Scoutmaster Podcast 89

And now the old Scoutmaster. Scouts go hiking and that's a wonderful thing to do, but you do need to understand the safety rules and the traditions of going on a hike in farm country, like we have around here Now. A farmer will typically let you cross his cow pasture for free, but you do need to remember that the bull charges. Hey, this is podcast number 89..

Hey, this is Clarke Green. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. Let's see who we heard from this week. David Shoup is a committee chair for Troop 59 in Egypt, PA, And David wrote in to say I wanted to thank you. I have experienced several hurdles with our district approval process for Eagle projects. I remembered that you've said on several occasions: if you're in doubt, check the book or run to the resource or any other kind of thing that I've said in the past like that.

You're right, David. Your recent post about the guide to advancement- the new guide to advancement, by the way- finally gave me the information I've been needing. Thanks for all your work. I'm a faithful listener to your podcast. Keep it up Well. Thank you, David, for being in touch.

My best information about the two new documents that have come out recently: the new guide to advancement and the new Eagle project workbook is that they are mandatory after the first of the year. Up until then there's a transition period, much like there is for new requirements for merit badges or badges of rank.

So that's my best information so far. Don't don't bet the house on the dog on that. I also heard from Christopher Beaver says: Hi Clark, Today is my second day as Scoutmaster.

Well, that's, that's got to be some kind of record for the podcast. Get somebody on their second day as Scoutmaster.

I'm with a well established troop in Madison, Wisconsin. Although I know there will inevitably be challenges ahead of me, I'm very excited about my new role. There is nothing quite like mentoring young men, and scouting to me is the ultimate experience for our country's youth. This past weekend at Outdoor Leader Skills Training, I couldn't help but think back on my experience as a scout. I can say without a doubt that I'm a better person today because of the time I spent as a scout.

Now it's my turn to give back to a new generation of scouts. Thanks for your podcast. I can't wait from week to week to hear the latest one.

Well thanks, Christopher. Congratulations on being appointed as a Scoutmaster, And I hope we hear back from you again. And you're right, There's nothing like being able to give back to a new generation of new scouts. It's, it's, it is worthy work. I applaud you for having undertaken to do that.

Well, this week on the podcast, it's just me, That's right. No interviews, No special guests, Nothing, just me in the microphone, And I'm going to be talking about the new guide to advancement and the new Eagle project workbook and Scoutmaster ship in seven minutes or less. Just kind of give an overview and it'll it'll be a subject of discussion for some time, I'm sure. Next up we will be answering some email letters. Actually, I have three email questions that have come in in the past week and we're going to spend some time working on those.

Well, that should be enough for this podcast. So let's get started.

Shall we Scoutmaster ship in seven minutes or less? Well, as I announced in passing last week, there is a new guide to advancement that replaces the advancement committee policies and procedures, God, and a new Eagle Scout workbook, And I wanted to expand on my first impressions of both of these documents because I think they're going to be tremendous influences for good.

You know, nobody really likes change. There have been a couple of pretty substantive changes But you know, as I reviewed the new advancement guide, I wanted to reconcile it with any advice that I've given in the past, because I want to correct any advice to meet whatever new policies and procedures There are.

I'm pretty safe on about 99% of them And we'll talk about the couple of things that are different now that I would change my advice to you about. But I think most of what's on the blog and has been in these podcasts is still pretty solid.

There's a couple of differences- We'll get to those, But I think it's going to settle a lot of debatable questions and settle a lot of common problems that Scouts have had in trying to advance, by informing us leaders about exactly how this is all to work. One statement in the guide says: the guide to advancement is the official source for administering advancement in all Boy Scouts of America programs.

It replaces the advancement committee policies and procedures and advancement and recognition policies and procedures, which are no longer valid Now I had mentioned earlier in the podcast that there was maybe a date attached to that, but you know that seems to be a pretty definitive statement that upon publication, this is what we're supposed to be doing? I'm going to do my best to revise any former posts at scoutmastercgcom to alert readers to the changes in the new advancement guide. But the guide also adds a very wise statement. It says: be aware that statements or interpretations offered from unofficial websites- I'm an unofficial website- and other such sources- This is an unofficial podcast- maybe out of date or incorrect. It will not be considered in resolving advancement questions and issues In situations not specifically covered in this guide.

Advancement chairs, coordinators or other administrators should make decisions based on the aims and mission of the Boy Scouts of America, as well as the Scout Oath and Law and Common Sense. How about that?

Here's one thing that that statement tells me and I want to make sure that all of my readers and listeners understand. I don't want to be a source to resolve an argument. If I can point you to the source of resolution, that's fine, But don't take what I offer as opinions to be gospel truth, because it certainly isn't. You should test everything that I say against the resources that are available that state the policies and procedures of the Boy Scouts of America.

