, over a hundred years, you've got a little arthritic and bureaucratic. We're steeped in tradition, which is a good thing.

But we're not particularly good at innovation and renewal. We don't want to abandon tradition, but we want to be nimble. He then went on to say, we run the risk of becoming irrelevant if we don't adapt to things that attract kids today. But we run the risk of losing our way if we abandon the principles, which is the Scout law.

So this week, somewhere around five million of us scouts and leaders will carry out this simple vital work by, you know, doing any one of a dozen things. We'll be at a meeting or we'll be on a camping trip or something like that. And it does us well to pause and remember we stand on the shoulders of a lot of people.

And if you just think for a moment and you've been in scouting for a while, you know you can call the name of dozens of people who have helped you along the way. So to mark this centenary, let's go back to 1937. It is the 80th birthday of Robert Baden-Powell.

And he makes this recording. My dear brother Scouts, I am 80 years old. What do you think of that? But I can't say that I feel very much older than some of you.

I did a good lot of traveling, which opened my eyes to other countries and other peoples and their ways. I played games and got healthy and I did exploring and got lots of adventure.

Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed my life. And though I had no money except what I earned by my work, I got lots of pleasure. But after a time, I found there was a difference between pleasure and happiness.

Happiness is another thing. It is a joy which lasts with you always. And it comes largely not so much from amusing yourself as from doing good turns which help other people.

80 years may seem to you a long time. But in all my 80 years, I can't remember a time when I wasn't busy. And so long as you are busy, you can't help being cheerful.

So if ever you find yourself without something to do, remember there are always lots of people wanting help who would be only too glad of a helping hand.

If you go and help them and cheer them up, a funny thing happens. You find that by making others happy, you're making yourself all the happier too. I want you to have as long and jolly a life as I've had. And you can get it if you keep yourself healthy and helpful to others. I'll tell you my secret for this.

I've always tried to carry out the Scout promise and the Scout law in all that I do. If you do that, you will make a success of your life and will have a very happy time even if you live to be 80 like me.

Thank you so much, Sir Robert. We're going to get back to work, keep ourselves busy here at the Scoutmaster Podcast and wish you a very fine centenary in this 100th year of the Boy Scouts of America. Scoutmastership in 7 minutes or less.

Hey, we have a nationwide Scout movement in the Boy Scouts of America. 2.8 million youth and 1.3 million adult participants. Right around 5 million people involved in Scouting in one way or another. And this whole movement is all about policies and procedures.

Yeah, it is. Administering it is about policies and procedures. You may not like that idea, but it really is. And what I'm trying to get across in my thinking here is that sometimes we have practices and traditions that have gone off the rails in one way or another and are hurting your effectiveness as a Scout troop or a Venture crew or a Cub Pack.

Let me give you an example. How many of you make a boy who is going to get the Scout badge memorize the Scout Oath and Law? Hands up. I see a lot of hands out there. I used to.

I used to. Well, if you go and look at the requirement, the requirement says understand and agree to live by the Scout Oath and Promise and the Scout Law, the motto, the slogan, and the outdoor code. That's what it says. That's the requirement.

It's very specific, isn't it? Understand and agree to live by. It does not say memorize. It does not say repeat from memory. That's in the Tenderfoot requirement. It says, the Tenderfoot requirement says repeat from memory and explain in your own words the Scout Oath law, motto, and slogan. Hey, we want boys to become Scouts in minutes, not hours and hours. Okay? We don't want to make it artificially difficult for them. The Scout badge is simple.

It's the joining badge. Learn to tie a square knot. Realize a couple of things. Think about them a little bit. Have your folks go through the book with you. Hey, bada bing, bada boom. It's done.

And it should be. It's not something that you want to put artificial barriers in front of. Now, I'm not going to sit here and harp about the fact that some of you are making a Scout memorize the Scout Oath and Law. I'm not going to harp.

Listen, I used to do it and I used to think, well, what's the difficulty of having a higher standard? How could that be disruptive or difficult? Well, first of all, it's just plain wrong.

I shouldn't be able to adjust the standards as I see them fit and as I interpret them when they're clearly when my interpretation is clearly in contravention of what's in the requirement.

Okay? That should never happen. And b, you know what? We've had 100 years in the Boy Scouts of America, I've had 100 years to figure some of this stuff out. I'm going to trust what they've figured out.

If I can't rationalize it and I can't figure it out for myself, then I'm going to work hard at it until I can and know the reason that it's there. And I haven't found anything in national policy or in requirements or anything like that that doesn't have its root in a common sense approach and the goals of scouting.

