My son started Cub Scouts this year. He just finished up his rank of Lion and will be moving on to his Tiger rank this upcoming year. As an Eagle Scout, I’m happy he’s taken a liking to Cub Scouts and I’m also a natural target for someone to ask me to help in the leadership of the Pack. To do so, I had to get some training, and this weekend was the weekend.
Before I get to the weekend, I’m pretty positive there was not this much training involved in leadership when I was growing up. I know this because if there was my father probably would not have helped at all in leading.
I had to go to BALOO training through the council. It’s essentially an introduction to camping and the outdoors for new leaders. We stayed at a local camp, camped overnight, and had instruction from some trainers from the council. We got to practice our outdoor cooking skills, learned basic first aid, and got to know basic gear that would be helpful when camping with Cub Scouts. All in all, it was a long but fun weekend.
When the weekend first started, one of the trainers let me know that as an Eagle Scout I would probably know everything that we were being trained on and would probably be bored. While I did know most of the topics that were covered, seeing them in context of teaching Cub Scouts was good for me. I also learned about some more training opportunities and that makes me feel good about what I might get into later in this journey.