Scoutmaster Podcast 51

And now for you, Scoutmaster. We were out camping last weekend in the middle of the winter and it was cold.

Oh, how cold was it? I'll tell you how cold it was.

We boiled a pot of water over the campfire and we put it down on the ground and it froze so fast that it was still a little warm. Yeah, that's cold. Hey, this is podcast number 51..

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clark. Green Had a good week and we heard from a lot of folks.

Hi, Clark, Your blog is so cool. Well, thank you. Just dropping by to say: keep up the great work. And that was from Lebo. Thank you, Lebo. Thanks for getting in touch Over on iTunes, Thundering Thor wrote this.

I think we're going to have a contest for the most unlikely iTunes username, But Thundering Thor said: whatever you do regarding scouting podcasts, this is the one to sign up for. Scoutmaster Clark delivers nuanced advice as well as produces a polished podcast show. It's got production value, valuable information and a great listen. Great work, Mr Green.

How can anyone not like a good polka? Ah well, thank you very much, Thor, And your check is in the mail. Naturally, I love the podcast, but the 1,001 strings is a little much to bear on repeated listenings. This is from Mark, who got in touch by email this past week. Yeah, Mark, if you are a regular listener, at the end of the show I've got a piece of music by the 1,001 strings And you have to be a certain age to remember the 1,001 strings. Think elevator music, Think going to the dentist and hearing this music in the background.

And it's a take on the bugle call taps. It's called Taps for the Fallen Brave. It's a pretty good piece of music, but it's a little 70s. It's a lot 70s. It's got harpsichords and things like that.

So Mark was kindly requesting that I might want to change that out every once in a while. Well, Mark, listen all the way through.

I think you'll be happy when we get to the end of the podcast. A lot of people are happy when we get to the end of the podcast. Other than that, Mark goes on to say: I've learned a lot from the podcast and almost always use it as the basis for my Scoutmasters Minute, with proper attribution, of course.

Well, I should hope so, Mark, because I have agents everywhere Heard from Blaze this week And we're having an ongoing email discussion. Blaze is a new Scoutmaster, About to be a new Scoutmaster Webelos Den Leader. We're just kind of talking back and forth a little bit about getting a troop started. Next week I will have the email newsletter ready to go out And I'm sure that you'll want to get on the list for that And you can do that by going to scoutmastertypepadcom. If you look in the upper right-hand corner in the right column at that web page you will see a place where you can sign up one of two ways. You can sign up to get an email update every time there is an update to the Scoutmaster blog And you'll also get the newsletter.

Or you can just sign up for the newsletter, which will come out about once a month, And that newsletter will be a digest of what's been on the blog and in the podcast for the past month. It will also have some interesting resources and things like that around a central scouting theme of one subject or another And it will have a gift offer from one of my affiliate sponsors- And I've got a good one lined up for this month- And I'll hope you subscribe to the newsletter and get that in your email inbox very soon.

So in this podcast we're going to tackle a couple of things. First of all, in Scoutmastership, in seven minutes or less, we're going to return to that scarred landscape of Eagle Scout stuff. Oh, my goodness, I get emails regularly about different problems that people are having with the Eagle Scout process,

And so I'm going to talk a little bit about that in Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. And then there's an email that I received with a question about the composition of patrols, And we'll be talking about that afterwards. That's a lot to do for this week's podcast.

So let's get started, shall we? Let's get to the Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. Here's an email that I've removed all the personally identifying information from, But it could be any one of several emails that I receive on a regular basis about this same subject. Dear Mr Green, please help. My 17-and-a-half-year-old Life Scout is working feverishly on his Eagle project.

With five months to go before his birthday, His Scoutmaster now says he doesn't remember my son having leadership positions And if he did, he doesn't remember his activity being sufficient. He is saying that my son will not earn Eagle because he hasn't fulfilled the leadership requirement and claims that he just hasn't been a leader. This is very frustrating for us all. My son is soft-spoken, but has done what he has been asked to do and fulfilled those rules to the best of his ability. Furthermore, this Scoutmaster says that he requires all boys to attend at least 75% of the meetings during this six-month period of leadership.

