Scoutmaster Podcast 45

And now for you, Scoutmaster.

So, there's a group of economists. Yeah, I said economists. You know, the guys study the economy, tell us things about it. Everybody knows an economist, right? Well, they're climbing in the Alps, and they get lost. And they're hopelessly lost. They can't figure out where they are. So, they get out the map, and they start studying it. And they've got compasses and GPS units. And, you know, they're taking bearings and looking at the sun and studying the sky and the landscape. And finally, one says, I think I know where we are. I think I've got it. And the others look at him and say, okay. And so, he says, you see that mountain over there? Yeah. That mountain over there in the distance? Yeah, that one. Well, according to the map, we're standing on top of it. All right. This is podcast 45. Hey! Hey! Hey! Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clark Green. In our last podcast, we talked about the concept of fun and that fun is challenge. And I got this comment from Alan who said this. Regarding fun, I don't think we adults are always a good gauge of this. For instance, during our camp out this past weekend, I got the Scouts together for a night hike up a nearby short peak. The other adults thought it would be a disaster in the dark, so they didn't go. The full moon was shedding a surreal light over everything and the warm air was pleasant. And the boys had to make their way through some thickets over a ridge and then up to the summit. I heard some discouraging words along the way and thought to myself, was this a mistake? But once we reached the top, it really paid off. We looked out over beautiful natural vista and I could see that the boys were having fun. And that's fun. It wasn't easy. And the adults thought it was going to be a disaster. But I think that's a great illustration, Alan. I think that's a good illustration, Alan, of exactly what we were talking about. And we need to continually challenge ourselves as adults to try and put ourselves in the mindset of the Scouts that we're working with. We also talked about Roland Amundson's quote last week. Roland Amundson, the polar explorer, who said that adventure is just a bit of bad planning. A new Scoutmaster said this to me, I never knew I was in such great company. My personal life slogan is it's not an adventure until something goes wrong. Well, in this podcast, we're going to be talking about boards of review. And I want to talk a little bit about how boards of review are conducted and give you some resources for training people who are going to sit on a board of review. Before we move on, though, I want to talk about blogging and podcasting. And I want to talk about that specifically in the context of Scout blogs and podcasts. There's a handful of us out there. And it takes a lot of time to put these things together. And this is a little self-serving, what I'm saying. And I don't like to pay a whole lot of attention to it. So you'll just forgive me for a moment. But I thought it would be a good thing to explain exactly what this takes and how you can support it. Besides myself, I'll give you, for instance, my buddy Jerry with the Scoutmaster Minute podcast. He's got a great podcast, great blog. He's out there doing good work and certainly somebody who you should be listening to. He is on something called PTC Media. P-T-C Media. Definitely worth going to the PTC Media website, listening to Jerry and the other podcasters there. This blog and podcast, well, the blog started five years ago this month. And it's had its ups and downs, but it's been very gratifying personally because, you know, I've been able to sit and write and work out my own thinking about scouting. And then I've been able to meet people virtually, you know, and have conversations with them about different subjects. And the response I receive indicates that other people are finding this helpful. I started the podcast in February of this year and we're still rolling along. We're at podcast number 45. Here's what it takes to do this. It takes a good number of hours to put together a blog and a podcast on a weekly basis. And the practical reality kind of boils down to two things. It takes time and it takes a little tiny bit of money. Not a lot. Just a little bit. Now, I'll spend somewhere between 10 and 15 hours a week working on the blog and the podcast. And I'm very happy to do that. I would probably end up doing it if nobody listened to it. And did I mention I have a patient wife? And the expenses, it's very de minimis. It's like maybe 30 bucks a month or something like that to maintain the web services and things need for that. So I'm not going broke. And I'm not starved for attention. But, you know, there's a tiny little bit of income that I get off of some affiliate links and things like that on the blog. And let me tell you how you can support the Scoutmaster blog, the Scoutmaster podcast, and all the other ones that are out there. And it's really quite simple to do. I'm not going to ask you for money. I don't really need it, to tell you the truth. Don't tell my wife I said that, please. She's patient, but to a point. You know, number one is to respond to what you see and hear. You know, respond to what you read. Comments and questions and reviews and ratings and things like that, these mean a tremendous amount to anybody who's doing this. Because, honestly, you know, there's no voices out there to respond to you. There's no faces that you're looking at while you're doing this. And it's very easy to get into the mindset of you're kind of doing this in a vacuum. So response, in any form, is tremendously important to anybody with a blog or a podcast. And it's pretty easy to do. You can email. You can comment on the blog. You can leave ratings and reviews on iTunes. And I mention this on every podcast just kind of as a general reminder. But if you see a blog or a podcast that does have a specific business sponsor, well, do a little shopping with that sponsor. And tell them where you found out about them. And that certainly helps. It helps a great deal. As I said before, I'm not going broke. I'm not getting rich. It's just kind of maintaining. It's all right. And I'm not really starved for attention because people are very kind and they do respond. If you are one of the people who respond regularly, well, I really appreciate it. And I'll thank you again. If you aren't, I'd love you to get in touch soon. You know, send me an email or something like that. We'll talk about that at the end of the podcast. Now, we're going to talk about boards of review. And it's a great subject. And it's something that we've got a lot of information for you on. So let's get started, shall we? Scout Mastership in seven minutes. Or less.