There's a disclaimer on my website and there's a disclaimer in every podcast that I am not an official voice in any way. I'm just trying to be helpful.

So don't consider what is said here or what's written on the blog to be anything other than my opinion, Unless you can back it up with a clearer policy statement or a procedural statement in the BSA literature. So let's make that abundantly clear.

Now, in the first couple of pages of the new guide it lists any significant changes And I've reviewed some of these significant changes and I have not reviewed others. But let's just go down the list. Number one: it says Council, District and Union Advancement Committee responsibilities are detailed and listed. I haven't looked at that yet. Number two is that the section on awards and recognitions has been eliminated for integration into a new publication, The Guide to Awards and Insignia.

Now I haven't seen that new guide yet, but there's apparently a new publication coming out called The Guide to Awards and Insignia. My imagination tells me that, if what holds true of the new guide to advancement, the new guide to awards and Insignia will probably replace the uniform and Insignia guide that we've had for years and years. Number three: it says Cub Scouting Material updated.

I love Cub Scouts but I'm not really actively involved in them, so I haven't looked at that piece. Number four: change number four: Active participation and position of responsibility requirements approached from units established reasonable expectations.

Now units can establish some reasonable expectations- with reasonable being the word to emphasize- to active participation and position of responsibility requirements. Now, I've argued against metrics being applied to these types of things in the past. I'm probably going to maintain, in my opinion, that that's really not a great idea.

But it is now allowed. It was specifically prohibited by policy, but now it is allowed. This change does allow units to do this- to attach metrics- but it does not allow those metrics alone to be the sole determination of active or to having fulfilled a position of responsibility.

Instead, it describes for active, a three-step process and alternatives to that process, And I think I'm going to expand on that. I've already prepared a post for the blog about that and we'll probably expand on that in a future edition of the Scoutmaster podcast. But you may think that I don't like that particular change, but I do.

I absolutely support it and I think it's very intelligent and when we get into it you'll see why. Change number five is: they have included venturing and sea scouts in the Guide to Advancement in detail, And I'm sure that that is a great relief to people who are working in those programs to have that easily at hand and to be included in the guide. Number six- and I haven't really looked at this: the Merit Badge section has been reorganized and expanded. Number seven: Board of Review practices clarified, including wearing the uniform, and I have looked at that And again, that will be something we'll expand on later. If you want the short story.

Nothing really changed there but they clarified the fact that you know you cannot ding a scout for showing up to a Board of Review without a uniform. You can't exclude him from having a Board of Review. That's going to ruffle some feathers and remain a debatable question, but policy is pretty clear about that. Number eight: Rank Advancement appeals limited to Board of Review objections. I haven't really looked at that and I'll get back to you on that. Number nine: Eagle Scout rank application process clarified and updated and we'll talk about that in a minute in the context of talking about the Eagle Project workbook.

Number 10, Eagle Scout service project requirement changed, detailed and clarified. There's a couple of big changes there but again I would want to expand on those in another podcast because the changes are reasonably significant. They don't really change the spirit of much.

It's just kind of some procedural changes and I think it will be important for us to spend some time on it. Change number 11 is new processes for requesting time extensions for earning Eagle Scout rank and that is part and parcel of the whole Eagle thing that we'll talk about in the future. Advancement for special needs youth is clarified in change number 12 and applying for alternative requirements for a qualifying disability: The qualifying disability need not be permanent, and that's change number 13. That's listed in the. In the guide There are 13 what they identify as significant changes. I'm very pleased with them and especially the clarifications in the new guide.

Some of the more debatable questions have been absolutely put to bed with this publication. I hope That's if everybody will take the time to read it. I suggest that you give the guide a complete, thoughtful read and make adjustments to your thinking and your procedures as needed. I'm going to have to make a couple of changes of approach and that's fine, because I am 100% behind what the guide has to say.

You know, as is true with many policy statements, we need to take them at face value. We don't need to make angels dance on the heads of pins and look at verbs and blah.

Do you understand what I'm saying? I haven't run across anything in the guide that I thought was kind of flubbed language-wise.

It's written very, very clearly And if you can't tell, I'm excited because I think that it will take some time for all of these changes and clarifications to promulgate themselves throughout the movement, But once they do, it's going to solve a whole lot of difficulties. It has that potential.

