This may be a bit of a strange request, but here we go…
After retiring from the Army and law enforcement, I started my new gig. In August, I became an English teacher in a private, all-male military school that serves young men in grades 7 through 12 and Post Graduate. Located away from all modern conveniences and distractions, our cadets often find themselves with little to do in the limited free time that they have.
I am planning to start a model building club with these young men to get them involved in something other than “Fortnite” and other online instant gratification. Many of our kids can’t carry on a conversation with someone in the same room, so I hope to use this club as an opportunity to develop and reinforce rules, communication, social interaction, creativity, and FUN!!
So, if you find yourself overwhelmed with simple, unwanted, or outdated kits and you need to make room for that next batch of “wonder kits” give me a shout…who knows? We may be able to work together to pass along a great hobby to a new generation of modelers.
If anyone has any ideas, pointers, or comments, please let me know…would absolutely love to hear from you…
I thnk this is a wonderful idea. I will peruse my stash and send some models to you. I’ll PM you when I am ready, due to work constraints it will be a few days before I can.
Just wanted to let you know that your package arrived safe and sound today here in Virginia. One of the kids that I coach knew what was in the package and begged me to open it up. Pretty soon we had a small crowd gathered around. It was good to see kids excited about something other than video games. We are still organizing as a club and can you believe that some kids have never seen a model?? Crazy!!
We will hopefully have our first build some time after Easter when they get back to school. I’ll keep you posted.
Thanks for the feed back. One never knows in what condition the packages arrive in these days and I’m glad to hear it was safe. It’s also gratifying to hear that the boys where excited about the models…just like me at the hobby shop lol
Most of our cadets left campus today on Easter/Passover leave. A handful of kids were not able to go home and stayed in barracks. I’m happy to say that I hooked up a couple of kids with some kits and some scrounged tools and glues so that they could build models over the long weekend…I’m happy to say that one of the kids sent me an email thanking me for his kit and asking me what the ‘possiblity’ would be of getting another kit over the weekend…I had to laugh at the kid’s spunk! He absolutely loved building his first kit…thanks for making it possible!!
Will have to drop by the classroom tomorrow and let him pick out another one!
Good to see some young boys excited about model building!!
Oh man, that surely is great news. I’m so glad that your “experiment” is working out well and I am glad I could be a small part of it.
Just curious, are you working in a class situation with all the boys working on models together or do they take the models to their dorm rooms for an individual build ? The reason I asked is that I still want to send you the Trumpeter Aircraft carrier and since it is a large model, I thought it might make a cool class project.
Since we are just getting this club off the ground, we are pretty flexible in our meetings and build time. Easter weekend was a little different for us. Most of our cadets left campus, but several remained on campus due to financial and long distance travel concerns in getting home for just a weekend. I had to get special permission for my 8th grader to take models and model making materials into his room.
As we get established, we will meet at least once a week for a couple of hours as a team, most likely in my classroom, unless we can find a vacant, tiled room with good ventilation. We’ll have to see about that…I made a request for a dedicated work space where we can secure our work and leave it out
An aircraft carrier sounds like a great team project!!! Working together, it may help some of my shy, introverted guys become more socially confident…great idea!! And as always, thank you so much!!
Finally got through my first year of teaching and have a couple of weeks before summer school starts. Just wanted you to know that our little club grew quickly from 3 cadets to 11 in just a couple of weeks. While some kids still need to work on their attention to detail and develop patience, a few have come along very nicely. I have one young man that loves to build but is not ready yet to start painting. I have another kid that likes to build and paint his kits. He takes some “artistic license” with paint schemes, but he gets better every day.
I had one kid ask if he could take home a kit to teach his little brother how to build models. So, it looks like the model building hobby is alive and well here at my litttle school!!
Once again, thank you so much for your kind generosity; it means the world to these young men!
Our school started the new year at the end of August and we are in full swing for school year 2019-2020! Our little group of scale modelers are getting together every Tuesday evening as part of the school’s club program and we are having a blast! We have anywhere from 10 to 15 kids showing up for at least part of the meeting.
I found several partial boxes of Revell “Make It, Take It” kits that I used as a police outreach to kids in the Boys and Girls Club and a few at-risk neighborhoods and brought those in for the cadets. In the last couple of weeks, we have built some Tomcats, F18 Hornets, a space shuttle, and several 2004 Chevrolet Corvettes. These kits have been the first introduction into models that many of these kids have had.
A pair of FSM forum members, Keavdog and Jay Jay, were kind enough to donate several kits to the club. On behalf of our cadets, I’d like to say thank you. Here are a few pictures from our recent club meetings.
Really cool to see those kids enjoying model building.
You know I saw a news report that parents are suing the gaming company that invented Fortnite,talk about delusional and denying your own or your kids responsibility.Exercise some parental control and be accountable for your own actions,its always someones elses fault.
We just had our last meeting last night. Christian is working on DKM Bismarck and U-81 along with his USS North Carolina. He definitely loves ships and is great with the small parts that I can’t even see. After a brief ‘how-to’ tutorial on making bed rolls out of tissue paper, water, and white glue, Julian added a folded tent, blankets, and clothing to his Crown Vic Zombie Hunter…he’s got a great imagination. Justin came in after evening football practice to get in an hour or so on the bench with a Monogram F-100 Super Sabre.
The kids are excited that we will be having a Parents’ Weekend event next weekend and I told them that we would show off their work as part of the school clubs presentation next Saturday. I’m even thinking about letting parents and other cadets vote on a “Best of Show” award. Sounds a little cheesy, but I think they are really getting the model building bug now…Life is good!![:D]
