Author: Jeffrey Heck
Email called “Are You a Youth Protection Hero?”
You may have received an email from Council with the above title. You will notice that they are encouraging updating your YPT status by April 30, 2018 using YPT version 2.0.
National has a deadline that ALL volunteers have updated to YPT version 2.0 by October 1, 2018. So why the difference?
This topic came up at this week’s Council Commissioner Staff meeting. No explanation was offered as to why the Council Training Committee has issued this mandate. The best I can advise you is that Council wants to get as many adults trained with the YPT standards before summer camp as possible.
The next question that I asked was whether an in-person version of the training is expected. Our best information is that we will have that available at the end of March 2018. Once that is announced, we should be able to provide live seminars to units and roundtables to help expedite fulfilling this mandate.
In the meantime, please bear with District as we adapt to the new expectations. Encourage your leaders to use the online training as soon as possible. The Del-Mi District Commissioner reported that he has done the online YPT version 2.0 since I last did it. He thought the whole experience went more smoothly than what I reported in the linked article above.
Please be aware that the commissioners’ general consensus that the time estimates on the training modules don’t include quiz time or extra modules on individual slides. The overall time needed is about 20-30% than the computer’s estimates.
We will provide more information when it becomes available.
Stories and the Child’s Developing Mind
As I have noted before, my latest obsession is Professor Jordan Peterson. His recent book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, is a tour de force in offering a way to live a good life. This is not the normal self-help book. This is the work of a deep philosophical thinker, practicing psychologicology research professor, practicing clinical psychologist, and practicing lecturing professor. He thinks about people, studies psychology, uses psychology, and teaches about people and psychology. For example, he understands that knowing what the rules of life and being able to follow them are not the same thing. It takes practice to be an actively moral person.
To that end, his fifth rule is “Do Not Let your Children Do Anything that Makes You Dislike Them.” He opens the chapter this way,
RECENTLY, I WATCHED A THREE-YEAR-OLD boy trail his mother and father slowly through a crowded airport. He was screaming violently at five-second intervals— and, more important, he was doing it voluntarily. He wasn’t at the end of his tether. As a parent, I could tell from the tone. He was irritating his parents and hundreds of other people to gain attention. Maybe he needed something. But that was no way to get it, and his parents should have let him know that. You might object that “perhaps they were worn out, and jet-lagged, after a long trip.” But thirty seconds of carefully directed problem-solving would have brought the shameful episode to a halt. More thoughtful parents would not have let someone they truly cared for become the object of a crowd’s contempt.
Peterson, Jordan B.. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Kindle Locations 2377-2383). Random House of Canada. Kindle Edition. In the chapter he goes on to explain that making a child welcome in the world-at-large is a big job for parents. If the parents like the child, because the child is well-behaved, when the child visits others’ homes or places of business, adults will greet the child warmly. This warm reception will make the child more likely to be well-behaved. Well-behaved kids tend to have an easier time making friends their own age. They are happier and more connected socially. Since we are social animals, this is important.
Female Athletes’ Emotional Development in College
In the Washington Post, from last year that I have been meaning to write about, a fascinating article about emotional isssues that kids in college are facing. The focus of the article that the title suggest the emphasis is on women’s college sports. The content is far broader, even though the persons interviewed are women’s college coaches and affiliate personnel.
One strong passage caught my eye.
Talk to coaches, and they will tell you they believe their players are harder to teach, and to reach, and that disciplining is beginning to feel professionally dangerous. Not even U-Conn.’s virtuoso coach, Geno Auriemma, is immune to this feeling, about which he delivered a soliloquy at the Final Four.
“Recruiting enthusiastic kids is harder than it’s ever been,” he said. “. . . They haven’t even figured out which foot to use as a pivot foot and they’re going to act like they’re really good players. You see it all the time.”
Some of the aspects emphasized apply equally well to scouters working with scouts.
It doesn’t take a social psychologist to perceive that at least some of today’s coach-player strain results from the misunderstanding of what the job of a coach is, and how it’s different from that of a parent. This is a distinction that admittedly can get murky. The coach-player relationship has odd complexities and semi-intimacies, yet a critical distance too. It’s not like any other bond or power structure. Parents may seek to smooth a path, but coaches have to point out the hard road to be traversed, and it’s not their job to find the shortcuts. Coaches can’t afford to feel sorry for players; they are there to stop them from feeling sorry for themselves.