So what do we need to do? Well, what we really need to do is not become, you know, little lawyers and go around with national policy manuals and try and fix everything. But we do need to examine some of the traditions and assumptions about scouting, don't we? Here's another one. Okay?

This one is shocking. This one... I'm going to get letters about this. Okay? So you have a tradition in your troop, I will bet, where you require a scout to be in a Class A uniform for a board of review.

Yep. I see some hands up. Okay. Do you know that you can't do that? What do you mean I can't do that? Of course I can require the board of review to have a uniform and appear in a uniform. We don't let them into a board of review unless they have a uniform on.

All right, smarty guy. Find me in writing in national policy, not in your troop handbook, but in national policy where it requires a boy to own a scout uniform. Much less appear at a board of review in a scout uniform.

Oh, now you're just crazy. Of course they have to own a uniform. Yep. Find it. Email it to me. I'll send you a crisp $100 bill. My $100 bill is safe. There's nothing in our national policy that says a boy must own and wear a scout uniform. It says that any boy who is a scout would want to, but it doesn't insist upon it or require it in any way. So when you're requiring that as a troop, are you allowed to do that? No. No.

You're really not. Should you encourage it? Of course. Should you support it? Of course. We do. But I'm not going to turn a boy away who doesn't have a scout uniform from a board of review because it's in contradiction of policy.

Hey, if a boy shows up for a board of review, he should at all costs be able to go through that board of review. Sure. Ask a question about the uniform. That's no problem.

And a class A uniform? Eh, there ain't no class A, no class B, but you already knew that, right? Oh, no. There really isn't. Look at your uniform and insignia guide.

Find me where it says class A, class B. No, doesn't happen. All right, so now I've been Mr. Smarty Pants and I've tried to debug and de, you know, debunk a couple of urban legends in scouting and why am I doing it? Just so I can be smart and the big guy? No. I'm doing it because sometimes those traditions and practices that are out of alignment with scout policy, they can look small and insignificant, but they really do mean something and it's really something that we should examine.

And it can lead us even farther off the path. Scouting is simple. Scouting is easy. Scouting is not complicated. Scouting is not full of rules and it's not full of prohibitions.

Everything in scouting is positive rather than negative reinforcement. Every single thing. There's not a lot of no's out there. There's a lot of yes's and there's a lot of this is going to be exciting and there's a lot of promises. So aligning all of your traditions and practices with national policy is a good practice because they're smarter than you.

They've been at it longer, okay? And it's also going to align it with the spirit of what scouting is supposed to stand for.

Ken Ryan retired from being a scoutmaster of another troop in our town the year that I became the scoutmaster of our troop. So that's about 25 years ago.

Ken had several boys still left in his troop that had grown kind of small. And so he asked them to come over and join us and Ken kept an eye on me for a number of years and made sure that I was doing a decent job as a scoutmaster and he always maintained his registration with our troop all the way until he passed away several years ago.

But early on I remember Ken attending one of the troop meetings and he taught me something that I don't know as I will ever forget a very valuable little piece of information.

At the beginning of the troop meeting the boys were kind of milling around and you know making noise and yapping they weren't paying attention to the senior patrol leader or anything like that. Ken was standing at the back of the room with me and he watched this for about as long as he could stand it and he reared up and Ken is just a little fire plug of an Irishman and very unassuming very calm nice fella but he reared up on his hind legs and he said be quiet and line up and not one of the scouts turned around they all just kind of went and lined right up and paid very close attention to the senior patrol leader and none of the scouts ever knew who the heck it was. So Ken taught me a pretty important thing speak softly and bark every little once in a while. Thank you.

This is the third in our series of instructional methods for scouts. I'm going to remind you that you can get all of this information in a PDF file on our blog.

So here's two or three very promising methods to use when you're instructing scouts. One is very, very simple. Actually, they're all pretty simple but one is called circling up.

Now, what's your normal picture of an instructional session? It's mostly the instructor standing in front of a group in one way or another and the group is very passive.

So, you know, there are going to be times where we have to go with the you stand and listen while I talk model. So when we do have to use this, we want to have everybody standing up in a circle.

Yep. And I'm I want you to try this. I want you to make sure to try it a few times. But if you are standing up in a circle, there's lots of interesting things that happen. First of all, there's no layers of people.

It's not people sitting or standing in rows. In a circle, everybody sees everyone else. The instructor sees all of his pupils and the pupils can see the instructor.