Now let's talk about the new Eagle Project workbook for a moment. The most significant statement I've found so far is this: It says only the official workbook may be used. Eagle Scout candidates must use the official Eagle Scout Service Project workbook as produced by the Boy Scouts of America. Although it is acceptable to copy and distribute the workbook, it must be maintained in the same appearance, with nothing changed, added or deleted. No council, district, unit or individual has the authority to produce or require additional forms or to add to or change requirements or to make any additions, deletions or changes in the text, outlines, links, graphics or other layout or informational elements of the workbook.

How about that? So that statement hopefully and finally puts an end to all of the unit-specific, district-specific and council-specific workbooks that are floating around out there. I have always maintained that it's a huge disservice to Scouts who are working towards Eagle to have to jump through some of the hoops that have been set up by district and council advancement committees and unit advancement committees. And I know that my own council advancement committee- God bless them because they're doing difficult work- in my own district advancement committee- Again, God bless them, they're doing difficult work- The Eagle Project approval process is sometimes a bit of a minefield, not to mention the whole Board of Review process. People get emotional and it's difficult.

So But you know, in order to try and streamline things sometimes they have invented forms and pages and pages and pages of advice that they stick in the project workbook and you're not sure quite what is council, what's from national. And I have found it confusing and, you know, really kind of disheartening to try and figure out just exactly what you have to do to get a project approved.

And then you know this really weird convoluted application process that we have, at least here locally, to get an Eagle Scout application taken care of. I think actually, if I remember correctly, I don't get directly involved in this, my advancement chair does, but if I remember correctly there's a series of like three or four forms.

You know there's an application for the application application. But listen, you know I definitely don't want anybody to feel bad if they're a council advancement chairman or if they're a district advancement chairman and think I'm thumbing my nose at you.

You know I know how difficult that process is and I know that, like I said, it can be a minefield at times, but I'm really happy that you know this is going to be simplified And more uniform all the way across the board. I will say one more thing about the new workbook that I really like. Part of the workbook that is filled out up till the district approval thing is clearly worded as a proposal.

A proposal is different from a plan And there is adequate space and some very good notes to help Scouts work on a plan after the district approval. And it says very clearly in the book: this plan isn't going to be graded or anything like that. It's just here to show you what the steps are and to help represent that you've done planning to your board of review. And I like that because I've had in the past some run-ins with district advancement chairs who wanted to see the number of nuts and bolts that were going to be used on the project before they approved of it, And I'm not kidding.

So there's a clear difference now between proposal- Hey, I'm going to build a bridge, It's going to be at this park And it's going to cost about this much money, And I know where my material is coming from And I have the approval of the organization. And I need a conceptual proposal approval before I go any further. I just I like that a lot better If anybody from the advancement team from the BSA is listening. My sincere thanks for all the work you did to put this together.

I think it's a giant step forward. You can find links to the new guide to advancement and the new Eagle project workbook in the post that contains this podcast at scoutmastercgcom, And I'm going to all but command you to go to scoutmastercgcom or go to the bsaorg website and get these two documents. Spend the time to read them.

If you have questions about them, if you're wondering about them, you know I'd be more than willing to help you sort through things. You also have plenty of resources in your district and your council to help you do that. I don't think any of it's rocket science.

I don't think there are any major changes to the spirit of what we have been doing, But I think a lot of things are clarified and it's going to make a lot of people sleep better and rest easier. Music- This is Cliff Jacobson and you're listening to the Scoutmaster Podcast with Clarke Green Music Email. That is folks,

And here's an answer to one of your emails- Music. So we're going to answer three email questions that came in within the last week. The first one comes from Walter- And this is not Walter, the typewriter guy who you heard last week and who's on the blog Walter Underwood. I'll wait for a second until you get the typewriter reference. If you got that and you're laughing, you're very old. This is what the other Walter had to say.

He said: I started listening to your podcasts from the beginning today. The first two have helped solidify my thoughts.

The idea of not having a classroom setting sounds so right to me. I've never, ever liked that style in scouting. That is why my boys and I did not join the best troop in town.

Their meeting consisted of breaking up their 70 plus boys into badge sessions with chairs and a grid, and then they proceeded to have school. As I watched, I saw several of the Scouts zone out almost immediately.

How do you fix that? How do we keep from having those kind of classroom sessions?

Well, Walter, I have a couple of answers for that. First of all, just stop doing it. That sounds trite and flippant, but I'm not being trite and flippant.

You know, I had to make a decision years ago that we would stop doing that. We would not have groups of Scouts sitting listening to somebody teach them something.

You know what You do, the things that Scouts do, and you instruct as you go along. Youth leaders are much better at that than we are.

So I don't end up instructing much of anything at troop meetings or campouts or anywhere. I end up instructing youth leaders who in turn go ahead and instruct the Scouts in the troop. That's the way it works. We don't do merit badges as a troop. We don't do them in our meetings. We don't do them on outings.