Coaches are not substitute parents; they’re the people parents send their children to for a strange alchemical balance of toughening yet safekeeping, dream facilitating yet discipline and reality check. The vast majority of what a coach teaches is not how to succeed but how to shoulder unwanted responsibility and deal with unfairness and diminished role playing, because without those acceptances success is impossible.
Here is a key conclusion.
The bottom line is that coaches have a truly delicate job ahead of them with iGens. They must find a way to establish themselves as firm allies of players who are more easily wounded than ever before yet demand they earn praise through genuine accomplishment.
From this article we can draw a couple key conclusions:
- In our role as scouters, we can help prepare our scouts, boys and girls, for their college experience. We can teach them to deal with “unwanted responsibility” such as cleaning up after dinner or cleaning the latrine and with “unfairness” such as being assigned camp tasks too many times when others have not had their rotation.
- We can be the “toughening yet safekeeping, dream facilitating yet discipline and reality check” that is parents to provide for their own kids.
- We can be “firm allies” of scouts “who are more easily wounded than ever before yet demand they earn praise through genuine accomplishiment” such as rank advancement, BSA Life Guard training, mile swim patch, or high adventure.
Lions will move from pilot to full-time part of Cub Scouting
After a successful pilot that introduced new families to Scouting and raised retention rates, Lions, the BSA’s Cub Scout program for kindergarten-age youth, will become an official part of Cub Scouting this year.
— Read on blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2018/02/14/after-roaring-success-lions-will-move-from-pilot-to-full-time-part-of-cub-scouting/
IYOS website rebuild
What is “IYOS”? It is the “Ideal Year in Scouting.” It is the way for the Crossroads of America Council to tell you what the Best Practices for units will be in the next 12-18 months. What camping opportunities and activities are coming up. When deadlines for summer camp are. When rechartering will take place. When popcorn sales will begin and end. How unit budgets should be developed. How big summer events can be paid for.
Council is in the process of rebuilding the website dedicated to IYOS. Make sure to stop in regularly and monitor the progress. Hopefully you will learn something every time you stop in. We expect the 2018-2019 district calendars to be added in the next couple of weeks.
How to Use Adult Leadership on your Resumé
So you were recruited to serve as an adult leader for “one hour per week.” Several years later you are amazed by not only what your scouts have learned but what you have learned, too. Do you feel like you have grown as a leader? Have you learned personnel management skills? Project management skills? Adaptation to adversity? Have you taken leadership training courses, such as Den Leader Specific Training or Wood Badge?
When you look at your resume for your next job application, have you included your scouting leadership positions like you would any other job? Why not?
Prospective employers want to see applicants that have challenged themselves and learned along the way. They want to see applicants that have learned lessons from failure, especially on someone else’s dime.
When you go back to your resume, consider the following topics for inclusion on your resume:
- Job description
- Risk management
- Team leadership and delegation
- Problems solved
- Leadership training and mentoring
But, don’t look at this only as a way to boost your resume. Look at resume enhancement as a means of recruiting new volunteers. When you talk to scout parents about their life experiences on campouts or during activity breaks, ask them what they do for a living and what their dreams for the future are. If they want to move up into management, suggest that scouting teaches those skills and is a way to get experience. Scouting is as much an experimental lab for adults as it is for scouts.
So look for scout parents who want to grow and recruit them based on what it can do for their careers (never mind networking with scouters who are extremely successful in their professional pursuits.
So make sure you know your scout parents’ resumes. It will work wonders for you.
The Shockingly Simple Way to Stop Helicopter Parenting – Let Grow
Scouters are some of the few parents in schools these days that push kids to learn independence. Lenore Skenazy, a mother of two boy scouts, has been pushing for schools to change the message sent home about how children should be raised. The results are dramatic and eye-opening.
It is so profound, that she has moved from just writing about the problem at Free Range Kids to developing a curriculum at Let Grow. It comes down to dealing with the problem of “helicopter parenting” that is so damaging to children.
