[MR] Teenager abuse at Pennsic

[Timothy Carter]

Greetings Merry Rose!Having raised two children in the SCA, and through them managed quite a few of their friends sturng along and brought to local events, the most common complaint I get from their age levels - 14-ish through 18, is the lack of activities geared towards their ability and attention.  Children's Corners are too young, and fighting is just out of their reach (save boffer weapons recently, which may draw a few), but especially after hours, when adults are want to relax and visit friends, where and what are teens to to go and do have been the ongoing questions where the answers are quite cloudy in most cases.
 
Part of the problem I have encountered is providing them answers with activities and places that are safe, non-obtrusive to others, and are cool enough to grasp the attention and willingness of teens.
 
I discussed a few of my ideas to a couple of gentles this recent Pennsic that involved permitting teens (16-18) to perform guard services for the royal camp.  Other services may be to help retain, assist in projects be responsible for beautification or maintenance tasks to improve Pennsic (local events too!) for everyone involved.
 
Since this discussion in this list's thread was derived from Pennsic I will mostly discuss teens at Pennsic. 
 
What if teen's could be employed to provide service hours.  Those service hours - well documented and confirmed - could be maintained in competition with opposing forces for war points to be awarded for the most hours of documented teen service to their crowns or the war overall (Security-runners, Chiurgeon-runners, Waterbearing, etc.).  The person-in-charge at Pennsic activites, as well as Kingdom service areas, should maintain a list of teen volunteers and document such hours to be tallied as the final war points, if used in such manner.  If teens know their efforts in service may lead to victory in the war, perhaps more teens will volunteer and hangout less.
 
Given the opportunity, I would love to see more teens serving in the royal encampment helping not only as retainer and gate guard, but perhaps as pages to assist with the tasks involved in managing the camp.  Split firewood, cleaning up between activities, filling snack and drink containers at the gate, acting as a gate host to announce arrivals to the camp, perhaps even preparing banners, arms, armor for courts, tournaments, and other official royal activities.  In having spent many shifts with Her Majesty, there have been quite a few moments when a runner (younger and faster than my aging bones) would have been most useful!
 
Looking back, I recall there are projects teens could certainly be involved with to improve the Pennsic experience for everyone.  Her majesty and I discussed how difficult it was understanding BLUE field from RED field with the absence of identifying markers.  I had suggested that perhaps She might rally the baronies to provide marking banners for the fields as A&S projects.  I suggest let each barony's teens gather and choose a color corresponding to a field of Pennsic, design that field's banners (8 banners should suffice for corners and mid-point for each side).  This may be a good Atlantian service project for Pennsic and may provide some worthy activity for the teens.  Granted this is only one project, and would probably -- most certainly -- not keep the teens busy for a year from now, but what other projects might the teens in each group be offered to let them feel needed and a valiant contributor to the group?
 
Mundanely I am a teacher at the junior/vocational college level, but having been a teacher at the high school level I have found that teens, when given responsibility and are motivated to manage a worthwhile project with little adult supervision take, on pride and are eager to be successful in that project.  If recognition comes with that success, the teens are usually quite eager to become involved in the next project too.
 
Keeping teens busy in worthwhile activities, even at night (fire watch, assistant kitchen manager, safety officer, etc...) tends to keep teens from simply hanging out and having trouble find them.
 
Lord Gunther von Lindenwald
Barony of Tir-Y-Don