Merit Badge Counselors - Access? Privacy issues??

[AnneinMpls]

Hi folks,

When a person is approached to serve as a MB Counselor, what are they told to expect? How busy - how many phone calls, etc. What options are they given regarding how they are to be contacted?

How does the idea of all requests for a Counselor going through one district level person grab you? This would presumably be to protect the Counselor from being swamped with requests. (Should I tell you now what I think of this idea?)

[Eamonn]

How Busy? Depends on the: Badge,Size of the District. How many Counselors for the Badge. Location of Counselor.Time of year (Winter sports - Slow in summer)

How Many Calls: Same as above.

I don't like the idea of going through one person because:

How can He / She make appointments for three people. Not knowing their schedules?

What happens when this one person is not available?

Isn't the Scout making the appointment an important an important learning experience for the Scout?

Our District List has over 200 Merit Badge Counselors and we have 600 Scouts - Talk about being swamped !!

At present Scouts choose where they want too travel to. (If there is more then one Counselor) This saves everyone time. If the person acting as middle man doesn't know every area in the district.

 

We have never had any problems with people getting swamped. Some Counselors will take all Scouts, some will only take Scouts from one Troop. There are some Counselors that have never had a call as they are the Counselor for a MB that no one has taken in years.

My thinking is that we have a system that works. So why try and reinvent the wheel. If being a Counselor is too much the Counselor have have their name removed. If the Scout is having a hard time finding or can't find a Counselor that is available for the MB that he wants he can contact the Dean of Merit Badges or the District Advancement Chair.

At present we list the Counselors name, address and phone number. We do not list E-mail addresses. The list that the Scout receives does cover the buddy system along with a guide of etiquette - Not calling after 9:00 PM or calling before 9:00 AM and hints on being polite on the phone.

To be very honest I think the idea of going through one person would be a real pain.

Eamonn.

 

[SMT376Richmond KY]

I've been a counselor for several and put down that I'm willing to work with any boy from any troop in the council. So far haven't received any calls. Except from the boys in the troop I serve.

[scoutldr]

Ditto. My perception is that most scouts now are spoonfed MB in their troops and the rest they get at Summer Camp. Never had a request from outside my troop, even though I'm on the District List.

[boleta]

Unless it's an Eagle required badge, do not expect many calls.

[Fat Old Guy]

Our parents panic at the idea of their son calling someone outside of the troop to be a merit badge counselor.

 

One problem that I see is that people (parents and Scouts) think that the counselor is supposed to feed them the material in little doses. The idea of actually doing the research and work and then taking it to the counselor and saying, "look what I did!" is foreign.

[wojauwe]

 

I'm registered for 10 merit badges and had only a few instances where I had more than 3 or 4 boys signed up with me at same time.

FOG has a good point too.You are not responsible for teaching the merit badge.Your job is to review the boys plans for fullfilling a requirement and checking that the requirement was completed.

You just make sure the applicant understands what is required

and advise him on where he might look for resources.

Eamonn pointed out the importance of the boy making the contact with the merit badge councelor.I agree strongly with

this.Sometimes I think that this process is more important than the merit badge itself.It's important for the boy to take the initiative.So another vote against a middle person.

You can always say that you are not availiable when you have what you feel to be your limit.Ask the district to not refer people to you when you have a full schedule.

Truthfully though I've never seen it to be an issue.

 

 

 

[eisely]

I have never been called by any scout outside my own troop. I totally agree that having a single person at the district level handle all calls is not a good idea. Does your district have so many volunteers that they have to invent jobs for people to do?

[AnneinMpls]

LOL

Y'all have told me everything I expected to hear

Here's the scoop: I posted this because basically what they wanted me to do in the intern position I posted about on another thread (grrr.) was to invent a database for all these wonderful new volunteers they have yet to bother recruiting. But they were soooooooo worried about burning out all these lovely fictitious new volunteers that they wanted to have only one person at the local level to contact them. I never did get a chance to tell them what I thought of that

Anyway, I'm toying with the idea of putting together our own database for our SU. And if I happen to recruit some new volunteers in the meantime, well, I recruited em, and I can tell em straight up what to expect in terms of how often they'll be contacted. Council can go and....do whatever they want Nuff said. Thank you all for responding - I appreciate you greatly!

Anne in Mpls

[wojauwe]

I know this thread is pretty much played out.But it was pointed out to me in a private message that I made a misstatement."You are not responsible for teaching the merit badge.Your job is to review the boys plans for fullfilling a requirement and checking that the requirement was completed."

 

OK your job is to council and guide and this is teaching.Some require more than

others.What I was trying to say was that you don't need to draw out a detailed class plan for the badge.You explain to them what is needed and you guide them towards the answer.Personally I beleive that helping them know what questions they need to ask and where to look for the answers is important.

If it's something like leathercraft,I'll show them how to use the tools and such

but I'm not giving them a predesigned project.There has to be some challenge.

 

Guess I got carried away with minimiseing the challenge.The old recruitment approach,you know "it's only an hour a week to be Scoutmaster".

Sorry about that.

And thanks BW for not making my error a public flogging.