Scoutmaster Podcast 356

And now to you, Scoutmaster. During one of my recent hikes I just I had to laugh at the mountains because they're hilarious: Hill areas, Hill areas- Okay, Yeah, That was a bit of a reach, but most of these are.

This is podcast number 256.. Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast.

This is Clarke Green, And this week I've got some email questions to answer, And you know what I'm going to do just that. So let's get started, shall we? I received this email from an assistant Scoutmaster and committee member- and I'll just keep their name out of the picture here, But they wrote saying the troop I am involved with is on the verge of complete collapse. You can probably guess the reasons, But from my perspective, they start and end with the Scoutmaster and committee chair being overtaxed, largely due to their refusal to delegate any responsibilities. This makes them kind of cranky. They don't use patrols, They don't allow the Scouts to plan, lead, control or become engaged in any of those types of things.

The Scoutmaster decides all the events, the dates, the meals, he shops for the meals, He's the advancement chair, the camping chair, the treasurer, et cetera, et cetera, and he's also deeply involved with several different roles in the Cub pack. Okay, I'm going to stop before I go on, because I want to answer one thing that I frequently get emails about, and that is multiple roles in scouting. Don't Just don't do it. Take on one principal role.

You know you're going to help with a lot of other things, I understand that, But don't take on the principal responsibility for anything beyond one principal role. If you're going to be a Scoutmaster, be a Scoutmaster. If you're going to be a committee chair, be a committee chair. If you're going to be an assistant Scoutmaster, be an assistant Scoutmaster. Don't do three or four things at once, especially across a couple of different units. It denies other people the opportunity to come in and join in as a volunteer and it's bad for Scouts.

In the end, it's bad for Scouts. Now, usually the argument that I get back is: well, nobody else will volunteer.

Well, of course they won't. If you're doing everything, why would they? You have to stop doing things that other volunteers should be doing, And if everything comes to a screeching halt, people will kind of go: oh, I guess somebody needs to take on some responsibilities. But if you feel it is your responsibility, and only your responsibility, to make sure everything is done and you don't particularly like working with other people and the way they do them, you are headed for the land of burnout. Don't do it to yourself, Don't do it to your Scouts.

One role is good More than one role not so great. Okay, just thought that that might be useful advice. Let's go on with this email. Both the Scoutmaster and the committee chair of our troop have expressed to me that they feel like they're done. They're not having fun anymore And they actually just planned to shut the troop down and call it a day. They say that I am a potential future Scoutmaster, but I'm just not ready yet And my initial reaction is to agree.

I have all the position training, but I've been in the troop for under a year. I was involved with our pack for two years And I lack experience.

So right now I am wondering if I should just find a new troop, because this one is imploding, or talk them into allowing me to try to run the troop. So my question to you is: am I ready?

What is your experience with a new Scoutmaster with little experience being able to successfully manage a troop of Scouts? We have 10 or 12 Scouts right now, with maybe five or seven Webelos who say they would join if the current Scoutmaster left?

Am I foolish to try this, or would it be better for all the Scouts involved to send them to other troops? Well, that's a very fair question And to begin answering it, I want to tell you a story. I took over as the Scoutmaster for our troop when I was in my early 20s.

I did not have a whole lot of experience as a Scout And the second or third year we were at summer camp. The camp director took me aside and asked me if I had a couple of weeks free that summer to come down and help him by directing the archery range for the remainder of the summer.

Now I was flattered because I had a lot of respect for this camp director and I love the camp program and being on the staff would be great fun. I told him.

I said: you know, that sounds like a really great time, but I don't know very much about archery. And he looked at me and he said: you know what you'll do? Fine, I'll give you a merit badge book. All you have to do is stay 15 minutes ahead of the Scouts.

And I thought to myself: well, yeah, that seems reasonable. I took up his offer. I stayed 15 minutes ahead of the Scouts. It wasn't all that difficult to learn the skills that I needed And I ended up working at the camp for a dozen or more years and also served in the camp director position.

So if you're concerned about having a whole lot of experience to be able to take over as the Scoutmaster of a Scout Troop, no, don't worry about it, You'll do fine, especially in comparison to the burned out Scouters that you'll be replacing. Expertise and experience is always a good thing to have, but it is entirely overrated in a lot of ways.

Scouts need someone with energy and vision to help them be Scouts, And they don't care what you know, They respond to who you are. I'm going to say that again: They don't care what you know, They respond to who you are.

So let's accept the idea that there could be a lot of people with a lot more experience who would certainly look better on paper for the job. But it doesn't.

But experience, expertise, training, all of those things- Okay, they're pretty solid indicators, but they're not the single most important thing, which is that kind of expansive vision and the energy and the interest in learning as you go along and making it work for Scouts- Another indication that you're a solid candidate for it is. You do possess the humility required to actually learn from experiences. Because you're already asking this question, You see what I mean.

If you thought that, oh yeah, well, this will just be a walk in the park, I can, anybody can- do this, Then I might not be as confident in my advice, but I know anyone with the vision and the energy to do so can rise to this challenge. You'll make plenty of mistakes, but those are really the joy of it all. Figuring all this out is the most fun part, and you'll learn as you go and you'll have fun doing it, and your Scouts will be learning right beside you.

