1st ever Merit Badge College

[ehcalum]

Afternoon all,

 

For my Wood Badge Ticket, one of my goals is to plan, develop and run a Merit badge College featurein Disability Awareness MB for the Troop and/or District. Does anyone have experience with planning MB Colleges? If so please let me know of any tips and advice that I could use. Thanks!

[LPC_Thumper]

We call ours a Merit Badge Pow Wow. We hold it for 3 consecutive Saturday mornings over a two month time (this way troops that want to go camping each month can). This last year we celebrated our 20th. We have nearly 300 scouts come and offer just under 40 Merit Badges. We try to keep the classes complementary to (rather than competing with) summer camp.

 

The headaches we face YEARLY are counselors forget to show up, boys loose their schedules, and misinformed adults refer to us as a merit badge mill. Here's how we handle each of our problems.

 

We always have two counselors for each badge. One of them knows they are the backup, and may get a call with very little notice. Many times these back ups attend just like the regular counselors. We start looking for next year's counselors after the first Saturday. We make phone calls to them about 6 - 8 weeks before hand, and then call them again the first week, but still someone is going to forget.

 

We create schedules on computer. (Actually we have an M/S ACCESS database set up) When scouts get their schedules, they are mailed back to their scoutmaster, and he gets a copy of them as well. We also reprint copies of scout letters and SM letters. It's much easier to just have duplicates than try and figure out how they did what they did to show up without a schedule. This approach keeps the blood pressure down.

 

As for those that insist that our event is a mill, we invite them to sit in any class. We tell them, they have to attend all 3 sessions before they decide if what we are doing is really that bad. See most of them think that since we offer a class, we are claiming that you will finish that class during that time. Well, since we offer Family Life, Personal Management that both have 90 day requirements we are obviously pushing the boys through without completing their requirements. It's very common for these critics to sing a very different tune, when they hear us as the leaders tell the counselors not to feel any pressure to sign any blue cards. They also hear these folks tell the scouts that this merit badge will not be completed without talking to them away from Pow Wow. Homework is also something that many of them stress. I mean how do you do Communications by sitting in a room for 1 hour on 3 consecutive Saturdays?

 

We have really made an impact on our scouts. I'd be happy to answer any questions, you have if I haven't already. This is just what we found works.

[ehcalum]

LPC,

 

Thanks for the input! I will definatly use the access database for scheduals and locate back up counslers. I like the idea of a 3 saturday thing, but as this is the 1st time offered, what do you think of a Saturday and a Sunday? I am hopeing to hold this outside with a contegiency plan for indoors. With the exception of MBC's, location will be the hardest to find. Any suggestions? UVA is located here, as in a community college and an education center that hosts our district RT. Thanks again for your help!

[LPC_Thumper]

Let me run over the schedule for you, you'll see why we do what do (I think)...

 

8:45 Opening (Last minute announcements (there will always be those), flag salute, and we offer a prayer)

9:00 Session 1

10:00 Session 2

11:00 Session 3

12:00 Session 4

 

Now here's a few more things we do. Each class is 50 minutes. We provide snacks for the scouts. Set them out at 8:30, and have them during passing times. We close up shop at 12:50. They are on their own for lunch. Each session is a different class (merit badge), except for First Aide. We run that as a two hour block.

 

We give them time to work on requirements during the week, so that's why we don't do Saturday and Sunday. Oh and the other thing... we use our local LDS Stake Center. This provides us with 28 seperate teaching stations (some indoor, some outdoor, all have at least a cover)

 

Your college sounds great. Are you going to provide for more than one merit badge? There aren't many (besides Fingerprinting) that we have found could be handled in a day. We may not be doing what you do, so my information may not help. Hope this helps, and good luck. They are a lot of work, but VERY rewarding.

[ehcalum]

So your running 3 half days correct? I would like to offer atleast 3-5 Merit badges, including Disabilities Awareness. I know that there will be partials but i feel that the scouts can complete the partials, as I will also provide a list of MBC contacts. We have a plan-o-ree coming up the Sat after Memorial Day so I wil recurit some team members and bring your suggestions up. Summer camp for us is the 1st camping week, so my goal is for Sept or Oct. Thanks again for the advice!

[Lynda J]

Our Merit Badge College is set up so that we go two Saturdays but they are two weeks apart. THis gives the boys time to do the home work.

A great source for work sheets is Meritbadge.com

Keep the classes to about 1.5 hrs. This way neither the scouts or the adults get burned out.

Set it up to work heavely on Citizenship badges.

Use resourses in your community. As have two man that work for Commanche Peak Nucular plant. They come and teach Atomic Energy (Nucular Science).

We also have a guy that is in a model rocket club.

He also worked for NASA. He teaches Space Exploration.

My boys love MBC. we have one in August within our district and then another in January that is 5 districts going together.

The main thing is getting the boys to do the paperwork.

 

[LPC_Thumper]

Yes we run 3 consecutive 1/2 day Saturdays. It works best trying to get the adults together. This year we offered:

 

American Heritage

Astronomy

Aviation

Cit in the Community

Cit in the Nation

Cit in the World

Communications

Computers

Cooking

Crime Prevention

Dentistry

Emergency Prep

Family Life

Fingerprinting & Law (we run FP 1 wk, & L for 2)

Fire Safety

First Aid

Fishing

Fly Fishing

Genealogy

Graphic Arts

Home Repairs

Indian Lore

Insect Study

Journalism

Music

Personal Fitness

Personal Management

Photography

Reptile Study

Space Exploration

Sports

Theater

Weather

Woodcarving

 

When you go over that list you'll see there are some that just won't get done. The counselors make sure the boys know that, and the counselors have any concerned parents call me, and we talk about it. We do get the new parent every year that has to have their son compress a 90 merit badge into the 21 days so that they can make Eagle, just like we have the scouts sign up for the same class year after year thinking that this is the year they will complete the homework in class. (for example, no matter how hard Mr. McC tried to convince this one young man, he insisted on sitting in his class(Citizenship in the Community) for 4 years. Mr. McC finally took him to a city council meeting.)

 

It has worked well for us. The other chairman and I are both PTC trained for summer camp, so we run our areas with the same ideas as camp. You'll have folks try to run around the requirements, but when they figure out you're serious, they'll play straight. If you need any other help, please just let me know.

 

YIS,

 

Thumper

[SR540Beaver]

Thumper,

 

Do you have a website address for you MBC?

[LPC_Thumper]

Sorry we do this the old fashioned way, everything is on paper. There is a picture of our opeing assembly on the district website, in case you want to check up on me (not that you doubt me, but hey...)

 

www.liveoakbsa.org (check in the Gallery, the rest should be easy. I'm the funny looking guy in the front)

 

Any other questions about what we do? Good Luck! They do a GREAT service, and are actually as much fun as camp.

[SR540Beaver]

Nope, not checking up on you or doubting you. What you do sounds pretty cool. Our council does an annual adult training pow wow and the council website has quite a bit of info to promote it. I was just wondering if you went that route or not. I think the web page for our pow wow in the past was better than this years, although all the info seems to be present. you can check it out at http://www.lastfrontiercouncil.org/powwowplus/