So it's hard to hide. Okay? Second, if you're standing, you become uncomfortable with just kind of standing there after four or five minutes. So your lecture is going to necessarily be limited because you're not going to, everybody's going to start shifting around and getting bored with standing in a circle listening to you if you go beyond, you know, four or five minutes.

Our rule of thumb is not to lecture beyond two minutes. And do what I do. Hand one of the boys a stopwatch if you need to. Because, man, I can talk the legs off of an iron pot and everybody knows it. So they can have a lot of fun keeping me to two minutes.

The other thing is in a circle I can see faces and I can ask questions very quickly and easily and it's a very natural type of thing. You know, another good rule of thumb is to try to ask as many questions as you make statements.

So the circling up thing is a very useful method. Don't discount it. You will be impressed with what a difference it makes. And as soon as the scouts become used to the idea that forming a circle is, you know, what follows is going to be an instructional thing, you know, it will also help them assume the right state of mind.

So a very important yet simple little piece of work. The next one is round robins. Now, as a wrestling coach, I coached wrestling at the junior varsity and middle school level for a number of years players. And we used round robins a lot during practice. And what that would be is we would get, you know, a small group and they would take turns doing different wrestling moves and practicing them.

And so it kind of would break up the practice a little bit and make it more interesting. And it would give you a chance to wrestle with a lot of different people. skill.

The way that we operate this in scouts is, let's say that we, let's take our example of totem chip. Okay? And we have axe, knife, and saw skills. So we have three basic areas to work with. So we're going to break that up into three different stations.

One, one's going to be the axe, one's going to be the knife, one.

That's right, it's time for a Scoutmaster's Minute.

I want you to come and visit a troop meeting with me, okay? My troop. My troop that I've been with for ages and ages and worked really hard with, and I'll tell you something, you are not going to call it a well-oiled machine or a model of efficiency.

And that's why I like it. That's why I like it. A dear friend who was a really successful artist and worked out at a studio that was just a hot mess. I'm not saying it was just like a little messy.

I'm saying it was breathtakingly disordered. Even so, he produced artwork that was just genius and penetrating and simple and beautiful. There's a point in any troop meeting where I do the same thing you do. I look around and I see some disorder, and from my perspective, the youth leaders are slacking off and the adults are interfering and the scouts are kind of disinterested. it's all just a millisecond from falling apart and from spinning out of control.

And it's those moments I imagine my artist friend laboring over painting. There's water everywhere. There's water pooling on a tabletop. On the paper, there's huge globs of paint and brushes are flying and splashing. It's an impossible mess.

He taught me, though, that what seems like a mess was actually really the process of creation. There were forces at work that no one could and no one should seek to control.

Art came out of working in that maelstrom of his and understanding and cooperating with the maelstrom that he created, not controlling it. I think it goes for scouting, at least for me.

It might work differently for you. I mean, our job as scoutmasters is to set things into motion to encourage and exhort and inspire and then step back and let things go to work.

What I see as messy and disorganized and is experienced by my scouts as the most orderly and enriching experience of their lives. It's just a little trick of perspective.

Now, I know throwing some lumber and glue and shellac in a cement mixer is not going to produce a Chippendale chair. That's not the kind of disorder and craziness I'm talking about.

Well, you know, theoretically I might produce a Chippendale chair. I'm not going to waste my time trying, though. I'm not recommending that we promote disorder or look on it cavalierly, but rather we recognize that what looks like a hot mess to us sometimes may be that vital maelstrom of creation.

Experience teaches there are times when we need to step in and times when we should not. This finds no better expression in the well-known prayer attributed to the theologian Reinald Niebuhr.

To accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. So that's it for the third edition of the Scoutmasters podcast. Thank you so much for listening. You can read the blog at scoutmaster.typepad.com. Look us up on Facebook at Scoutmaster Blog. Follow us on Twitter at Scoutmaster Blog. And you can get in touch with me at clarkgreen at gmail.com. Remember, Clark has an E.

C-L-A-R-K-E-G-R-E-E-N. And we'd love to hear from you and know what you think of the podcast and the blog and all that. Love to get questions. And here's what everybody's been waiting for, the disclaimer.

That's right, folks. The disclaimer, the Scoutmaster blog and the Scoutmaster podcast are not official publications of the Boy Scouts of America, nor are they endorsed or sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America. Until next time. Good luck to you and good camping. tahu this library... good week. Good work. Good enjoy purchasing. sagen eu �ë and 들 from the Area finals Thank you.