So a scout has all his requirements signed off. He's had his Scout Masters conference and he's ready to go to the final step in passing to the next rank in scouting. And that is a board of review. Boards of review are kind of misunderstood in some places. What a board of review is, is not so much a retest and an examination of a scout as it is a checkup on the troop and the patrols program. Now, this board of review will have three to six adults from the troop committee. And they will sit down with the scout and they will ask him a lot of questions for about 15 minutes. And they'll be good open-ended questions. So they'll be looking for more than yes or no answers. You know, what was your favorite requirement for this rank? And can you tell us why it was your favorite? What did you really enjoy doing? Was there something in this that you didn't particularly enjoy doing? Do you feel like you learned some things in being able to do this? Can you tell us what you learned? How's your patrol doing? What would you like to do with your patrol? How would you make your patrol better? Would you like to be a patrol leader someday? Just interesting questions to kind of investigate to see what kind of an experience a scout is having. The review is not of the scout. I mean, that's not the point here. The real point of a board of review is to find out how the troop and patrol is doing. And also to make sure that the scout is getting a good experience and that the program is working for him. So once they've had their time, they will ask the scout to step out of the room. They'll discuss what they have learned. And then they will ask him to come back in. And they will, in 99.9% of the cases, congratulate him on having completed everything for his last rank. The board of review, like I said, is not an interrogation. It's not a retesting of a scout's competence. It's not an examination. It's just an attempt to see that the examinations that went into getting the scout signed off were up to standard. It's a checkup to see that what should have been done actually was done. It's a friendly growth experience. Some reasons to have a board of review might include a scout's lack of advancement. Maybe a perceived trouble that he's having in the troop or a certain event at the last camp out or meeting. Ideally, a scout should sit for a board of review about every six months, whether he's advancing or not. Now, if a scout turns out to be poorly prepared for his board of review, and maybe he has clearly not achieved what his book says that he has, that's a result not so much of something that the scout has done as what has brought him to the board, those who've signed off his accomplishments without actually having them properly achieved. Thus, a scout might not be as responsible for his lack of preparation as one would think. Now, this doesn't wipe away all the responsibility on the scout, but it does place responsibility where it ought to be, those who are delivering the program to him. The actual meeting with the boy should be give and take, an informal conversation between the scout and a group of adults who are interested in his welfare and are supportive of his efforts. We should encourage the scout to come to conclusions on his own and not just tell them what we think. What we have to do to keep our troop boards of review on track is to see that the members of the board have been properly trained to conduct a board of review. And there is an excellent resource, a board of review training, and there's a PDF version of that that I'll link to on the blog. And there are many, many resources available on the web. But I would make sure to say, be sure that they are consistent with BSA training. Ask Andy, which is a venerable web-based advice column for scouts, has a great true-false quiz on a board of review, and I'll include a link to that. I just thought it might be interesting for us to go through a few of the questions from that true-false quiz, and we'll get an idea how good we are at understanding the intent and the conduct of a board of review. Here is question number one. True or false? You ready? The board of review is the final opportunity for the troop's adult leaders to retest the scout to make certain he's mastered the skills and learned the requirements for the rank that he's seeking. So what do you think? True or false? Well, that's false, because we are not retesting the skills. We want to know that he's learned them. We want to know that he has a legitimate claim to having those things signed off. But it doesn't really mean that we retest the skills. Now, what would a retest be? Well, tie me these knots. Show me this first aid problem. Explain the whole map and compass thing to me. Something