Summercamp Activity Signup

[SeattlePioneer]

I spent Sunday through Thursday morning at the Counsil's summercap with the Troop. I had to return to work on organizing a district event taking place 8/3.

 

I found the signups for summercamp activities somewhat aggravating. First, I had never seen the information sheet on summercamp, and thus wasn't as informed as I should have been on a lot of things.

 

While parts of three troop meetings had been involved in planning what the Scouts would sign up for, that seemed to be thrown out the window when the signups actually took place. Young Scout who a Sage Scouter might think needed to sign up for "Trail to First Class" kinds of activity wanted to sign up for anything but. Scouts who were beginners or non swimmers didn't want to sign up for swimming instruction.

 

The bottom line seemed to be that it wasn't practical to force boys into program I thought they ought to be in. I did my best to sell boys on things I thought they needed and would benefits from, but the Scouts mostly decided for themselves.

 

Yes, the SM might have refused to sign off on blue cards or whatever, but it wasn't worth the fight.

 

The end result was that two of these Scouts got tossed out of the Cooking Merit Badge Class they signed up for, for being bored and disruptive and making remarks like "this is boring. It's just like school" and such. Well, duhh. They were trying to do a program they weren't ready to do.

 

In talking with the Scoutmaster of a neighboring troop about this, he suggested having the senior Scouts talk up the value of certain skills, pointing out that swimming was necessary to do boating activities for example. That was a good idea.

 

Any others?

 

 

 

Seattle Pioneer