So don't let this troop fold up. Step up, Do what you can, Who you are, your energy and your vision is much more important than any level of experience or expertise you may have, And I'm going to say this too: that what most experienced Scouts believe to be crucially important is often just window dressing. The simple, most obvious things in Scouting are often missed and devalued.

Aim at making it possible for Scouts to go camping with their friends, and everything else that we want to have happen will follow. Don't aim at administrative excellence, Don't aim at any of the other window dressing. Get Scouts out camping with their friends, Put your energy there, Make that your vision and things will start to come together. You are in an ideal situation if both the Scoutmaster and the committee chair say that they're going to step out of the picture Because you do not need them around telling you how to burn yourself out, just like they did. I would just say thank you very much and thank them for having served the troop and get them out of the way. Turn to the work at hand.

The only other piece of advice I have for you is to recruit a committee chair right away you can work with- And my guess is you probably already have a couple of candidates in mind. And I want to repeat: what most experienced Scouters believe is really important is not, It's really just the window dressing of the program. Don't be distracted by their experience or their square knots. What you're told is important at training events and by the literature and by Scouters who believe their experts tends to obscure rather than reveal the simplicity and directness of the Scouting program. And I should mention the advice that I extend in that wise also applies to what you hear from me. If it works, it works If it doesn't move on.

And I leave you with this bit of advice from Baden Powell: The Scoutmasters job is like golf or scything or fly fishing: If you press, you don't get there, At least not with anything like the extent you do with a lighthearted, effortless swing. But you've got to swing, It's no use standing still. This next email comes to me from Jody, who's the parent of a Scout, and they asked this: I have a sticky situation with our Scoutmaster. My son made life rank two years ago. His Eagle project is done, The paperwork is completed, His application is signed. The Scoutmaster, however, refuses to have a Scoutmaster conference for Eagle Scout or put the date on the application because, according to him, my son has not recently been active enough.

My son has already served in a position of responsibility for six months, but the Scoutmaster is not going to sign off until January because he insists he must have a current position of responsibility. My son worked hard to get to this point and being held off at the last minute, like this, does not seem right or fair.

Is the Scoutmaster allowed to do this? And if they are not, what is my recourse?

Well, Jody, this is a simple answer, and I'm sorry you find yourself in this situation. Although this kind of situation is distressingly not unfamiliar, The Scoutmaster's behavior in this case is misdirected and it's counter to what's expected of him.

So I'll spend a couple of minutes in a quick review for everyone on exactly how this works, because this kind of an ambush usually happens when somebody has reservations about an Eagle candidate having served actively in a position of responsibility or having been active in his troop and patrol during the period of time he was a life Scout. Now there is no excuse for Scouters to ambush a Scout over these issues this late in the game.

So, as we know, to move from life to Eagle you have to have tenure in a position of responsibility and you have to have tenure as an active member of your troop and patrol. Enough time goes by in either of those propositions that a Scouter who is concerned that that activity is not sufficient to fulfill the requirement for the next rank needs to be talking to the Scout as soon as that concern becomes apparent to them.

They cannot and should not wait until we get to this point and have them issue a judgment that says: well, you haven't been active enough and you haven't fulfilled your position of responsibility. So what about this scenario where they were active for the specific tenure required to move up to Eagle and they were active in a position of responsibility, but it was a while back. It still counts. They do not have to be currently active. They've already banked all that activity and you can't zero out their account.

So there's two problems here. So we must not ambush Scouts, because any concerns about their level of activity or how they are fulfilling a position of responsibility should be addressed as soon as those concerns become apparent, Not six months down the line, not two and a half years down the line. And this is all in the Guide to Advancement. It's not that hard to understand And the recourse in this situation is reasonably straightforward and it is also outlined in the Guide to Advancement In section ready. Here you go, Pencils up: 8.0., 3.2, 3.2., 4.0., 5.0. 6.0.

7.0. 8.0. 9.0. 10.0. 10.0. 11.0.

11.0. 12.0. 13.0., 14.0., 15.0., 16.0. 17.0., 18.0., 19.0. 20.0. 21.0.

22.0. 23.0., 24.0. 25.0., 26.0., 27.0., 28.0., 29.0. 30.0. 31.0. 32.0.

33.0. 34.0. 35.0., 36.0., 37.0., 38.0., 39.0. 40.0. 40.0. 40.0.

31.0. 31.0. 32.0. 33.0., 34.0., 35.0., 36.0., 39.0., 39.0., 34.0. 35.0., 26.0., 27.0., 28.0.. Past or outside of scouting.

Is this a judgment call or is there a hard and fast BSA national rule we can refer to If it's a judgment call. I would imagine that could get difficult differentiating from one merit badge to the next and one scout to the next.

And the second part of my question is: if past work is permitted, what's the standard of proof? I hate to use the word proof, so perhaps verification for a scout to be credited for the requirement, A note from a coach or a teacher, hard copies of reports or presentations, photographs of the work that they did.

