I’m not a scouter but I’m a man that believes in scouting. Who wouldn’t believe in a program that gets young men to do something besides watching TV or play video games? Don’t get me wrong as an old fart I watch plenty of TV, I would play video games too if I didn’t lose so bad no mater which one of my kids I playing against.
Scouting teaches a lot of other qualities: service, honesty, trust, teamwork the list goes on and on. There are a lot of things that a scoutmaster does, herding and motivating kids is the one that takes the longest. The troop I had was made up of twelve and thirteen year olds, there was about twelve of them. Of course they are changing all the time, which makes it hard to get everyone working on the same thing. This is the perfect time to influence young inquisitive minds – but you better hurry because before long they will be teaching you things you’ve never thought of. Just get over the fact that they already know more about technology than I will ever learn.
As a scoutmaster the first merit badge I always made the kids gets was first aid – the reasons should be obvious. The most important tool you need as a scoutmaster is at least one good assistant scoutmaster. Not only can they watch your back but also when you’re about to lose it they can take charge. My assistant just happened to be a police officer – perfect. Besides their Mom’s making them - the scouts are there for two reasons: 1st to be entertained and 2nd to be fed. These usually come in that order. Because some of the kid have different interests it’s hard to keep them all entertained, but they’ll stick through it if they know there’s food at the end. I use to tell the parents that a kid will advance to the rank of life by accident if they just show up - but if they want to get their Eagle they will have to work for it. Most of our scout got their Eagle, but all of them got their Life if they were there long enough. It’s not hard to motivate kids to do many of the merit badges: woodcarving, basket weaving, fingerprinting – that’s a great one if your assistant is a cop. I think he kept copies for future references. The jury is still out but there’s usually one kid that it would be a good idea to have his on file. I know I was that kid in scouts long ago. When you figure out which kid that might be, it’s also a good idea to try to get his father as an assistant as well. This isn’t always easy since the reason they’re sending him to scout is so they can have a break.
Trying to keep the kids on task is one of your greatest challenges; I think my boss would say the same thing once in a while. A scoutmaster is a CEO, manager, salesman, game warden as well as a cook. Many times the kids are the ones that are cooking thats how they get the merit badge. But after a couple of days of the threat of cancer, it becomes obvious that you need to take over.
It takes a certain kind of person to be a good a scoutmaster, just like it takes a curtain kind of woman to have ten kids. It helps if you’re basically insane. Like being a parent most of the time you receive very little thanks or recognition, like a parent the kids don’t always do what they’re told or what is best for him or the troop. But like a parent there is no better feeling that when one or all of the kids do something they didn’t think that they could and are happy about it.
The greatest time for me to be a scoutmaster is at the end of the day sitting around a campfire. This is when we talk about what happen and what needs to take place the next morning – but then we share jokes, stories and just have a lot of fun together. Our troop was church sponsored and we always ended up with a story from the scriptures: the mountains full of horses and chariots of fire to protect the prophet, David killing his Goliath, stripling worriers defending truth and right. It was great to see the excitement in their eyes as the stories unfold before them. Then of course we always had a treat.
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