Scoutmaster Podcast 33

And now, for you, Scoutmaster.

So these two bear biologists are headed off into the woods. Wait a minute. They're not bear biologists. They're wearing clothing, but they're studying bears. You got it? Yeah. So they're headed way off into the backcountry to do a field study on some bears, put on their backpacks, hike in. They get about five miles in, and they get to a trail sign, and the sign says, Bear Left. So they said, well, what the heck? We might as well go home. Hey, it's podcast number 33. Hey!

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clark Green. In our 33rd podcast, we're going to begin with Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. We're going to talk a little bit about den chiefs, and featuring an interview I did with one of the scouts in our troop who's a den chief. Then the return of this has got to be true because nobody could make this up, a story from summer camp. And we're going to finish with answering a couple of emails. That's a lot to do. Let's get started, shall we? Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less.

So school goes back in session, and scouting gets ready to begin again. Troops and packs are beginning to meet, and they're starting to sort things out, and they've settled their schedule, and they're ready to be active again. Let me ask you this. How many den chiefs are part of your troop leadership? Den chiefs. Now, you should be familiar with the role of den chief. This is a scout who's going to go and assist a Cub Scout den. And this can be a den of any description. It can be all the way from Tiger Cubs through Weeblos 2. A den chief is a wonderful job for a scout. It's a great thing for them to do. It's a school of leadership for them. It really can be a very big confidence builder. And it really, it not only does that, but it assists the Cubs and the den leader. And it also helps to cement a relationship with those Cubs when it's time for them to choose a troop to graduate into after Weeblos 2. So, den chiefs are a very important aspect of scouting, and it needs to be guys who know what they're about and who are able to really bring something to the table as a den chief. We've always used the position of den chief as kind of an entry-level leadership position because we know it's going to be supervised pretty closely by an adult, that it's going to be working with Cubs who are, well, I know they're all over the map behavior-wise, but usually they show a great deal of deference and respect to an older scout. And it works very well. Now, I had the opportunity earlier this year to sit down and talk with one of my scouts who works as a den chief and just asked him a few questions about it, and I thought it might be interesting for you. The job is what I thought it was going to be. It was going to be helping out with the running of a Cub Scout den, and that's exactly what it is. I come, I help out with whatever they need me to do. And a positive experience for you? Yeah, because I get to, I mean, I get to go back to Cub Scouts, which is kind of like a neat time. And also, I get to help out. I mean, that's always a good feeling, you know? Yeah. Has it been aggravating enough? I wouldn't say so. No, not at all. It hasn't really infringed on my schedule in any way. What would be, like, the optimum age, in your humble opinion, age for a dent chief? The optimum age? 14 or 15. You think that's the youngest you would go? That's, no, I think that's about, like, the center, the median age, I guess, for somebody who would be doing this. So you would go a little bit younger? Sure. I would be, I would think that somebody who is 13 could easily do this. Okay. What would be the two or three things you would tell somebody who is going to be a dent chief? Well, first they have to be good with, like, you know, little kids and not get completely annoyed. Or, like, you know, go, like, completely around the bend when they have to come in contact with them for an extended period of time. But, I mean, other than that, it's not, it's certainly not a difficult job. It's, um, it's a responsibility, but it's not something that's going to, like, completely throw a wrench into your schedule. Well, that should give you a pretty good idea of a few reflections from a scout who has served as a dent chief and the kind of things he experienced. This particular scout went on to become a senior patrol leader. He had served as a patrol leader prior to his dent chief experience, which sounds a little backwards, because usually you would think, like I said earlier, a dent chief is kind of an entry-level leadership position, and then that moves on into patrol leader and then one of the other more senior leadership positions in the troop. I had this wild idea, thinking that my 15-, 16-year-old scouts, who had done a lot of leadership and things like that and didn't have as active a role in the, you know, senior leadership of the troop, might be interested. We offered them the idea of going and helping out with Cub Scout dens, and several of them caught on and really enjoyed themselves. They went back having, you know, a little more maturity and a little more knowledge, and they were really able to help out, and the den leaders really appreciated it as well. So there you go. There's just a quick little reflection on what dent chiefs are and what they do, and an encouragement to you to get a good dent chief program running in your troop as soon as you can. This has to be the truth, folks, because there is no way anyone could make this up. So finally, finally, the Sunday that we head off for our week at summer camp rolls around. And I've got all my stuff, and the scouts are on their way, and we head on down. We get moved into our campsite, and we're getting settled, and parents have dropped the scouts off. Myself and two other adult leaders are there with about 24, 25 boys. You know, 24, 25. Who counts, right? I mean, they move around so much. When can you ever count them?

But anyway, we're down there, and, you know, as the guys are getting ready to head out for the health check and the swim test and things like that, my cell phone rings. You heard me. My cell phone rings right in the campsite. Yeah. I guess they put a new tower up somewhere. Now, we're in a reasonably built-up area. Here in the mid-Atlantic states, you know, there's not too many places I guess you can go without your cell phone ringing. Ugh.