like that. That really doesn't have a place in a board of review, because those skills have already happened. Now, we might ask some questions about those. What can you tell me what a square knot is used for? Or tell me how you completed your first aid requirement for the badge. Explain to me how that worked. And this is just kind of a checkup, not to see that the scout did everything properly, but to see that the troop and patrol did everything properly. I do this myself as a scoutmaster every once in a while. I'll just, you know, in a scoutmaster's conference, I will ask the same type of questions to check up and make sure that whoever is signing off requirements has gone ahead and done that properly. I will sign off requirements for a boy's badge of rank maybe once a month. Most of that happens with patrol leaders and the senior patrol leader and the older scouts in the troop are the ones signing those requirements off, and my assistant scoutmasters as well, but largely youth members. Inevitably, there's going to be a point at which I need to remind them to read the requirements very carefully. Okay, so this one is tricky. This question is tricky. True or false? False. The scoutmasters or assistant scoutmasters vote in a board of review carries the same weight as all the others. True or false? You got that one easy, right? Scoutmasters and assistant scoutmasters do not sit on boards of review. We know that, right? I mean, that's a policy statement from the BSA. Scoutmasters and assistant scoutmasters do not participate in boards of review. A couple more quick true-false questions. How about this? A group board of review can be conducted for multiple scouts simultaneously so long as they're all candidates for the same rank. Well, that's false. You don't have multiple boards of review. This is a personal growth agreement conference with an individual scout. And you really can't, you don't do this with three guys at a time or five guys at a time or two guys at a time. This is that scout's opportunity to sit down with members of the troop committee and to discuss his career in scouting with them. Here's another good true-false question. The BSA guidelines for advancement requirements represent the minimum standards for ranks and merit badges. The troops' leaders set the final standards. True or false? You got that one too, right? I hope. That's absolutely false. We know that the advancement requirements are written in stone and that we cannot subtract from them or add to them. We know that, right? I'm glad. So one last true-false question. A board of review represents an opportunity for the troops' committee to learn how well the troops' adult leaders are delivering the scout program to its youth. Absolutely true. And that is what boards of review are all about. They're certainly not retests of requirements for any reason. They're definitely conversations. And many of these conversations just need to focus on the kind of experience the scout is having and how well the troop is delivering the scouting program as written. This is a big subject in a lot of ways. There are lots of sets of questions that people have written for boards of review out there. Lots of thinking about it. But the most important thing is what I've just said, that the board of review is a focus on the kind of experience a scout is having and how well the troop is delivering that program. So I'd like to hear your questions or comments about how boards of review are conducted. And if you have any questions about exactly how they should be worked out, do get in touch with me and I'll tell you how to do that in just a moment. Well, once again, thanks for listening to this edition 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 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.

Okay, well, if you've hung on this long, you've gotten to the part of the podcast. In which you get a bonus joke this time. And it's another economist joke. These are hard to find. No, it's rare. Three economists go duck hunting. They're sitting in the duck blind and a bunch of ducks fly across their field of vision there. And one of them fires, shoots way, way ahead of the group of ducks. And one of them fires and shoots way, way behind the group of ducks. And the third guy says, hey, we got them. I didn't say it was going to be a very good joke. But it is an economist joke.

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. Nope, it's just me talking into a microphone, trying to lend a hand to scout leaders and have a bit of fun along the way, perhaps. Well, before we go, we need to hear from the founder, Sir Robert Baden-Powell. Sir Robert. Good luck to you and good camping. Thank you, sir. Until next time. Thank you. Thank you.