Latest / A Time to Sharpen / FAQ's: Part 3

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FAQ's: Part 3 · A Time to Sharpen

0:09
Is there anything worse than the dull blade?
0:11
Yeah, well, lots of things, I guess.
0:14
Poverty, war, having to say goodbye to two recent graduates
0:20
even though it's a good thing that they're going home.
0:23
Goodbye. Lion, you know, I know it isn't
0:26
right, but I'm going to miss the way you used to holler for help
0:30
before you found your courage. I would never have found it if
0:34
it hasn't been for you. Seriously, though, a dope blade
0:37
is bad. It's unusable.
0:40
In fact, it's downright dangerous.
0:43
Knives need sharpening. From Whetstone Boys Ranch in
0:47
Mountain View, MO, comes a Time to Sharpen, a biweekly podcast
0:51
that examines how we can all be better versions of ourselves.
0:55
Better counselors, better teachers, better parents, better
1:00
people. In this third installment of
1:05
FAQs, we're going to dig into some of the practical details
1:08
that matter a lot. What life at Whetstone actually
1:11
feels like day-to-day, how structure and freedom work
1:14
together, what growth usually looks like, and why change
1:18
rarely happens all at once. Join us this week on a table to
1:22
Sharpen as we offer a clearer picture of life at Whetstone
1:25
without the sales pitch, the buzzwords or the magic beans
1:28
version of change. Just honest conversation, a
1:32
little perspective and a few straight answers from two guys
1:35
who live this work every day. Welcome back to a time to
1:41
Sharpen. This is Axel Limata.
1:43
I'm here with Brandon Maxwell again.
1:46
Again. Hey, Brandon.
1:47
Hey man, How's it? Going It's going good.
1:49
In fact, it's going to need to go kind of quick today because I
1:53
have an appointment in West Plains at 4:00, have a guitar
1:56
lesson with my son, which is great.
1:59
Oh, that's cool. Yeah.
2:00
So Asher has been. Asher's been learning.
2:03
Picking it up. Yeah, pick a picking and a
2:05
grinning, that kind of thing. And yeah, he's got nice long
2:08
fingers, so that helps. Oh yeah.
2:10
And he's got an aptitude for it. It's funny you say that, I've
2:13
just I've dusted off my guitar the last couple of months.
2:17
Have you run OK? Just Little Blackbird by the
2:20
Yeah, I mean, it's always a standby that I play, but I've
2:23
got a couple other songs that I'm working on and I actually
2:27
just a friend of mine in town, we're going to meet once a month
2:30
and try to get together and play.
2:33
It's always better when you can play with somebody that is a
2:35
little better than you and can teach you.
2:38
So yeah, I'm excited about that and that's cool that Asher's
2:41
picking it up. Evelyn actually started playing,
2:44
so she's been looking at the Youtubes and helping her with
2:50
her learning curve. So she's actually, she's got a
2:52
good voice and she's picked up a couple of songs.
2:55
So it's. Yeah, the Ozarks is a very
2:56
musical place. Yeah.
2:59
It's just something in the air around here, old timey music,
3:01
bluegrass, folk, a lot of famous musicians from this part of the
3:05
country. Porter Wagner.
3:08
Yeah. Dolly Parton, I guess she wasn't
3:10
born here, but she had association with Porter Wagner.
3:12
They had a kind of sang as a duet for a long time and haha,
3:15
Tonka. Yep, right, good little.
3:19
Updates Good shout out for our 4th of.
3:21
July, Brandon, real quick. Concert we're hosting them again
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out at Pine Meadows 4th of July on Saturday.
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So they were great last year, great to work with and they're
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excited to be doing that benefit concert for us again.
3:35
So, so we'll have more info for you on that.
3:39
But but yeah, Steve Cropper is a guy that I thought of when you
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said. Steve the Colonel Cropper.
3:44
Yeah, yeah. Booker T and the MGS Blues Blues
3:46
Brothers. He's around here, so there's got
3:49
to be a handful more. Of course, you know, with
3:54
Meredith, Cisco and the Winter's Bone.
3:58
What's the name of that band? BlackBerry Winter.
4:00
BlackBerry Winter. Yeah, they were kind of made a
4:03
little bit famous for that movie.
4:05
Yep, Yep. So, well, more on that to come,
4:09
but let's just jump into our FAQs here.
4:12
We're trying to do 4 different podcasts that get at all of the
4:17
most frequently asked questions by parents, so they're all in
4:19
one place. So we're hope we're not boring
4:22
our regular sharpeners who may have heard some of these things.