We at Council should be looking at this as a way to get into schools. What happens if a bunch of scouters decide not to push to put a scout unit in the school, but instead approach the school principle or the school board one-on-one for coffee then as a group at school board meeting in uniform; the message is “we love scouting, but we encourage independent growth of citizens whether in scouting or through other programs.” The school leaders may be resistant. Yet, what happens if we can replicate Lenore Skenazy’s success with simple Let Grow curricula? Do we gain credibility?
National Commissioner to Speak at Commissioner College
Crossroads of America Council Dean of the Commissioner’s College (November 2-3, 2018) announced that National Commissioner Charles Dahlquist will be the keynote speaker at a reception at the Friday, November 2, 2018 opening ceremonies. The reception is open to all scouters across the council.
Accompanying Mr. Dahlquist will be Fred Wallace, Central Region Director, and a return visit from Kandra Dickenson, the Central Region Commissioner.
The college will begin the next morning.
For more information see the flyer.
NORTH STAR DISTRICT 2018 OBJECTIVES & 2017 AWARDS
Setting the Stage for Continued Growth
[INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA, February 8] District Leaders, mentors, family and friends assembled at the 2017 North Star District Awards ceremony to offer well-deserved congratulations to the Leadership team and to recognize members of the District for their commitment to service. Included in these honors was the highlight of the Journey to Excellence Gold Award status earned by North Star with the overall highest score in the Council and an announcement that North Star’s contribution led to the Crossroads of America Council being the highest scoring council nationally, too. A highlighted list of honored outgoing leadership and 2017 Award Winners can be found below.
2018 District Objectives
As 2018 North Star District Committee Chair Mark Maucere outlined in his keynote address, there are four pillars on which the upcoming leadership team will be focused in order to build on the success of this past year, which are:
Membership Growth. This includes development of strategies to communicate with Charters and Schools as well as in assisting our Units with Leadership Outreach and Program Awareness. This work will help keep up the interest with new/prospective Cub Scouts and their parents in the competition for time and attention with other extracurricular activities. Our new Membership Chair is soon to be named.
Increased Unit Commissioner Involvement. Stephen Heath is the 2018 District Commissioner, and he is looking forward to building the Unit Commissioner team and for these Unit Commissioners to create stronger and more cohesive working relationships with each of our District Units as “one team.”
Program Offering. Mark Pishon as 2018 District Program Chair will bring a passion and energy to this critical pillar to enhance our current program offering as well as expand in areas that will further encourage greater recruitment, participation and retention.
Communication. Cheryl Bilsland will be serving as 2018 Communication Chair and brings corporate digital marketing and Toastmasters communications mentorship experiences to the role. We look forward to building upon and expanding our communication and outreach presence in a way that best meets the needs of the District.
Mark emphasized his “open door policy” and is humbly looking forward to meeting and working with each of you, thanking you for your service, insight, talent, energy and involvement in order to grow our District in 2018.