Now some of you are going to hear that and think: well, that takes away about 90% of our program. Then Well, no, Boys can challenge merit badges- any merit badge- anytime after they've joined Scouts, you know, and they manage to take care of it. They'll go in groups of twos and threes. They'll find a counselor. They'll meet with the counselor. They'll do it outside of the troop meeting time, They'll do it outside of our camping trips And they're very happy to do that.

Occasionally I have a patrol. We'll go and challenge a badge.

You know they'll find themselves a counselor. They'll meet with a counselor during their patrol meetings and they'll work on that badge together. But as a matter of course we do not do any merit badge instruction in troop meetings. We may have an introduction to a merit badge if a counselor would like to stop through or something like that, But that's uncommon because most counselors come and they sit the boys down and they start talking at them And Scouts don't particularly care for that, Just like Walter didn't particularly care for that and his boys didn't particularly care for that. I do have a PDF file that I put together a few years ago about instructional methods for Scouts And I'll link to that in the post that contains this podcast at scoutmastercgcom. But thanks for getting in touch, Walter, and I hope that helps.

I also heard from Crystal And Crystal had this to say: She says our unit is growing but we're struggling with parent participation. It seems like every time we have a camp out, special event or anything else, the scoutmaster who is my husband and myself are the only two adults supervising.

We have parents that say yes, they will be there, but often they back out at the last minute, By the time the weekend is over. My husband and I are just exhausted. We've tried talking to parents, sending emails, posting Facebook posts and making sign up sheets. At times my husband and I dread the idea of a camp out coming up, and it should not be that way.

This month we cancelled our weekend camp out because we did not have enough adult participation. Any suggestions?

Well, last weekend two adults and myself- so there was three adults total- went camping with our Scouts. The Scouts were set up about 25 yards away from us and we spent all but an hour or two sitting and talking and, you know, cooking great food The adults did. The Scouts did some advancement work. They played a lot of games, They cooked their meals and they invited us to their campfire every evening.

On Saturday we spent a half hour or so looking at the stars, while I talked about astronomy. But other than that, that's basically the way the weekend went, And it was very relaxing as an adult to be able to go to kind of keep tabs on what was going on down in the scout camp site, But they did this under the direction of their patrol leaders and their senior patrol leaders. We had very little to do.

So my first piece of advice, Crystal, is to strengthen your youth leadership by giving them responsibility to do things for themselves. You might think they're too young or too inexperienced, but they aren't. They will surprise you and they will respond to your getting out of the way and letting them be responsible for what they do as scouts. Think of your role as an observer, not a leader. You don't need to supervise, You don't need to run the show. Sit back and watch what happens.

I tell adults to think of a camping trip with our boys, as though they're driving through one of those wild animal parks where you get to watch the animals but you have to stay in the car. You don't get to tell the animals what to do. They might come up to the car every once in a while and you can be very happy that they've come and you get a close look at them. You just kind of watch and see what happens.

Now, naturally, we're charged with the responsibility to keep everybody safe and to monitor the appropriateness of the scout's activities, But we can do this at more of a distance than you may think, and we can do it without interfering with their plans, And they do need to have plans. Now, prior to the weekend, I asked my senior patrol leader what they had planned He told me. He said they were going to work on advancement. They're going to play some games. I asked if he needed any help or support from the adult leaders.

He said no, And so we sat and watched them from a distance, just like we were in that wild animal park. Now, had any safety or behavioral issues arose, they would have tried to resolve them themselves first And, if they had, if they couldn't, they would have called on us for our help. And this all may sound a little impossible, a little far-fetched and a little scary, but I've got to tell you it works. They did not do everything like I would have done it.

They didn't instruct as well as I can. They don't cook as well as I can.

They don't set up tents as well as I can. They don't lead as well as I can. I've got 30 years of scout leader experience behind me. I'm older, I'm smarter, You know. But they're doing it for themselves and that's what's really important. Finally, I'd say, Crystal, if you make up for the lack of help by doing it all yourselves, nobody's ever going to notice.

They're going to think everything is fine. If you cancel trips and activities because there's insufficient adult coverage, that's really a matter for the troop committee, not the Scoutmaster. The troop committee needs to back you up to make arrangements to have adequate adult participation. They need to know that this is their job and that you will no longer be doing it for them. Otherwise there's not a whole lot of hope that that situation will change. Some of these things take some time to fix.

Some of these things take some time to happen. But you have to be patient and you have to just assiduously apply the principles that I'm talking about. Let boys do the thing that they need to do, Get the troop committee to start backing you up and you'll start to see these problems kind of dissolve.