4:25
We'll try to keep it a little spicy and moving through and
4:28
hopefully give you some insights about parenting and teaching and
4:31
counseling, but these are really more informative than some of
4:34
the other podcasts. We're trying to move through
4:36
some stuff pretty quickly so people can, you know, use their
4:39
time efficiently if they're investigating Whetstone Boys
4:41
Ranch. So let's pick up with the next
4:44
question, which has to do with the structure of the ranch in
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terms of what the daily schedule looks like.
4:50
Why don't you give us a little rundown of what it looks like?
4:52
Wake up in the morning. Yeah, go to bed at night.
4:56
Yeah. Well, the word you use,
4:57
structure is key there. I mean, everything that we do is
5:00
structured and that's when you're working with teenagers,
5:04
that's very important and so. It's part of the therapy.
5:07
It's a huge part of the therapy and when that breaks down, the
5:11
program breaks down. And so that's something that is
5:15
as much as we can, we stick to the normal structure.
5:20
So what does that look like in the normal weekday?
5:24
In the mornings, the boys wake up about 6:30 and they basically
5:31
take a shower, do their hygiene, get ready to go down for
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breakfast. And prior to going downstairs,
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they have to do some normal, you know, make sure their bathroom
5:41
space, there's no water on the floor.
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All their, you know, hygiene bag is put up and they have to sweep
5:47
their floor and make their bed and keep their dresser clean and
5:52
tidy. And so those are some basic
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things that they get graded on how well they do every morning
5:59
as far as all that stuff kind of goes into getting to the next
6:02
level. But go down to breakfast about
6:04
7:15 and then eat breakfast and their next chore duties are
6:11
cleaning up from breakfast. Everybody splits up from
6:15
sweeping to putting dishes away, putting them in the dishwasher,
6:19
all that stuff. Then we go down to Chapel.
6:21
We have Chapel every morning from 8:00 to 8:30.
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And then following Chapel, they just get on with the school day.
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So the way we have it now though is we have two houses.
6:32
We have level 1 house with the lower level house, which is the
6:35
foundry, the upper level House of the forge.
6:38
And so the Foundry guys, they do school two days a week and work
6:46
three days a week. And then the Forge House, the
6:49
upper level guys flip that. So they'll do school three days
6:51
a week and work two days a week. So between that like 9:00 to
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3:30 time is either work or school.
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And with 15, as far as the school goes, there's every two
7:05
hours there's a 15 minute break where we either play disc golf
7:09
or if the weather's bad, play pool or, you know, inside ping
7:12
pong, things like that. And from four days a week, is
7:19
the run program right or is it 3 three days A.
7:21
Week 2 days a week we run over down, sometimes once on the
7:23
weekend. OK.
7:25
But there's a run program from 3:30 to 4:00, and then there's
7:32
rec from about 4:00 to 5:00. So we'll introduce a different
7:36
sport to the boys, you know, whether it's depends on the
7:39
staff is football or basketball or baseball, sometimes rugby,
7:44
some some ultimate frisbee is whatever.
7:49
I couldn't couldn't come up with a name.
7:50
But anyway, so there's recreation just to release the
7:53
wiggles and get get the blood flow on and just any kind of
7:58
just from sitting down. If they're in school, it's nice
8:00
for them to be able to to run around and get some fresh air.
8:04
And then in the evening we're doing either work consequences
8:09
or helping with dinner and dinner prep.
8:14
So 5:30 to 6:00 is usually dinner and then from really 7:30
8:20
to that 830 time frame is playing games like board games.
8:28
It could be cards, it could be, again, if the kid has PR
8:31
privilege restriction and they need to work off some hours,
8:34
that's the time to do that. And then we do bed prep.
8:39
A lot of times there's a house meeting prior to going up for
8:43
bed. Prep, but sometimes a devo.
8:45
Yeah, the the the upper house, they do a devo these days.
8:49
Yeah, which is good. Just kind of wind down.
8:51
Highs and lows, happies and crappies.
8:53
We'll check in at the end of the day.
8:56
Yeah, so and then they go up at 8:00 and then they're able to
9:00
read. You know, they kind of do their
9:02
hygiene again, get ready for bed, and then they can read with
9:05
a reading light. And then it's for a little while
9:08
and then it's lights out at 9. And so it's a pretty full day
9:11
again. Everything is structured, even
9:14
the free time is structured. And so that's the weekday.
9:18
The weekends are just a little bit later, wake up later,
9:22
breakfast. And then a lot of times we'll do
9:25
airsoft on campus or we'll do a field trip.
9:29
I think we do a couple of field trips a month at this point,
9:33
maybe more frequent than that if depending on the staff and if if
9:37
boys are, if we have something that cool that a staff,
9:40
particular staff wants to do. So we have the freedom to.
9:43
Just about just throw to throw this in real quick this Saturday
9:46
we have an interesting field trip.
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One of our staff members is going to bring our guys up to
9:50
Jeff City to the the, the prison.
