The young man giving the lesson quietly slipped out a
borrowed tablet, got it ready to play some videos. Two other young men sat in
chairs near the window. Sat is a loose word for Deacons; one sat
conventionally, feet on the floor, the other sat with his legs pulled up onto
the chair, knees tucked under his chin. He had something in his lap – LEGO
figures – he was showing to the other boy.
Two other boys leaned their chairs against the wall. One of
them realized with both the president and the first counselor gone, he, as
second counselor, was in charge. He called the group to order.
I am their Scoutmaster, but in the fuzzy leadership links in
the LDS Church between the Aaronic Priesthood and the Boy Scouts of America, my
role at church is uncertain. Tuesdays are my days to shine and campouts and
merit badge pow-wows are my territory; Sundays belong to the deacons quorum
adviser. Who was not present.
The lesson commenced. The boy giving the lesson resembles my
own: intelligent, obsessive, smug in his abilities and eager to challenge his
cohorts to read a long list of scriptures, to guess the identity of the general
authority speaking – Jeffrey R. Holland – and to repeat several times with joke
that we look under our beds for devils and demons, while devils and demons look
under their bed for Jeffrey R. Holland.
The boys by the window weren’t listening. The LEGO figures
were more compelling.
The boy who took charge appeared to be asleep.
The other boy challenged everything the young man teaching
said, finally blurting “Why does everything have to be a competition?” throwing
the boy teaching off his game. He tried to recover by bringing up the Elder
Holland joke again.A bishopric member poked his head into the classroom, looked
at me. “You alone here?”
“Apparently so,” I replied.
He took a seat. As it was Fast Sunday, he wanted to make
sure the fast offering routes were assigned. They were not. One boy lamented he
wanted to sing with the choir after church and thus couldn’t do fast offerings.
Another said since he’d volunteered to help pass the sacrament at a retirement
community that afternoon, his obligation to fast offering collection was
nullified. Three other boys just stared at the brown leather envelopes in the
counselor’s hand.
Eventually, they decided amongst themselves that they could
do two of the five routes. The leader went to find conscripts from the teachers
and priests quorums for the other three. The lesson recommenced. With the Elder
Holland joke.
These are my scouts, I thought. On Tuesdays, they’re
noisier. There are others there who don’t regularly come to church who add
their own individual elements of chaos and decorum, often at the same moment.
As I watched them, Wood Badge training kicked in. This kid
challenging the teacher isn’t one who comes to scouts regularly. But when he
does, I thought, our Scout team will go from norming to storming again – the
team dynamic they’ve figured out (the norming, everything’s working normally) in
his absence due to football practice will be upset and they’ll have to learn
how to work as a team all over again (the storming, as in thunder and
lightning) as he comes in, not knowing where to fit in, not knowing how the
team has worked before, and with the team not knowing what to do as he attempts
to fit in and his attempts are interpreted as disruptions.
I sat there with them, terrified.
Not because of anything that happened in the classroom. This
wasn’t my first experience with this knot of Deacons on a Sunday. The boys
always teach the lessons. That one kid always brings LEGOs and those two always
sit by the window, distracted. The second counselor almost always looks like
he’s asleep. And if the kid questioning everything isn’t there, another kid who
does the same thing is.
But because I’d seen it all before. Somewhere. Deja-vu.
The Scoutmaster Handbook tells us this: “A new Scoutmaster
is likely to approach his troop with self-confidence. He anticipates that his
enthusiasm will excite his young charges to get the most they can out of
Scouting.”
I can do self-confidence and enthusiasm. As can just about
anyone any bishopric would call as Scoutmaster, providing he meets the basic
requirements: He appears to be breathing, is likely to pass a background check,
has not been openly heard swearing, and
is also on the bishopric radar after the ward paid for his Wood Badge training.