Since there isn't six months left before his birthday, and because my son hasn't attended a high enough percentage of these meetings while he has held these positions- now don't ask me how the Scoutmaster knows his attendance wasn't high enough or his performance wasn't good enough if he doesn't even remember my son was holding these positions. But can a Scoutmaster or a troop set its own standards for Eagle Scout rank advancement? He points to our troop handbook regarding attendance and his right to be the subjective authority on that subject.

Is this fair? Is it within the regulations for the National Boy Scouts of America?

Can there be an attendance requirement to the six months of leadership position associated with the Eagle rank advancement? My son certainly meets the definition of active as it is officially defined, and it's really actually quite a low bar to clear. To make matters worse, the first I ever heard that my son was in this situation was an email from the Scoutmaster to me exactly five months before his birthday and the Scoutmaster said that was it.

There's nothing more now that could be done, because there just was not time. That part of it made me feel as though we had been ambushed from people I have known for 10 years. It is just unexplainable to me. I feel it's probably much too late to switch troops. I mean, we've been with this one since he was a Tiger Cup.

If I can't resolve this within the troop, what should I do? Is there someone I should speak to at the national office or my council office? This whole situation just makes me sick. My oldest son is an Eagle who was dealing with the same people, but they didn't have any such requirements at the time. My younger son, who am I talking about here, is not a slacker. He's a wonderful, intelligent, respectful young man who had a 90% attendance record for years when he was younger and that declined a bit given his very heavy, non-scouting senior year of high school College applications in the fall of 2010 and he spent six weeks in Kenya building houses the last two summers.

He's rowing crew in the fall and spring and all of that. So that came to me in an email and it just frosts my cork And I get this kind of thing regularly. It's amazing. I just cannot believe it.

So let's look at this from a couple of perspectives, shall we? First of all, all the questions that were asked to me in that email boil down to two things: Can attendance metrics be mandated by a troop?

In other words, can a troop have a policy that says, in order for you to be considered an active scout, you have to attend a percentage of outings or a percentage of meetings, or something like that? Well, the answer to that question is really really easy: No, A troop cannot do that. If you look, you're going to find how the word active is defined officially And basically that definition is: if a scout is on the roster and he's regularly engaged by troop leadership, he is considered active.

Now I'm not going to take the time right now to argue about whether you like that policy or not. Some people do, Some people don't- And I'm not going to take the time right now to argue why that policy is good. I like that policy.

I think it is good. You know you might have a different opinion, But it is exactly what the rules of the game are.

You might not like the idea that you know you get six points for a touchdown and then you get another point for the kick. Afterwards You might not think that that's such a great idea, but that's the rules of the game And we have to play by the rules of the game. We don't get to make them ourselves.

The other question is: can a scoutmaster decide at this point that a scout has not shown adequate leadership? I've got to say 99 and 99. One hundredths percent of the time, no. I can't imagine a situation where a scoutmaster would just simply say no.

And here's why: Because, based on the evidence that I see in this email, the boy has an Eagle Project And he's working on it. So somebody had to go through the Eagle Project process with him. The scoutmaster had to sign that he was qualified and had reviewed this with the boy. And if a scoutmaster has waited this long to raise concerns about the viability of a scout's leadership, if he's waited this long, he's not doing his job. He's not being a very responsible scoutmaster. If I had concerns about a boy who was in a leadership position within the troop and did not execute that leadership position in a way that I thought was effective, I would talk to him immediately.

I would not wait until it was time for me to pass off his active leadership role towards his Eagle rank. If I was uncertain that he had been in a leadership position and I had some doubts about the way that he did it and we actually got to this point.