9:52
Oh yeah. And get a tour of that, right.
9:54
So yeah. That could be get.
9:55
A little dose of reality of what happens if you make, you know,
9:58
continue to make wrong choices. Yeah.
10:01
So, but it's the first time we've done that trip.
10:02
So we're we're, you know, thankful to him for coordinating
10:05
that. But yeah, he was he was
10:07
passionate about his former law enforcement kind of experience,
10:11
so wanted to take that on. Yeah, you bet.
10:14
Yeah. And one of the things as far as
10:16
you know, again, structured free time there, we also the boys
10:22
work hard every all week long. And, and we know that like, like
10:26
anybody, like the, the Sabbath, we really don't have a whole lot
10:30
of planned on the Sabbath or on Sundays.
10:34
It's, you know, there's a healthy boredom there.
10:37
That's it's good for kids to just relax and not have a whole
10:41
lot planned. It's, it's structured time that
10:44
is unstructured, if that makes sense.
10:46
I mean, obviously there's not boys just sitting around and
10:50
collectively being together like a pack of wild dogs.
10:53
I mean, obviously we we've talked about the staff ratios,
10:55
but it's just time to relax and the boys can read, they can go
11:01
out and fish if they want and just some downtime and that's
11:06
time to just kind of recalibrate.
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So we build that into the program as a model for them,
11:13
that it's important to take time to just not do anything and let
11:17
your brain kind of settle. Yeah.
11:20
And one thing that I have been passionate about over the years
11:23
is disc golf and we do have 18 hole disc golf course that is
11:28
pretty sweet that we're near to completing.
11:30
So that's another way they can use their free time.
11:34
But yeah, this, like I said it before you started that, which
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is a great summary, is like this.
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The structure is the therapy. Yes, we have counseling and yes,
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we get into the nitty gritty of, you know, the psychology of
11:46
everything. And but, you know, we have wide
11:49
range of boys, 12 to 16 to sometimes 17 that can only
11:54
engage at that level to a certain extent.
11:57
So they're getting therapy by virtue of the fact that they're
12:01
expected to be in a certain place at a certain time or that
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they have to kind of go with the program, whether they like it or
12:08
not. They have to get along with
12:09
other people who are doing the same thing as them, whether it's
12:13
playing a game or whether it's working on a chore together or
12:16
whether it's a the work day and we're having to lift a lift
12:21
something, right? Even just something as simple as
12:23
that. Getting in fact, I, I spent a
12:25
lot of time with the work crew, the Kansas City group that came
12:29
down recently and we were out in the woods working on tee box and
12:35
we wanted to make it look nice. So we were digging up rocks
12:39
because there's lots of those around here.
12:42
And they wanted to, of course, pick the heaviest rock they
12:45
could, you know, to kind of show how you know how strong they
12:49
were. But usually that's, that's
12:52
number one, they could hurt themselves, try to lift
12:55
something too heavy. So we encourage them to push
12:57
themselves. But I was like, you know what's
12:59
better is like, we have this big rock.
13:01
It's an ornamental rock. Want the two of you work
13:03
together on moving this rock, right?
13:06
And it took a while for the two of them to figure out how they
13:09
were going to do that. Rocks are awkward to to carry
13:11
and, and they got frustrated and they would blame the other guy
13:14
for not lifting enough or not getting a good grab or a good
13:16
hold or whatever. But like I said, that's all a
13:19
part of the therapy that the work, the school, the program,
13:22
the structure, the getting up, the going to the going to bed.
13:25
And in some ways it's depending upon the boy can be more
13:28
important than the, the cognitive therapy that that he's
13:31
undergoing. So let me jump into the next
13:36
thing, which is related to that and kind of jumping off of
13:38
cognitive as well. Talk about the school structure,
13:41
which you mentioned already. In the Foundry occurs on Monday
13:45
and Tuesday, and in the Forge occurs on Wednesday, Thursday,
13:48
and Friday. We've done multiple podcasts on
13:52
what we do in school. We did a podcast with the
13:54
headmaster, Gabe Newell about movies and importance of film.
13:58
And I, as the previous headmaster, have talked at
14:01
length about various things that we do in school.
14:03
But to just to give a broad overview for this FAQ pod, I
14:08
would say the school is, is individualized.
14:10
So the boy's going to be tested when he comes in and we're going
14:13
to figure out where he's at. And that's just essential
14:18
because he has to teach himself the material We're teaching them
14:21
responsibility, ownership, intrinsic motivation.
14:25
Of course, we have lots of extrinsic ways to motivate them
14:28
with merits and merit stores. And we do some tutoring and
14:32
we'll do one-on-one when we feel it's necessary.