2017 North Star District
Leadership and Award Winners
We want to thank our 2017 District Key 3 team for their dedicated servant leadership:
John Wiebke District Chair
Con Sullivan District Executive
Jeffrey Heck District Commissioner
Hearty congratulations and gratitude for your service, goes to the following 2017 District Award Winners:
| Alec Damer | T514 | Merle H. Miller Eagle Scout Project of the Year Award |
| Austin Damer | T514 | Judge John Price Outstanding Eagle Scout of the Year Award |
| Agrayan Gupta | T56 | Dr. Bernard Harris SUPERNOVA Award (the first awarded in North Star District, based on our information) |
| John Wiebke | T358 | District Award of Merit |
| Mike Yates | T56 | District Award of Merit |
| David Sperry | T514 | Unit Leader Award of Merit |
| Michael Faulk | T56 | Arrowman of the Year |
| Bill Buchalter | P83 | Cubmaster of the Year |
| Ron Wells | T343 | Scoutmaster of the Year |
| Denise Purdie-Andrews | T69 | Firecrafter of the Year |
| Katherine Ritchie | T343 | Boy Scout Committee Chair Person of the Year |
| Todd Sanger | P514 | Cub Scout Committee Chair Person of the Year |
| Nick Griffith | T56 | Hooked on Scouting |
| Jason Chamness | T358 | Hooked on Scouting |
| Laura Gunderman | T358 | Hooked on Scouting |
| James Stiles | T358 | Hooked on Scouting |
| Amanda Walsh | T358 | Hooked on Scouting |
| Jill Williams | T358 | Hooked on Scouting |
| Mary Fenchak | T514 | Hooked on Scouting |
| Jill Carson | T343 | Spark Plug Award |
| Mark Carson | T343 | Spark Plug Award |
| Brendan Cavanaugh | T358 | Spark Plug Award |
| Joe Forler | T358 | Spark Plug Award |
| Brad Gibson | T358 | Spark Plug Award |
| Kathryn Gibson | T358 | Spark Plug Award |
| Bob Jalaie | T358 | Spark Plug Award |
| Dawn Pasquale | T358 | Spark Plug Award |
| Chris Pishon | T358 | Spark Plug Award |
| Chris Strachan | T358 | Spark Plug Award |
| Jane Sullivan | T358 | Spark Plug Award |
| Valerie Swack | T358 | Spark Plug Award |
| Matthew Glaze | T514 | Spark Plug Award |
| Marilyn Mathioudakis | T514 | Spark Plug Award |
| Ken Savin | T514 | Spark Plug Award |
| Lisa Savin | T514 | Spark Plug Award |
###
If you would like more information about this topic, please call Cheryl Bilsland, 2018 North Star Communications Chair, at 317-225-6102, or email c.bilsland@yahoo.com.
More Details on YPT ver. 2
UPDATED 2/23/18 at Council Training Director Jay Soucy’s request to reflect new language for the deadline to complete training. The updated language is underlined below. The deleted language is crossed out. The original language was intended for council’s professional staff only. The new language applies to all volunteers. This is consistent with the first bullet point on the last list. The language change hopefully avoids any confusion.
More information on council website.
I just received the following email via Central Section’s Director of Field Service Ken Ruppel (District Executive Jessica Hofman’s supervisor). It is a copy of an email sent to all council staff after my article posted yesterday.
Colleagues,
On February 1st, 2018 the New Mandatory Youth Protection Training was released online. Currently, the training is only available through my.Scouting.org. This training is replacing all previous Youth Protection trainings and will become the one training all adults complete. The previous versions of trainings have been removed from my.Scouting.org already.
Crossroads of America is a pacesetter council for Youth Protection training and has set a goal of April 30th, 2018 to be 100% trained. Join us in becoming a Youth Protection Hero and take your training today! (DELETED:
We need to continue to be a PACESETTER Team so I’m asking you, yes every one of YOU, to complete this training by February 28th, 2018. Your staff leaders are aware that you will be completing this task during your normal working hours however you like – completing all the modules and quiz at once or taking a module a day. This will help prepare us all to answer questions about the training.)The training has 3 modules and a final quiz that must be completed:
- Overview and Policies (20 min.)
- Sexual Abuse (20 min.)
- Bullying (20 min.)
- Quiz (10 min.)
You must score a 75% or better on the quiz to successfully complete this training.
Things to know prior to taking the training:
- You need your login and password for my.scouting.org
- On the dash board there is only one training option to select.
- Yes, it should say you are trained and have ### days left before you expire. It’s still tracking your old training information.
- On your computer you will be prompted to turn on your pop blocker
- Some text is in White and can be hard to read.
- There have been some reported issues already with a few videos not completing.
I’ve attached a FAQ sheet to help you answer volunteer questions as they come up.
Here are some highlights:
- Our goal is to have all Registered Adults complete the training prior to April 30th.
- There will be additional recommended trainings released later on this year.
- There is a new ScoutsFirst Helpline (844)-Scouts1 or (844)726-8871. Anyone can call a Youth Protection violation into this numbers as it’s open 24 hours a day.
- Training is good for 2 years.
If you have questions about the training or suggestion for improvements please send them to Sherry Webb.
Thank you,
Jay Soucy | Training Director
BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA
Crossroads of America Council
Copies of Jay’s attachments are linked here:
CAC North Star Unofficial Website 
You must be logged in to post a comment.