So anyway, I answer the cell phone, and I get a message from one of the parents who's just dropped one of the boys off that there's a big thunderstorm heading our way. And, yeah, you know, the thunderstorm comes and passes through a little later on that afternoon. And then we've been off to retreat and dinner and to a big campfire, and we're sitting around our picnic table in the evening. And the boys are headed off to bed. Taps is about to blow soon. One of the guys that's with me, one of the adults that's down there with me, assistant scoutmaster, says, you know, I think I'll give my wife a call. And I said, oh, yeah, fine. So he takes a step or two away from the picnic table, gets the phone, dials his home number.

And we only heard one side of the conversation, obviously. He said, yeah, hi, we're here. Oh, yes, he's doing fine. Yeah, I'm fine. No, the storm didn't hit us too bad or anything like that. And then he says, then he says, yeah, honey, it's amazing. The cell phones work right here in the campsite. And just as he gets the last part of the word campsite out of his mouth, his face falls and a look of horror spreads across his face. And he looks at the two of us sitting at the picnic table. And of course, we too are horrified. And those words are words that we could never get back. So we just had to turn the cell phones off for the rest of the week. Oh, what a pity. What a shame.

Yeah, honey, the cell phones work right here in the campsite. Oh, I'll never forget that look. Yeah, true story. He's my favorite all time boy scout. He's my favorite all time boy scout. You're my favorite all time boy scout. You're my favorite all time boy scout. You were always on the beat boy, beat boy. Yeah, you were always on the beat boy, beat boy. I'm hanging in the street, boy, street boy. You were always on the beat boy, beat boy. Yeah, you're my favorite all time boy scout. You're my favorite all time boy scout. He's my favorite all time boy scout. Write me a letter. Send it by name. Email, that is, folks. And here's an answer to one of your emails. Here's an email I received from Scoutmaster Mike in Kentucky. He says, I've really been appreciating your podcast. I'm a new Scoutmaster and have an important question. Our troops' older Scouts are down quite a bit in numbers, and that means we have a whole bunch of new Scouts and just a few older Scouts. With this, our patrol method utilization has been lacking. So what's the number one thing, in your opinion, you can do to jumpstart the patrol method? Well, Mike, I actually get this question quite a bit. People listen to the podcast, or they just kind of observe what's going on within the troop, and they say, yeah, you know, we don't really have much of a patrol method going. You know, my answer to those questions usually are just start using patrols. It's, honestly, it's really kind of that simple. Don't worry about the boys. They will get it. They will get it very quickly. You know, just get to the next troop meeting and have the guys divide themselves into patrols, have them elect a patrol leader, have them elect a senior patrol leader, and let them at it. That's really what it takes. Boys understand this intuitively. They form groups and gangs and cliques and things like that all the time. So they understand exactly what a patrol is. They might not call it a patrol outside of scouting, but they understand exactly what it is. They understand being a member of a team. They understand leadership. They understand how to do things. Now, you'll need to train your leaders, but that training doesn't need to be, you know, three weekends, taking them away and showing them a lot to PowerPoint slides. They can be trained in five-minute increments just before it's time for them to lead. It really is, really is kind of that simple. If scouts haven't been a part of a real patrol, they'll have some things to learn, but they learn so very quickly. Once you have patrol leaders leading, you'll have to keep the adults out of the way and let the boys take care of things, let them do things. Now, it will take some time to make things happen to where they're really going and really moving on and things like that, but the group of scouts that starts up in this type of way who form patrols and elect their leadership and everything like that, they're going to be very energized and very excited about the process. A lot of times, the biggest obstacle of making the patrol system happen is our impatience and reluctance and fear as adults, and those obstacles really don't go away. We just learn how to ignore them. So that's my advice to anybody who is in this kind of patrol system conundrum. Just get it rolling. The boys know how to take care of it. They know real well, and you'll be surprised how good they are at it. Here's another email that I received with another pretty common question, actually, and this email comes to me from Jerry in Texas. Here's what Jerry had to say. He says, First, let me thank you for the many hours of work that you put into the podcast. Your candor, wisdom, and humor is remarkable and as a scoutmaster, very relevant. Well, thanks, Jerry. It's always good to hear good things. I'm glad you find the podcast useful. I do have a question like your input. In the past, we have allowed scouts to use some requirements earned in merit badges to suffice as proficiency for rank, and he gives the example of swimming. I don't think there's a problem that the scout has demonstrated proficiency in swimming in order to earn the merit badge to make sure that he gets it, you know, that that can be applied to the rank requirement for swimming. It's a new twist occurred when a scout asked my permission to earn service hours for STAR. I approved it. He completed the task, but unbeknownst to me, he had also asked his merit badge counselor for citizenship service hours referring to the same task. So, is that right? Or is that wrong? Is it okay to use the swimming requirement earned in a merit badge to apply for a rank? Is it okay to use the service requirement for STAR to apply to can that same work go ahead and apply in the merit badge situation? Well, these kind of questions really do come up all the time, especially around camping merit badge, and I'm