14:34
But ultimately, a boy has to be able to sit in a seat by himself
14:39
and teach himself math, teach himself social studies, teach
14:41
himself science. The English is a little more
14:45
embedded into the curriculum in terms of note taking, when we
14:50
say speaking, listening, reading, writing.
14:53
So you have multiple opportunities to do those
14:54
things. My background is in English
14:56
education, so I come in and do a lot of stuff with the boys.
14:59
They do creative writing, you know, they write essays, they do
15:03
research, they do all that stuff.
15:05
What's the specific curriculum? It's called Life Pack, Life
15:09
Pack, and it's a lot like the ACE curriculum that I used to
15:12
use in that they assigned themselves along with some
15:17
supervision, the number of pages they need to get done in terms
15:20
of reading and then completion of follow up questions and
15:23
assignments. And it comes in like booklets,
15:27
like 10 booklets is a full credit.
15:29
So they have to do 5 booklets to get a semester's worth of
15:32
credit. And so that's what each boy is
15:34
required to do to complete the program is is a semester's work
15:37
of school. So that would be 5 packs in
15:40
math, 5 packs in social studies, 5 packs in science, and then
15:43
they have to get a certain number done to progress through
15:46
the various levels. So to get to level 1, you have
15:48
to complete one life pack in each of those 3 subjects and
15:52
then meet the requirements in terms of language arts with
15:57
writing assignments, film analysis, passing a, a music
16:03
test. I do a music lecture on film.
16:05
We do the history of, of the 20th century basically over a
16:08
period of 10 to 10 to 12 months. So it's, it's robust and we, we
16:16
set the standards as high as we can reasonably set them for a, a
16:20
curriculum that's self-taught. A lot of parents have concerns
16:24
on the outset. And when they hear that they're
16:26
like, there's no way my son can do that.
16:29
There's no way that he could sit still for, you know, 3 hours in
16:34
the morning and, and work on those 3 subjects.
16:37
And I would just say to that, that yes, way, yes, because the
16:43
boys, the boys do it. And not to say that we haven't
16:46
had a boy here or there that when he got here, we realized
16:49
that his academics problem, academic problems were, were
16:51
beyond what we could, we could address.
16:54
But most boys, when they get in this environment and they have
16:56
the proper motivation and they have the space and the quiet and
17:00
they have the support and they're removed from all the
17:02
other distractions and the screens and everything, they,
17:05
they can acquire the ability to focus.
17:07
And if they're held accountable, they they will accept the
17:10
responsibility and they'll grow in their ability to, in their
17:15
self-control to be able to do that.
17:17
Yeah, I'm going to have you just touch on that a little bit.
17:19
Thinking about being self-taught and if a kid gets stuck, if he's
17:25
working through a pack and he gets stuck, what's the school
17:28
process for him to get help and and who do we have to help?
17:32
Yeah. So we have a flag system.
17:34
So they sit at a desk that is like self-contained, so they're
17:38
not going to be distracted by anything to the right or to the
17:40
left or in front of them. And so, yeah, say they're
17:44
working through math and they get a tricky section and
17:49
they've, they tried to figure it out themselves.
17:51
That's the main thing. Like, I'm not going to help a
17:53
boy until he's shown me that he's at least tried to figure
17:56
out himself. And if he hasn't done that, I'm
17:58
not going to run and rescue him right now.
18:00
He's got to learn that he can do it.
18:02
But I feel, but if I feel like he's just like beating his head
18:05
up against the wall and he's frustrated, then I might sit
18:07
down right next to him and reread the the part that was
18:11
teaching him how to teach how to learn it.
18:14
I wouldn't just show him how to do it.
18:16
I would say here's here's what the pack says.
18:19
Let's see if we can follow the directions because I could, I
18:22
could rescue him there. But the next time he has a
18:24
problem, he's going to want me to do the same thing.
18:27
So I'm going to teach him how to how to teach himself.
18:30
We also have, you know, with the ratio, it's a little higher in
18:35
school usually because the three to one ratio applies to staff on
18:39
campus at all times. And during the school week.
18:42
There's lots of people, you know, it's like a one to one
18:44
ratio during the week, which is good if you have to remove a boy
18:48
from class because he's being unruly.
18:51
But in general, there's Gabe, the headmaster, and then there's
18:54
Taylor Glass, who's the assistant.
18:57
So right now, you know, the Max we have in any of the houses is
19:01
like 6. So that's a three to one ratio
19:03
or better if there's only four kids in the forge, for example,
19:06
and six in the foundry. We also have like the room we're
19:10
in now is adjoin to the school room.
19:11
It's quiet. We can shut, you know, the door.
19:13
We can come back here and a boy can really.
19:16
You mean there's a lot of stuff that happens during those, you
19:19
realize, oh, the reason why he can't do math is because he's
19:21
thinking about something traumatic that happened to him.
