Summer camp MB counselor age requirement

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Most staffers are 15 to 17 year olds that have just learned the topic during staff week. The instructor may get a crash course on the topic and an outline of what to do each day, but that usually happens in the last couple days of the staff week at the same time theyre trying to get a million other things done like skits, songs, and camp preparation.

 

I'm sorry if this was your experience - sounds like a crummy situation for both campers and staffers.

 

Where I've worked, instructors and area directors were selected for their maturity and expertise in the field. We didn't pick someone who hadn't yet taken high school biology to be an ecology instructor, for example. If you wanted to teach an Aquatics merit badge, you had to have a lot of the pool and waterfront badges already, and people with BSA Lifeguard or Red Cross Lifeguard certification shot to the top of the list. Experience clearly counts.

 

The exact assignments of who's teaching what badges may not be determined until staff week, that's true. But as an outdoor skills director, I aimed to match badges with staff skills - putting our best cook as Cooking MB instructor, etc.

 

The instructors also developed their own teaching outlines and lesson plans, detailing what they do day by day. (We avoided the pre-packaged lesson plans because they lack detail.) That process was begun early in staff week, though, and not saved until the last minute.

 

You will occasionally encounter an instructor with little to no background in the badge he's teaching - the Space Exploration badge is a perfect example. From my own experience, I taught Basketry while having never earned the badge. I had about 10 hours notice after the original volunteer instructor became unavailable. But I'd say that those are by far the exception to the rule.

 

It would be fantastic to run a camp where very instructor had significant experience in the field - search and rescue team members teaching wilderness survival, veteran portagers teaching canoeing, ex-military snipers teaching rifle shooting. To get to that level, councils would have to dramatically raise camp prices, however.