not even going to touch that. I'm not even going to touch that in this podcast, but I'll tell you what solves the problem. Most of the time, 99% of the time, what solves the problem is reading the requirements and reading them carefully. So, let's take the example of the citizenship in the community requirement, the service part of it, and it's requirement number seven. It says, do the following, choose a charitable organization outside of scouting that interests you and brings people in your community together or work for the good of your community. And then, it says, with your counselors and your parents' approval, contact the organization and find out what young people can do to help. While working on this merit badge, volunteer at least eight hours of your time for the organization. After you volunteer and your volunteer experience is over, discuss what you've learned with your counselor. So, that's the requirement there. Now, let's read the star requirement for service, which is requirement number four. While a first class scout, take part in any service projects in, I'm sorry. While a first class scout, take part in service projects totaling at least six hours of work. These projects must be approved by your scout master. And that's it. Now, what we have to do is ask ourselves if the scout fulfilled both of these requirements. Now, the merit badge requirement is really much more specific than the rank requirement. The merit badge requirement says that the organization should be outside of scouting. It needs to work for the good of the community. The scout has to learn about the organization. He has to get approval from his parents and his counselor to contact him. He then has to get approval for the work that he's going to do. He needs to volunteer to do that work in a minimum of eight hours. And then he needs to discuss what he learned. The star requirement is really very general by comparison. And, you know what? When I sat and read this to answer this email, I learned something new. And I'll tell you about that in a second. It doesn't really have any broad specifics about the project. It just says the scoutmaster needs to approve of it. So, there's no specific or implied limitation in the application of the work a scout did for the merit badge. It doesn't say, yeah, you do this project but you can't apply it to any ranks or anything. And it doesn't say in the rank requirement, doesn't specifically prohibit him from applying it to the rank requirement. And I really don't have a problem. Actually, you've got to pat the scout on the back for noticing this and for using his time really well. Now, naturally, we want to have more service than less. And we don't want boys just kind of like playing this game where, you know, they drop a quarter in the machine and they get a gumball out. We don't want advancement to be that. We want it to be a recognition of like real motivations. But in this instance, this doesn't look like double dipping to me. It looks perfectly acceptable. Now, what did I learn in reading that scout requirement for STAR? It doesn't say anything about the fact that for that service work for STAR that the organization has to be outside of scouting. Go ahead. Open the book. Read it. It doesn't say that. Which really surprised me because that's been one of my general understandings all along. You know, Eagle projects can't be done inside of scouting. And so I just kind of extrapolated that out to the STAR and LIFE service time but apparently I'm wrong. So now I know. Now I've learned something. And I almost always do when you take a question like this, you go back to the requirements and you actually read them. And you look at them carefully with a fair amount of equanimity and without judgment. And then you develop a logical conclusion based on what you read. It can be very revealing. So I know that you might feel differently and your argument might have some merit. Like I said, of course we want more service rather than less. We want scouts to do more things rather than less. But if we don't find any verbiage to support the way that we feel, you know, and the argument that we have must be just plain wrong. I mean, I just learned something new by reading that requirement carefully. I used to tell scouts that their service projects for rank had to be something outside of scouting but that doesn't seem to be the case. So live and learn. Now, this is a common question. This comes up all the time. I've seen it asked many times. People have asked it of me a number of times about double dipping on these requirements and things like that. And you would think if there was a quick, easy answer or if there was a policy statement behind it that you would find it because this is a very, very common question. And there is no language that I can find in the Advancement Committee Guidebook or in any other national publication that tells us exactly how to handle these situations because all we have to do is read the requirement. And once we've read the requirement carefully and we've kind of worked it out in our heads, the answer is right there. So there's the emails for this week. Thanks very much. And you can email me at ClarkGreen, C-L-A-R-K-E-G-R-E-E-N at gmail.com. Thank you for listening to this, the 33rd installment of the Scoutmaster podcast. You can read the Scoutmaster blog at scoutmaster.typepad.com and follow us at Scoutmaster blog on Facebook and Scoutmaster CG on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the Scoutmaster podcast on iTunes and when you do, feel free to leave a comment or a review or a rating. And as I just said a moment ago, you can email me, Clark Green, with your comments and questions at ClarkGreen at gmail.com. That's C-L-A-R-K-E-G-R-E-E-N at gmail.com. 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. No, no, not at all. It's just me talking into a microphone trying to lend a hand to Scout leaders and perhaps have a bit of fun along the way. As always, before we go, we'd like to hear from our founder. Sir Robert, what have you to tell everyone this time? Good luck to you and good camping. Why, thank you, Sir Robert. Until next time, everyone. Erin King, why, Archie Safari, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.