19:24
So we can, we can sit down and we can work through that or we
19:28
can call in a counselor. We can call in Tom to Thomas to
19:32
talk to him. So we have a lot of tools about
19:34
at our disposal in the school room.
19:38
So they're going to get a full semester's worth of credit.
19:41
They're going to hopefully keep pace with their grade, even if
19:44
we have to go back and fill in some gaps because it is
19:47
self-taught. They can move more quickly
19:49
through the curriculum and get caught back up or even ahead in
19:52
some circumstances. And we've had a lot of success.
19:56
You know, when I, I know when I was tracking it for the 10 years
20:00
I was headmaster, I mean, the average boy would raise his GPA
20:04
almost a full .0. Wow, you know so.
20:08
And all those transfers, we've never had any issues with those
20:11
credits transfer. No, because I mean people are
20:13
really open to home schooling these days if they know a boy is
20:16
getting help. Mental health, like nowadays,
20:19
schools are all about that. They want to see, you know, they
20:22
may call Gabe and ask him a few questions about his
20:24
qualifications, about his curriculum.
20:25
He'll explain to them about the life packs.
20:27
He'll explain to them about a, you know, our history, our track
20:29
record of success. Every once in a while, they'll
20:32
be a school that will say, well, we can accept that class, but we
20:36
can't. We'll have to title it something
20:38
different. And so it may count as an
20:40
elective instead of whatever credit that school needed.
20:44
And different schools in different states are a little
20:46
pickier about certain things. But, you know, that's one in
20:50
every, you know, 100 kids, you know, or 50 kids where, where
20:55
someone even asked that question.
20:57
So it's really kind of a, it's really kind of a moot point.
21:00
Yeah. In terms of whether the credits
21:01
are going to transfer right? Good.
21:03
Yeah. All right.
21:05
That's my. There's the school.
21:07
So the other part of the structure is the work program
21:10
which you used to be in charge of.
21:12
So we'll let you take that one, right?
21:14
Yeah. And I'll just say that Pat and
21:17
Mr. Pat and Mr. Page have done an incredible job just
21:21
bolstering that program. And it's a lot more robust these
21:25
days, which is good because we just need to keep more boys
21:30
busy. And so man, there's one of the
21:35
the key things that they have done that's been huge is just to
21:38
kind of for all the staff on campus.
21:40
We all have different jobs or different areas or things that
21:44
we see need needs to be done around campus.
21:47
And so we have a little forum on Google Docs where we can just
21:50
put jobs up there that we would like to get done and we can put.
21:55
Like kind of nice. Hey, this is like super priority
21:58
or just whenever you get to it. Yeah, for me, you know, I, it's
22:01
good for me because I have people contacting me about
22:04
community service and it's great for me to just say, hey, we got
22:07
this community service opportunity and here's when they
22:10
would like to have it done. And so that's kind of how a lot
22:15
of the jobs come to the work program is just internally and
22:20
then just external community service jobs that people call
22:23
about. But between, you know, managing
22:26
285 acres, that's a huge job in itself.
22:30
So there's there's no shortage of jobs.
22:33
It's just trying to figure out what's the priority.
22:35
And so that is what the boys really from that 9:00 to to
22:44
3:30, they are either, you know, splitting firewood, they are
22:52
doing wood shop. We have a specific wood shop
22:55
time where they're just learning how to work with their hands,
22:59
learning elements of just how to measure things with the tape
23:05
measure, what tools do what, what are they called?
23:07
Just some basic things in the wood shop that boys love to do.
23:12
And sometimes they have not had any experience with that and
23:16
they really find some joy And, and that's one of our core
23:19
values is just creating and building and teaching the joy of
23:23
work, you know, and work's not a bad 4 letter word.
23:27
We want them to understand that God created us as men to build
23:30
and to to create and to design. And a lot of that is
23:35
incorporated into the work program.
23:38
And so they really, they get a pretty wide array of skills in
23:43
their time here from not learning how to install barbed
23:49
wire fences or fix barbed wire fences, do some plumbing with
23:52
agricultural systems and building hanging doors and just
24:00
a lot of just basic carpentry stuff that they get here.
24:04
And learning how to use a wood splitter mower, how to work on
24:07
mowers, how to change the oil between our side by sides and
24:11
the mowers. And so all of that maintenance
24:13
type stuff, they get a part of that and that's all goes into
24:16
the work program. And so that's kind of on campus
24:21
stuff. And then probably 2 * a month, I
24:23
would say we do a community service project where we really
24:27
want to be intentional with meeting real needs out in the
24:31
community. And so one of the ones we do on
24:34
a regular basis is pack lunches for some school programs and the
24:38
boys, you know, we pack probably 2000 lunches in a day between
24:43
some of the other volunteers that help out with that.
