Scoutmaster Podcast 99

And now it's the old Scoutmaster, Would you say to us scouts. It's not coincidence that baboons and scouts both travel in troops. The sort of folk wisdom here is that you should always have a rubber snake because monkeys are scared of snakes and if they break into your taint and see the snake, they'll run away. Certainly easier to deal with than a black pig coming through your campsite, say.

Well, I wonder if rubber monkeys would keep snakes out of your campsite. Never tried that.

I'll let you know how that works out. Hey, this is podcast number 99..

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green.

That was Peter LaRue, Do you remember Peter? Peter's a scout leader from South Africa And we recorded an interview for the podcast back last fall and he had a couple of great stories and I saved that one for another podcast.

So there you go. Let's take a look at the mail bag and see what we've heard over on iTunes. This comment: I've been a scout since I was seven.

I'm now an assistant Scoutmaster, completing the circle. I can relate to many of the things discussed in the podcast, For example things the boys planned but don't get organized enough to do. You offer some great advice on how to deal with issues such as these in a positive, encouraging way that allows the boys to learn from their mistakes and successes. My only issue with the podcast is I can't find the older podcasts. I just started listening recently.

Anyone know where I can find them? It's hard for me to answer the comments that are left on iTunes because there's not really a dialogue there. But I can tell you this: If you go to scoutmastercgcom, look in the main menu and you go to the podcast archive, I've got a new page where I've captured all the podcasts.

Well, this is number 99. All 99 of them- and I have them there archived so that you can download them at your leisure. I get a regular request for this. I know people go and they listen to that backlog of podcasts once they find us on iTunes or otherwise.

So now go to scoutmastercgcom, look for the podcast archives page in the menu and you'll be all set. Dave Klein wrote in. He said: Clark, thanks for a great year of commentary, advice, speedy email replies and humor.

Now, if you do send me an email, I do try and get back as soon as I can. So if you send me an email, question or comment at scoutmastercgcom, at Verizonnet. You'll hear back from me Sometimes sooner than not. And Dave went on to say Merry Christmas to the entire troop from your newest member, That's my granddaughter, Sawyer.

Have you heard about Sawyer? Well, I have pictures if you'd like to see them. On her first Christmas to their senior patrol leader- If you're like my troop, it's probably your wife. You are right, Dave- And John from troop 25 and Martinsburg, West Virginia, wrote in to say my thanks to you for all the time and effort you put into the blog. As a new scoutmaster, it is an invaluable resource to me And I've started working my way through from podcast number one. See, there you go.

Your podcasts are sized just right for my inbound and outbound commute legs. Well, I'm glad that you're finding them useful, John. He also says this to Larry Geiger, Walter Underwood and Tom Gillard, three of the guys who will be in an upcoming podcast with our next scoutmaster panel. He says thanks for sharing your tips, techniques and practices with us. I enjoy hearing them, reading your comments, seeing the interaction amongst all of you and all of us. I'm also grateful to all the other scouts who share their thoughts as well.

I always come away from this site with more to ruminate on during my daily commute. Thanks, Thanks very much, John.

I'm glad things are going well down there in Martinsburg And I'm glad that you're finding the podcast useful. Bruce Liggett on Google Plus say hey. Just wanted to say how much you inspire me. With one Eagle Scout already, I'm about to start helping my next son choose a troop. Thanks for reminding me what scouting was all about. It's an awesome podcast.

Well, thanks, Bruce. Thanks for being in touch, And you can get in touch with us over at Google Plus. If you're a Google Plus person, just look for ScoutmasterCG and we'll put you in the exclusive ScoutmasterCG circle. Howie Jones is an assistant scoutmaster from Troop 570 in West Springfield, Massachusetts. He says this: hi, Clark, I wanted to thank you for a very inspiring year of blog posts and podcasts. I've been borrowing a lot of your ideas from my Wood Badge ticket.

In fact, at the last campfire of our Wood Badge course, we were exchanging jokes around the campfire. I was not the only one repeating them from your podcast. Oh, my, I'm not quite sure what to say about that.

We all need to come up with some better jokes, don't we? Ooh, But anyway, anyway, Howie, I appreciate it. Thanks for changing how I and my troop approach scouting Well. Thank you, Howie. It's always good to hear from folks and I'm glad that you're finding what we're writing and what we're talking about useful. Podcast 100 is coming next week if this is 99.

The next one has to be 100, right, And I am collecting comments and things like that to read out on the podcast and also recordings. I have two or three recordings already.

You can call 484-734-0002 and you will hear a message from yours truly and then you can record a voicemail which may be included in podcast number 100, or you can write me at scoutmastercg at Verizonnet. So today I have an email answer about summer camp. That's right, It's wintertime, but we're going to be talking a little bit about summer camp

And then Scoutmasters minute to share with you, And I think that should be enough for this podcast. So let's get started.

Shall we Write me a letter? Send it by name Email, that is, folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. So this question comes from Dave And Dave says in some parts of the country there's still snow on the ground and plastic Santa Claus is on the roof.

Yet here I sit thinking about summer camp, Scouts are joining our troop and here we are asking for all kinds of things. We welcome them. Then we ask for troop registration funds, We ask them to make a commitment to a week of summer camp and an extra $100 payment. All in the same breath.