But the Scoutmaster handbook goes on to say, in the same
breath and with that same self-confidence and enthusiasm: “Learning about the
characteristics of boys, how to motivate them, how to deal with their behavior,
and how to help them with their problems will give the Scoutmaster the insights
necessary to enjoy working with his Scouts.”
Oh woof. This is something respiration and a mild financial
obligation can’t cover.
Wood Badge taught me enough to know that “learning about the
characteristics of boys” goes much beyond pigeonholing them into categories:
Smug, self-confident yet awkward in social situations; At ease in social
situations but prone to sweating and stumbling when called upon to pronounce
words with more than three syllables; Distracted LEGO aficionado; Thrall of the
LEGO aficionado; Avoider of responsibility unless it’s easy; and the inevitable
Scout Camp Slob. Wood badge taught me that learning the boys’ characteristics
meant finding ways for them to learn, to accomplish, to lead, despite the
challenges they face from broken homes, aversion to schoolwork, or fixation
with Danish toys.
Wood Badge taught me it’s okay to let the boys lead and to
let them make mistakes; the Scoutmaster Handbook cautions me against “falling
into the trap of controlling the Scouts’ experiences and doing everything for
them.” Wood Badge taught me it’s better for boys to try and fail and then try
again than never to bother trying because “the Scoutmaster did it for me.”
Wood Badge taught me that old saw from Lord Baden-Powell
himself: “Scouting is a game with a purpose: the game is a fun and exciting
program, and the purpose is to become better adults.”
To become better adults.
Funny, I’ve heard something like that before.
Part of Brigham Young University-Idaho’s mission statement
reads “Prepare students for lifelong learning, for employment, and for their
roles as citizens and parents.”
Different words. But the same thing.
All this time I’ve been concentrating on how the training I
got at Wood Badge could help me be a better online instructor at BYU-Idaho.
Part of me now sees this as a two-way street, as there are elements of our
online teacher training and the experience of teaching diverse groups of online
students will help make me a better Scouter.
As I sat in that Deacons Quorum room, I thought not of
Scouting, but of my students at BYU-Idaho. What am I doing in class to, as the
Scoutmaster Handbook advises, to make my classroom a safe place? To think
ahead? To recognize students as individuals? And then conversely: What am I
doing with my Scouts to encourage them to live gospel principles, to provide a
quality education for Scouts of diverse interests and abilities, and to
maintain a wholesome academic, cultural, social, and spiritual environment?
Should my goal be to squeeze my scouts through the eight
hours of community-based service they need for their Citizenship in the
Community merit badge, or to show them that there are community-based
organizations who need service from every person, including Scouts and Scout leaders,
so those organizations can concentrate on serving the public?
Should I sign my Scouts off on the Personal Fitness merit
badge because they‘ve stumbled through three months’ worth of push-ups and mile
walks and bookwork, or because through example they’re seeing how fitness now
will pay dividends well into the future that for them may as well be a million
years from now?
One hand can learn from the other. My role as an online
instructor at Brigham Young University-Idaho has as much to learn from Wood
Badge as my role as Scoutmaster has to learn from my teaching online English
students.
So I took two of those Deacons – my Scouts – on their fast
offering route, forgetting that when I arrived at church, my first thought was:
My son is home sick; I don’t have to do fast offerings today either. We talked
about the wind, the cold, the coming snow that might make our camping trip the
coming weekend a bit more interesting. I reminded myself that one of those boys
was in charge of planning our upcoming court of honor as he works on his
Communication merit badge; I’d better follow up on that on Tuesday, lest the
court of honor go unplanned and his experience fulfilling those merit badge
requirements goes unfulfilled.
I also noted the need to plan ahead for my Foundations
English students. They’re starting work on their group projects, with some of
them already expressing anxiety over the mistake-makings of their peers. As I
remind them I’m not a fan of group work myself, I also mention, casually –
about half of what I do in my full-time job as a technical writer involves
working with groups. Work doesn’t have to be pleasant to be necessary.
A game with a purpose.
Preparing students for lifelong learning.
One hand complementing the other.
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