24:46
And then in a couple of weeks, we're going to help out a friend
24:49
of ours whose mom passed away and she's just has a bunch of
24:52
stuff in her basement that needs to be cleared out, that's been
24:57
there for years. And so they're just needing help
25:00
moving that stuff. And so so anyway we can be of
25:05
help to others and be of service, it is really key for us
25:09
to just show the boys how to serve, that it's important to
25:13
serve. And they're also learning some
25:15
skills and just getting their hands, yeah, dirty and getting
25:19
their hands kind of roughed up because a lot of them have got
25:22
soft hands. They haven't done a whole lot of
25:24
work in their days. So it was the work ethic is
25:28
being built on a daily basis here.
25:31
So. So that's kind of a a good
25:33
snapshot of the work. Program and I, I would add to
25:36
that that the, the work program is where a lot of mentoring
25:39
occurs. Yes, mentoring occurs in the
25:42
school room to some extent when you can sit down with a guy and
25:45
help him, you know it, it happens in the, in the evening,
25:50
you know, during rack and everything.
25:53
But but that work program is where I think the mentoring
25:56
really shines because you come alongside a, a kid, a young man
26:00
who's just aching to use his hands to do something and to get
26:03
out and be outside and to, you know, all that.
26:06
So they're, they're really more open to what you might tell them
26:10
in terms of advice. They're not going to, they're
26:12
not going to like get defensive, right?
26:15
You know, you're like, oh, wow, you're going to teach me how to
26:17
use this tool. Wow, I've never learned more.
26:19
You know, we got a couple, some boys, not a lot of boys
26:24
actually, who think they know everything and they think they
26:26
know how to use the tool. So you got to break that down.
26:29
But I would say in general, the the young men are really
26:32
receptive to that teaching. And then you'd be amazed at the
26:35
kinds of life lessons that come up when you're when you're out
26:38
there working on the farm. One other thing that I wanted to
26:43
throw in here as it relates to the work, the work program that
26:47
is a huge part of Whetstone is just all of the volunteers that
26:51
come on campus. And we just, we're coming off of
26:53
cabin week where we had a handful of volunteers come and
26:57
do some incredible work this week and or this last week.
27:01
And when you're working together and you have volunteers from
27:05
other churches that sometimes drive like halfway across the
27:08
country to come do that. I mean, we've had from from
27:11
Kentucky to Texas to Kansas City, there's multiple groups
27:17
that come here and drive a long ways just to pour in to what God
27:21
is doing here. And so when you have that
27:24
dynamic and throw in the work projects where our boys are
27:28
working with volunteers and staff, there's so much good that
27:32
God does in those situations. And so that's a, you know,
27:36
probably a few months out of the year, the boys are working with
27:39
volunteers. They when you add up all the
27:42
time. Once 1/4.
27:43
Of yeah, we have, we got a group coming in a couple of weeks, you
27:47
know, we just had one leave last week.
27:49
And so that's just a you talk about the therapy part of the
27:54
program, like the therapy happens like really in in all of
27:57
that stuff where you're just building relationships and
28:00
working together and constructing and, and seeing
28:04
things come together that you dreamed of, you designed and
28:09
then work together on it's it's really a cool.
28:12
It's very fulfilling. Yeah.
28:14
And our boys have not had that experience.
28:16
Most of them, like, we don't realize how much that means to
28:20
them because we, it's just kind of old hat.
28:23
We're used to that. But to really put your put
28:25
ourselves in the boys shoes, like a lot of times, like we've
28:28
had boys like why are these guys here?
28:30
Yeah. You know, it's like it makes no
28:32
sense. These guys would drive, you
28:35
know, 10 hours to come here for a weekend and do some work that
28:39
that makes no sense in the conventional wisdom, but.
28:42
When you're crazy. When you put God in the mix and
28:45
what God's doing and how he wants to communicate and work
28:49
and then it, it does make sense. Yeah.
28:54
All right, great summary. We got 2 here that I want to
28:59
mash up together. I got about 5 minutes here but I
29:03
thought we we could kind of mash up food and and divide food into
29:12
and food and health into like spiritual food.
29:15
Right, you said mash up like mashed potatoes.
29:18
No, no, like mash up. Like you take two things and
29:20
like mash them. I'm thinking food.
29:22
But yeah, mashed potatoes too. That works, works.
29:25
So what do we do to feed the boys and keep them healthy
29:27
physically? And what do we do to feed them
29:29
and keep them healthy spiritually?
29:31
OK, so I'll take the the spiritual component.
29:35
How's that? You'll take the High Road.
29:37
I'll take the higher road and you'll take the lower Rd.