How do we sell the virtues of sending your son off to summer camp with people you just met? And how do we convince our incoming Scouts and their families that summer camp is something that they need to do and that they want to do?

How about that for an upcoming topic? Well, Dave, thanks, And here it is. We talk a lot about summer camp, You know.

Hopefully we can derive from some of the things that we've written and said in the past some ideas to promote around. But you're right, you know, Here we are.

It's still wintertime, Summer is a long way away And while a lot of families are beginning to think about making plans, when we go to them and we say, hey, it's time to sign up for summer camp- And, by the way, you know you got to cut us a check- It may be a little tough to get them to imagine exactly what it's going to be like: Boys who have just crossed over and joined the troop and families who, you know are still kind of waiting to see how this is going to pan out. How do we sell them on signing up now and getting to summer camp?

Here's what I would say to them- and you know it's not necessarily just a sales pitch for this time of year, It's for any time of year. If folks aren't sure whether or not summer camp is a good idea for their 10 and a half or 11-year-old boy after he's completed the fifth grade, And if they're not too sure whether or not they want to send them off to summer camp for the week, what I do is I tell them this. Often note that their boys returned from the first week of summer camp having grown up a little bit and they're a lot more appreciative of the comforts of home.

So there's a couple of very practical things that happen when a boy attends a week of summer camp. What you have to imagine is this Camp is a challenging and exciting experience. There's a lot of adventure to it. There's a lot of new things that are going to happen. But if you think about this, think about what the average scout does during a week of summer camp. Think about what this is going to do for your son.

He's going to wake up every morning and he's going to wake up on schedule. And he's not going to wake up because he's heard an alarm clock, necessarily, or some adult is coming by and making sure that he's awake. He's going to wake up on schedule because the boys in his troop are going to make sure that he is being supported and he gets up and he's ready to go And pretty soon he's going to be doing that all on his own. He's going to keep his personal space and his things reasonably orderly and clean, without a whole lot of intervention on the part of adults, without a whole lot of nagging or carrying on.

Like you know, more than likely is happening at home. If he goes to summer camp with our troop, where we have a dining hall program- and I would imagine that's pretty much the common arrangement in most summer camps that you will be attending- He's going to actually eat three meals a day, sitting at a table with seven other people. His food is going to be served family style. He's going to be shared amongst the whole table. Each meal is going to begin by reciting grace and it's going to end when they're dismissed And scouts are going to take time during the week serving as waiters for their table. They're going to set up and serve and clean up after meals.

You know that doesn't happen in very many homes anymore. Not three meals a day, seven days a week. A lot of families do make time and they have dinners and they have breakfast, maybe together, But not three meals a day, seven days a week. I don't think anybody manages to pull that one off If you do more power to you. But if you just think about that aspect of camp just around, that very simple thing of going and sharing meals with their fellow scouts and having some responsibility for it, That's a pretty big deal. That's a pretty big deal.

He's going to need to manage his money without a lot of oversight. That means he's got a plan and budget for his visits to the training post.

He's got to think his way through about how he's going to spend his money and that's probably the first time in his life that he's had, you know, a pocketful of money that he's going to need to manage in. That was without his mom and dad being right there.

So that's another pretty interesting thing that you might not really think about when you think about a week of summer camp. He's going to follow his own schedule of activities and he's going to set that schedule according to his own interests and he's going to have a fairly broad menu of things that he gets to choose from.

Now a lot of camps have a first year program. That's a pretty set schedule and usually some time in there for self-determined activities and maybe a couple of merit badges and things like that. That's a pretty big deal. That's going to be a pretty big deal. He's going to be responsible to find his way to and from those activities and to plan his time and to make sure he gets to them on time and things like that.

You know, this is something that he may have experienced somewhat in school up to this point but that he will experience later on, especially in the coming years in high school, and high school you know, that kind of self-awareness and responsibility of planning things and he's going to get a pretty solid week of that. These are some of the things that we don't often think about that are very important to that summer camp experience. He's going to be working together with his troop and patrol. He's going to be responsible for himself. He's going to need to take care of his things. He's going to have a set schedule of activities.

It's a pretty big deal If you're running your troop by the patrol system, if your youth leaders have a lot of latitude with what they do and how they run things. Any scout who's going to camp for his first year is going to learn a lot more than he does just going and attending merit badge sessions. I mean that's great. It's great that they get to go and attend these merit badge sessions. They get to learn skills and interesting things and they walk away with merit badge or two. Or if they go to that first year program, they're working on scout skills, usually up to first class, and they spend a lot of time doing that.

That's okay. That's a great thing for him to do and a lot of times that's what we concentrate on as the direct benefits of going to summer camp.

But I want to think of all those intangible things. When a scout comes home from camp and he wakes up the next morning, or maybe he wakes up the next afternoon and gets up and starts moving around the house and doing what he does, has the way that he looks at the world and the way that he relates to other people changed?

Well, if he's had a good experience at camp. It certainly has, And that is what I would approach parents with.

So, Dave, I hope that helps and I hope that begins to answer the question about that. I would certainly like to hear your reflections and your ideas about how you would promote summer camp to parents who may be a little bit reluctant to have to cut that check right now, but you can get in touch with me and you'll learn how to do that at the end of the conversation.