Is there a standard for proof? Well, Tom, those are two very interesting questions, and all that one needs to know about advancement policy and merit badges is in the extraordinarily well-written guide to advancement I referred to earlier in the podcast.

Look in the podcast notes for links directly to a couple of things that I think help answer your question. The first is a section titled about the application for merit badge, or something as better known as the blue card, and, to quote from that section, it says it is the counselor's decision whether to accept work or activities completed prior to the issuing of the signed blue card, and notes that common sense should prevail.

So it is the counselor's decision whether to accept work or activities completed prior to the beginning of the merit badge. It's pretty simple. It's something that is a judgment call on the part of the counselor, who is making any number of judgment calls in counseling the merit badge and fulfilling requirements. Anyway, it's not a sticky situation at all. It's up to the counselor.

The other thing that touches on this is fulfilling more than one requirement with a single activity. There's a section on that in the guide to advancement and I'll have a link to that in the podcast notes.

Now, when we talk about judgment calls, there's no reason that a merit badge counselor or another scouter should make a judgment call about what a scout has done on their own. Our work is developing character and this is a great opportunity to do just that.

We ought to make the most of the opportunity to apply the scout oath and law to these types of situations, and here's an example of exactly what I mean. If I was counseling a merit badge and a scout came to me and we were looking at requirements and the scout said: you know I already did that- I'd ask them to read the requirement very carefully out loud, so we both understood exactly what was required, and then I would ask them to explain to me how they fulfilled that requirement specifically, step by step.

So after we did that, I would ask them if they still believe that the activity they described to me after reading the requirement fulfilled what the requirement asked of them. So I'm not going to impose my judgment on the scout. I am going to seek out how they judge the situation. They may be able to explain better to me exactly what the situation is and I may end up agreeing with them. Or, if I disagree with them, we're going to figure out how they fulfill that requirement in an equitable manner that credits them for any of the past work that they've done perhaps, but still makes it work, and we both leave that conversation happy. If I handle this correctly, the scout's going to leave the conversation convinced the whole thing was his idea in the first place, because that's usually exactly how it goes.

I'll also note what I said before. I have the scout read the requirement out loud and then we kind of break the requirement down, because some of them are pretty complicated.

So we kind of break it down into distinct tasks or pieces of knowledge that they have to fulfill, and that usually makes it pretty obvious whether they've actually fulfilled the requirement or not. Tom asked: if the work's permitted, then what is the standard of proof or verification for the scout to get credit?

Well, I believe that the standard of proof and verification is the first point in the scout law: that a scout is trustworthy. They're not going to lie about something or misrepresent themselves in order to get credit for a merit badge requirement. Because if being trustworthy doesn't mean something in this situation, it doesn't mean anything anywhere else.

So if a scout asked me to sign off on a requirement that I have not seen them complete, I asked them once again: read the requirement, explain fully how they did each separate part of the requirement. If I think they're hedging or, you know, trying to misrepresent what's going on, I just keep asking questions. If they haven't fulfilled the requirement, it becomes pretty obvious and I usually don't have to tell them. If they haven't, we'll figure out how they're going to fulfill the requirement and we'll talk about it again soon. And always before I sign the requirement, I say: look, I trust what you've told me because you're a scout and we both understand before I sign that this is really a matter of your personal honor and I don't want to sign this if you're not 100% sure that I should. Like I said, if the scout law doesn't mean something in this instance, it's meaningless everywhere else.

So I have to say that, as a Scoutmaster, I paid as close to zero attention to merit badges as I possibly could. I regarded them- as I do most things about advancement- as really none of my business. This is something that it's up to a scout for themselves. Scouts would bring me blue cards to sign before starting and I always did after, asking them who the counselor was, but beyond that I had as little to do with that process as possible. We stopped having merit badges as the focus of troop meetings or outings years and years and years ago. We don't really keep track of who's doing what merit badge or anything in that wise.

Our scouts manage their own merit badge paperwork. They find their own counselors and they bring us signed blue cards when they're done. And I have honestly very little idea of how they do that and I've always been surprised by the amount of merit badge work our scouts do, despite our kind of laissez faire attitude that we're not really promoting doing merit badges. We don't really care whether you do them or not, and we're certainly not going to manage any piece of the process other than taking the blue card and making sure you get the badge.

So, one way or another, it doesn't seem that it's been all that difficult for them to find registered counselors, nor to finish the work on the badges. Outside of troop meetings and camping, I've even gone so far is when we've gone down to summer camp.

You know, let's say: look, don't spend all your time doing merit badges, do something fun for you know, just like build a fort, go on a hike, hang out. You don't have to do eight hours of merit badge work every day. I haven't had a whole lot of scouts take me up on that, by the way.

Well, that's the email questions I have to answer for this podcast. If you have a question, it's easy to get in touch with me. I am always available at Clark at scoutmastercgcom. That's CLA RKE at scoutmastercgcom.

I want to thank all the folks who are backers and patrons and make the podcast possible. If you'd like to be a backer or a patron, just go to scoutmastercgcom and click the support link at the top of the page and all that remains for us to do is to hear from our founder, Sir Robert Baden Powell. Sir Robert, good luck to you and good camping.

Why? Thank you, sir? Until next time, everyone.