29:40
Yeah. So the spiritual component, we,
29:42
Brandon already mentioned that we have Chapel 4, four times a
29:45
week, sometimes 5. We have guest speakers that come
29:48
in on Wednesday sometimes. We just had one recently that
29:51
had an amazing tale to tell. Yeah.
29:53
That was of coming back from the dead, literally, and how God has
29:57
worked through through his life. And so we'll try to reach out to
30:01
community members or friends that are in town or, you know,
30:05
whoever we think might really have an impact on the boys for
30:09
those. But in general, we're, we're
30:11
kind of rotating those Chapel responsibilities.
30:13
We each have our own thing. I talk about gratitude and the
30:17
importance of it. And I work in a little writing
30:19
exercise that we put stuff on sticky notes.
30:21
If you follow us on social media, you'll see those little
30:24
sticky notes sometimes Brandon talks about manliness and what
30:27
it is to be a man and the qualities of of being a man and
30:31
biblic, the biblical concept of a man, not toxic masculinity,
30:35
but but what what how God created us to be.
30:39
Jeremy has his set of stories that he tells of with relate to
30:42
character traits. You know Gabe is usually
30:46
something science related or history related.
30:49
Or animal control related. Animal Control Related has got
30:52
lots of good animal stories. So we all connect with the boys
30:55
on, you know, on different levels and and so we feel like
30:58
that that variety of personalities and styles will
31:01
connect with them. But that's like instruction.
31:05
Usually some Bible verses involved, right?
31:07
It's the more the more Bible Y kind of like spiritual formation
31:12
part of the program. We do bring the guys to church
31:14
somewhere on Sunday morning, kind of rotate around churches
31:17
in the area. But Pomona Christian Church is a
31:20
big one. They've been big supporters and
31:22
we love bringing the guys there and then then a variety of
31:27
churches around sometimes are related to who's working that
31:30
that Sunday. They want to bring them to their
31:32
church or the church that they attend, not their church.
31:34
But you know what I and then you know, we we also feel like more
31:39
is caught than taught. So we believe that you should
31:42
preach the gospel always and and use words when necessary, as
31:47
Francis of Assisi said. And so that spiritual formation
31:50
component is built into the very nature of what we do.
31:56
And we are a Christian boarding school.
31:59
And so we would not be here if we did not have a strong
32:03
commitment to biblical teaching, to having a relationship with
32:08
God through Christ and and showing that we love him by by
32:14
loving others. And I think that's, that's
32:17
pretty much kind of the summary of our spiritual formation
32:21
approach. We, we don't have a campus
32:23
minister. We would like to get to that
32:25
point at some point. But I think we're all ministers,
32:28
we're all vocational ministers and we all take that part of the
32:30
job very seriously. Yeah, it goes back to the ratio.
32:34
We always talk about those ratios allow those one-on-one
32:38
conversations in the evenings, you know, with some of that
32:41
downtime where you know, boys when they work hard during the
32:44
day and the downtime in the evening.
32:46
Sometimes those are times where they start just kind of feeling
32:49
down and they feel homesick. And, you know, usually in the
32:54
evenings or when the the good conversations happen from the
32:58
standpoint of like when a real heart to heart happens or just
33:02
that where a boy gets real with the staff.
33:05
And, you know, all of our staff are, are believers and we try to
33:12
to steer them in those conversations, you know, model
33:15
Christ in those conversations, show them love and grace and,
33:19
and help them see that Christ is the answer to these.
33:23
We don't. And and trying to do that in the
33:24
right measure, that's, that's always sometimes a challenge.
33:28
Yeah, my dad sent me a a text this week.
33:32
He said the old, old Yiddish proverb.
33:35
The rabbis would always say. You'll either, you can either
33:38
listen to what I'm telling you or you can wish that you had.
33:41
So I think that I think that's our approach towards what the
33:44
Bible says. It's like we can do what the
33:46
Bible tells us to do, or we can later on wish that we had done
33:50
what the Bible told us to do. And so but we're not beating
33:53
them over the head with the Bible by any means, by any
33:56
means. A lot of our guys have some
33:58
spiritual trauma, so that really pushes them away.
34:01
But we do speak the truth in love.
34:03
Yeah. OK.
34:05
So why don't you take the food nourishment component in a
34:09
couple minutes here before we wrap it up since you were kind
34:12
of in charge of that at one point?
34:13
Yeah, as, as house parents initially, yeah.
34:17
I mean, teenage boys and food, first of all, that budget is big
34:23
and boys eat a lot and they get angry.
34:27
So old Cal Farley had a saying early on, Cal Farley's Boys
34:33
ranch. Work them hard, feed them well,
34:36
and they don't have time to get in trouble.
34:37
Yeah. You know, And so there's a lot
34:39
of truth in that. And just that structure and
34:42
feeding them well, good healthy food.