Well, my next action would be to talk to the scout himself and to ask him to tell me how he fulfilled the leadership requirement. Now, if I found his explanation wasn't very good, I would ask my senior patrol leader, I would ask my fellow adults, I would ask some of my older scouts. I would say: evaluate his leadership for me, Tell me what you think. I might even ask the scout's parents to help me fill in the blanks if I'm not too sure about what was going on. What I would be doing is I would be starting from the assumption of two things: that a scout is trustworthy and that I am on his side trying to help him sort this out. I'm not sitting on Mount Olympus with the keys to the kingdom in my hand waiting for a scout to come supplicating to me about passing him on a leadership requirement.

Boys who are in leadership should have an ongoing relationship with their adult leaders in which they are continuously discussing this leadership role, where they're continually being mentored And I'm just dumbfounded that anyone would have this kind of a diseased ego where they think that they're going to just close the door on a kid. A kid who, by you know- and of course I'm hearing from the boy's father in this email, So I understand that I'm getting one side of the story- But who would close the door on a boy who has been very involved in things You know? He's a senior in high school, He's very involved in stuff, He's volunteered, He's done a lot of things in the community, He's active.

Why in the world wouldn't I want him to be an Eagle Scout? If it was just a matter of punching a ticket, punching a time clock whenever he showed up at a troop meeting or an outing, that would be a very narrow definition of what leadership is and what being a community servant leader is. There is more to consider than just what is within the scope of what a young man does in scouting.

Now, yes, they have to occupy a position of responsibility for a given amount of time, But that's pretty simple, That's pretty easy. I think there are two options for anybody who finds themselves in this position: They can fight or they can switch.

Now, the fight option is not a very good idea because it's very trying and very emotional And it adds more emotion to the situation that this family already finds itself in. It means that they need to go to the chartered organization representative for their son's troop.

They need to outline exactly what has happened, exactly why they think it is wrong, And then the chartered organization representative needs to go to the scoutmaster and tell him that he needs to sign the boy off on his requirements and institute a board of review. If the scoutmaster is this sure that the boy does not deserve to become an Eagle Scout, he can go up here at the board of review and let the board of review figure that one out.

I mean, wouldn't that be just a smarter way of doing things rather than a scoutmaster just slamming the door in a boy's face? And the reason we go to the chartered organization representative is the chartered organization representative has the absolute final authority on who is going to be a volunteer with the troop. They're the person who can tell a recalcitrant scoutmaster that his services are no longer required. And if this one did not kind of see the light and sign the boy's requirements and I was the chartered organization representative, I would shake his hand, I would thank him for his service and I would say that his services were no longer required, that we'll be appointing a new scoutmaster who's willing to do things the way that scouting is supposed to happen. Failing getting the chartered organization representative to do this, it's time to walk away and find another troop. It's a fool's errand to think that you're going to change people's minds or that you're going to get them to see the light, or that you're going to instruct them on the way that the BSA is supposed to happen, And that's not going to work.

Outside of the chartered organization representative is going to do it. It's not going to work. Nobody at the national office is going to get involved. Nobody at the council office is going to get involved, and rightfully so.

You know, unless there is a problem that needs to come to the attention of the civil authorities, you are not going to get people on the council or the district level in trying to tell a scoutmaster exactly what to do. They can encourage him, they can advise him, they can do that type of thing, but as long as he was within the civil law and as long as he has not flagrantly- and in my opinion. This one has flagrantly ignored the policies of the BSA. Nobody's going to come down on him like a ton of bricks. It's just not going to happen. I wouldn't put myself through it, I wouldn't put my son through it.

I'd go find another troop. If that boy showed up at my doorstep and his father was along with him, it would take us about 10 minutes to sit down and figure out if he had been in a leadership position or not.

Very simple questions, Very easy to do, And if there was any doubt in my mind, I could call a couple of people from his old troop, ask them the same questions and then I would know. Then I would make sure to sign off his requirements.

