Akela: a wolf pack of eight-year-olds

In scouting, the cub-pack leader is called Akela, after the wolf in the Jungle Book. It sounds grand until you’re standing in the rain with a whistle, a first-aid kit and a dozen eight-year-olds who have just discovered mud.

I lead cubs in a Lugano scout group that has existed since 1915, which is a humbling piece of context: the program I improvise on a Saturday afternoon sits on more than a century of other people’s Saturdays.

The work itself is planning games that are secretly lessons, keeping the fast kids challenged without losing the shy ones, and running camps where the real curriculum is: you can carry your own bag, you can cook something edible, you can sleep away from home and be fine.

What it teaches the adult

Everyone assumes scouting is about teaching kids. Mostly it trains the leader. You learn to give instructions that survive being heard by a distracted audience, to plan for the weather you’ll actually get, and to project calm you don’t always feel, because twelve kids calibrate their reaction to yours.

If you’ve ever wondered why I stay level when a deploy goes sideways, part of the answer is a gym full of cubs and the discovery that panic is a choice you make for the whole room.

Cover photo: russty67, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; cropped.