34:45
We try to, we're not super like, you know, major health food
34:51
nuts. A lot of us here value good
34:53
healthy food. But there's again, a balance of
34:56
like what you can practically do when you're feeding, you know,
34:59
dozens of boys, three meals a day and things like that.
35:03
So, but we, I mean, Jessica and, and Sean, really Jessica
35:07
overseas so much of that now as far as the management of the
35:11
food between both houses and just, I know she takes a lot of
35:15
pride in it and does a great job, which is providing good,
35:18
healthy, well balanced meals that our boys need protein and
35:22
vegetables and really kind of how we handle that.
35:26
Most of our boys are very picky, I would say in general with
35:30
vegetables. And so in order for them to get
35:33
seconds on the things that they like, they have to at least
35:36
finish the first of the vegetables and fruit, right?
35:41
That's typically breakfast, lunch and dinner.
35:43
How we handle that, you know, to use a carrot as a carrot the
35:50
next to, to get the next helping.
35:53
And so, so, yeah, we like to try to expand their palette of taste
35:58
and not be as picky. And, and we have a wide array of
36:02
food that's served here. And, and really there's just a
36:05
weekly menu that comes out and then staff, different staff,
36:08
especially over here in the Foundry, they work to prepare
36:12
those meals with the boys and the boys get experience, just
36:17
real life experience on knowing their way around the kitchen.
36:20
So that's a thing that they get. So as an added benefit, but we
36:25
they do get to have some sweets, but we are very conservative, I
36:29
would say with that for obvious reasons.
36:31
And just, you know, boys having crazy sugar highs, but their
36:37
birthdays are special. They get to pick their birthday
36:40
cake and then on weekends with movies and some of their merits,
36:46
they get to spend some some of their allowance monies on snacks
36:54
for movie nights and things like that.
36:55
So so they do get some sweets, but again, it's regulated.
36:58
It's kind of structured. They don't just get to go raid
37:01
the pantry of energy drinks and right Twix bars, you know?
37:06
So, yeah. Yeah, I would say food is
37:08
medicine. And if if your son is overweight
37:12
and you're, you're concerned that that's, you know, affecting
37:16
his health, then the diet that they eat here and the exercise
37:19
and the regimen they get, he's probably going to lose weight.
37:21
If your boy is underweight and he's just not eating right and
37:24
he's not taking care of his body and he's too thin, he's probably
37:27
he's going to put on weight, he's going to look healthy, he's
37:29
going to develop muscle. So I think the, the program, the
37:32
food program that we have, you know, meets guys where they're
37:35
at and, and helps them to, to get them where you want them to
37:39
be a healthy body, mind and soul.
37:43
And yeah, it's kind of foundational to a program.
37:46
One thing I would say for maybe a parent listening to this,
37:49
whose son has a specific allergy, we've had a little bit
37:52
of that in the past. And so we do the best we can to
37:57
accommodate some special allergies.
38:00
Like I have a peanut allergy. Obviously if we have a boy
38:02
that's got a peanut allergy, we're going to not make him eat
38:05
a peanut butter Jelly sandwich or some kids play on that and
38:10
it's like I have a gluten allergy.
38:12
And a lot of times that's not really been the case.
38:15
I just don't want to eat what's in front of them.
38:18
So if it's legitimate and we talked to the parents about a
38:22
long lasting allergy or just some some food things, yeah,
38:26
we'll, we'll, we'll work with you.
38:28
Be flexible and try to to work with any special diets that way.
38:33
Yeah, so. Well, I feel like we got through
38:36
a lot, Brandon. Yeah, I'd like to keep talking,
38:38
but I'm going to have to bounce here.
38:41
I want to thank Thomas for putting this together.
38:43
We're going to be heading out on, I'm heading out on Adventure
38:46
week with some other staff coming up.
38:47
So I'm going to hand off this SD card to him and, and he'll get
38:50
it put together and probably out sometime while we're on
38:53
adventure week and then when I get back, that's kind of the
38:55
next thing outdoors. So all right, I'll be.
38:58
Able to have some. Stories, fresh stories about
39:00
Adventure Week. So yeah, we're good.
39:02
OK. Well, thank you all for
39:03
listening to A Time to Sharpen and we'll catch you next time.
39:07
Bye Whitestone Boys Ranch is a therapeutic boarding school
39:18
located in the scenic Ozarks of southern Missouri.
39:22
It was founded in 2011 to serve families from around the country
39:26
who are struggling with challenging behaviors from their
39:28
12 to 16 year old sons. Our mission is to sharpen the
39:32
character of young men. Please visit
39:35
whetstoneboysranch.com if you want to learn more about our
39:38
program or about how to contact us for help.
39:41
Thanks for listening and we hope to catch you next time on A time
39:44
to sharpen.