I would institute, I would, you know, get the wheels in motion for an Eagle Border review and that boy would become an Eagle Scout. No matter what option this family decides to pursue, it's going to be emotional, it's going to be difficult, it's going to color this young man's experience in scouting. He can't be insulated from the fact that sometimes people who he is supposed to trust and respect have let him down. We don't let anger and revenge inform our actions. In that case We just move on.

I think the real message here for us as scout leaders is to understand what the policies are surrounding a question like this and what best practices are surrounding a question like this. And I think I've already stated them, but I'll restate this: Listen, you don't get to the point where you are going to sit down and ambush a boy and his family at a Scoutmasters conference because you say, well, I've been watching you for these past several months and you're just not a leader. That is unconscionable, That is mean and that is bullying. If I have a question about a boy's capability, about his dedication or about his suitability as a leader, I'm going to address it with him right away. I'm not going to wait And I'm going to have those questions, certainly about any Scout who is a leader. But my job, that I need to do as a Scoutmaster is to be working closely along with my youth leadership, mentoring them, talking to them and having an ongoing relationship in which these things are discussed on a regular basis.

So that is one story that is repeated, unfortunately, many, many, many times. I'm sure this bears further discussion. There are a lot of smart people that listen to this podcast who've been Scout leaders for a long time and have been up against the same thing, and I'm interested to hear from you. And yes, there are many possible scenarios and things like that. Yes, I only have one side of the story, but I hear this all the time. If you have some thoughts on the subject and you think you can shed some light on how to fix this type of problem, do get in touch.

Hi, I'm Kevin Callen and I'm listening to Scoutmaster iPod. No, iPod, What is it called? Again, Hi, I'm Kevin Callen, the Happy Camper, and you're listening to the Scoutmaster Podcast. Ah, beautiful, beautiful. Write me a letter, Send it by mail, Email. That is folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. Hey, here's another email. I take in the Scoutmaster Podcast and blog on a regular basis and I learn a lot from them. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the composition of patrols, that is, mixed-age patrols as opposed to same-age patrols, as recommended by the BSA. I tend to prefer same-age patrols, but I have heard some strong arguments in favor of mixed-age patrols, namely the distribution of maturity and experience amongst the patrols, and that's from Jeff, who is a Scoutmaster in Benton, Arkansas. Thanks, Jeff, for getting in touch and I'm glad that you find the podcast and the blog useful.

I've seen both the mixed-age and the same-age patrols work well. I'd suggest that the most important factor is how the patrols get formed in the first place.

Let's imagine you're going to start a new troop and there are 35 boys you know waiting to form patrols. So how are you going to do that?

Well, there's a lot of alternatives. Perhaps a couple of adults would look over a list or a questionnaire completed by the Scouts and divide them into patrols according to their age or interests, or into combinations that you know they imagine might would work. Another way to form patrols would be to ask the boys to do the task themselves and to see what happens.

What they would be likely to do is to make up patrols based on their own interests and friendships. They may make some changes along the way as they figure out what works and what doesn't, and these may end up being mixed-age patrols or same-age patrols. What matters is, in the end, they've done it themselves.

I've got to tell you I used to be much more concerned about engineering patrols myself and to put them together the way that I thought that they would work, but I found that, you know, when I put this into the hands of the Scouts, I get a much, much better result. I'll remind everybody that Baden-Powell once said: the best progress is made in those troops where the power and responsibility are really put into the hands of the patrol leaders. This is the secret of success in scout training. I too have heard, and for a time subscribed to the idea that patrols would function better if we engineer them to distribute age and maturity.

You know it's a pretty sensible argument, But in the end I don't get involved in how patrols get formed in my troop. I leave this totally in the hands of the patrol leaders' counsel.

Very occasionally a parent will get in touch and tell me that their son isn't getting along very well with somebody else in his patrol and I'll relay that information to my senior patrol leader. We'll discuss it and I'll ask him to look into it, And usually this results in finding a better fit for the scouting question. But remember, when power and responsibility are really, really, really put into the hands of the patrol leaders, they rise to the challenge and they make good things happen. They'll amaze you at what they're able to do every single time.