Most Scouts are already doing requirements for merit badges and don’t even know it! Tonight Scouts reviewed their advancement reports and completed requirement 2 for the Scholarship merit badge, discussing the various merits of different types of planning and organization strategies and talking about their own school homework “agendas” (req 2.c).

Then, their Scoutmaster, who happens to be a university professor, demonstrated how different research methods resulted in different outcomes, showing how using more than one source in library databases, google, google scholar, and google books enable more in-depth and useful research results (and Scouts were excited to learn especially about google books and google scholar, which allow for in-text searching and access to a greater variety of materials than any one library can provide) (req 2.d).

When we next meet on April 25, Scouts who wish to complete the Scholarship merit badge should bring: evidence of Bs or higher on school grades or evidence of improvement (req 1); evidence of behavior, leadership, and service at school or homeschool have been satisfactory (req 3); and a 250-300 word report about how education is valuable to the Scout now and in the future OR a 250-300 word report about two careers that interest the Scout and how specific classes and good scholarly efforts will help him achieve his goals (req 5).

We will also discuss their participation in extracurricular activities or participation in a group project at the meeting to complete req 4.

During part of this meeting, Koda completed his Board of Review: please join me in congratulating our newest First Class Scout!

(Gentle reminder that we are not meeting April 18th. Our next meeting is April 25th. Have a lovely Easter weekend!)