Our troop has worked things out. The girls made suggestions for a behavior contract and I typed it up this past week, adding the Girl Scout promise and law at the top, because except for trip-specific details, almost everything that should be expected of girls is in the promise and law. I sent it to my coleader to see what she thought, and she liked it. She'd been hesitant at first because it wasn't very organic, meaning, it made our group a lot more official than she (or I) felt comfortable with. But she read it and liked it and decided that we should bring it up over lunch on our upcoming trip. We should go over it together as a troop and make the pledge to follow it, together. This is why my coleader and I are so well matched. I have a high tolerance for paperwork and love to teach skills, while she really understands how 9 year old girls work. Thank goodness, because otherwise I'd probably be running the troop like a police state. Just my natural tendency. I'm a former middle school math teacher. So we're headed out to a field trip Saturday, hoping for good weather. And by the end, hoping fences are mended and we can move on, together.

Looking for a bit of advice or maybe just simply posting this to admit that it isn't all hearts and flowers over here in my junior troop. I have a girl, let's call her Jackie, who has been in our troop for 3 years. Never much of a problem, but her mother is hard to handle and her grandmother more so. But I have handled them as best I could and we're all still here to talk about it. Jackie was never the issue, and so the adults involved took most of my managing time. All my other families, all of them, added together, were never as much work as this one. Jackie joined late in this year because the adults in her life couldn't get the paperwork together. I learned via another scout leader that Grandma probably forged mom's signature on the form--yet mom was the one who dropped it off with payment. That was in November, and Jackie didn't come to a meeting until the January "Get ready to sell cookies and go camping" meeting. Since she'd been a member for some time, I didn't think twice about having us join us on the camping trip. I knew her family situation wasn't her fault.

She was a problem on the camping trip. A big problem. She stole a bunch of fruit from the kitchen and took a bite from each, hiding them in her sleeping bag. She brought candy--against the rules--and hid it in her cubby (we were at a lodge). She kept girls awake into the night and shined her flashlight in their eyes while they slept. She was sullen and didn't participate. And she stole other girls' items and hid them and made one girl cry. The worst part was that she was a ringleader of sorts and drew two new girls in, which made it even more complicated to sort out who was responsible for what. I know I could have sent her home. I knew, however, that it wouldn't have made an impression. I had a growing suspicion that Jackie didn't want to be in girl scouts at all, but was there because her grandmother used to be a leader at another school and was probably forcing her to join. I wanted to make it work, and my sainted co-leader drew her in by Saturday afternoon and we were able to make it through until it was time to go home. By the time I made it to the pick up site, she'd already been picked up. The rest of my life was busy enough, with cookie sales and a vacation and all this sleet and snow. So I didn't get around to contacting her mother or grandmother. I expected I'd see her at our February meeting and could handle it there. She didn't come to the February meeting. Nor to the February gathering. Or the March meeting. I didn't follow up. I have a big troop and so be it. Her partners in crime from the camping trip seemed to drop off as well. Except all three sold cookies...and picked them up...and dropped off money. So girl scouting was still on their minds. Grandma called my cookie manager to ask for my phone number, which of course she should have so far. She told her, "Jackie is so excited about the field trip this month and camping in May." She hasn't called me yet to get the details, and I'm really at a loss. I've never had a girl act like this on a trip and never had a girl who seemed to be using me for free field trips and camping this way. Girls come to the majority of meetings, most gatherings and trips. That's how it's always gone. It's never been an issue. Ever. Really. I don't think I should allow her to go on our field trip and I certainly don't think she should camp in May, unless she starts coming to our meetings again and participates in April Showers. I know her family situation is complicated, but her behavior on the camping trip was completely out of line. Other girls have asked me, privately, if Jackie is still in our troop. They came up with a behavior contract for all girls to sign before our next trip and I know they did it because of Jackie's behavior in January.

We've never done anything like that before. So what do I do? My co-leader likes second chances but Jackie never showed any remorse, never apologized, never seemed to admit that she was in the wrong (and she camped with us twice last year with no problem--I think the combination of her with the two new girls, who are friends of hers from the same school, was the perfect storm kind of set up in January). She knew what was expected and she knew the rules and continued to break them--and I hate to take it personally but I'm a volunteer. I'm not her teacher. I feel like I shouldn't have to put up with behavior like this, especially when we're away for the weekend. I expect Grandma will call today, and I am going to remove myself from the position of being between her and her ex-daughter-in-law. I'm going to tell her I need to talk to Jackie's mom or dad about this. But I'm sure I'll get a phone call from Mom right afterward. And I need to figure out what I'm going to say.

With cookie season in full swing I was expecting to receive a few knocks at my door but go day came and went with no sign of Girl Scouts in my neighborhood. Or so I thought…

 

The following weekend I found myself having a particularly lazy Saturday with naps and all. As I was cuddled up in my bed snoozing away I heard a knock at my door. I decided not to answer as I wasn’t expecting anyone and was trying to get my sleep on. A second knock went ignored in the same fashion. Then I heard a banging on my door. I jumped up and began to walk to my living room to look out the window when I saw her. Her was a Brownie Girl Scout peering in my window. I opened the door and was greeted with, “Wanna buy some cookies?!?” After my purchase and light banter with the Brownie I closed the door and shut my living room curtains.

 

Happy Cookie Season!

 

*This blog in no way promotes peering into windows as a sales technique*

Lately I have been hearing about Girl Scouts beyond the Service Center walls. I always enjoy hearing what people have to say about Girl Scouts and especially enjoy it when it is unsolicited. Below are just a few statements I have recently heard or read. They all made me smile, some made me laugh but all made me happy to work for the Girl Scouts. 

 

“Dear Maroon 5, your name sounds like a Girl Scout cookie. Sincerely, Simon Archer.”—106.5 radio station promo.

 

“I don’t need a GPS, I was a Girl Scout,”—I Hop patron.

 

“Thanks to Girl Scouts, I didn’t have to call AAA to change my tire!”—My cousin’s status update on Facebook.

 

“Because God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies.” –Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

 

What have you heard or read about the Girl Scouts that made you crack a smile?

Last year this time, I spent a lot of time during my winter break working on my Girl Scout Gold Award but now I am done and I have a chance to look back on the benefits of recieving my award.

      Standing on the stage and recieving my plaque, numerous letters of congratulations from various  leaders, and most importantly having the Gold Award Pin hung around my neck by my mom will be one of the memories that I soon won't forget. The Reflections Ceremony was a time of celebration and recognition some of the Girl Scouts hard work. Not only Gold Award recipients but Silver Award recipients, 10 year Girl Scouts, and 13 year Girl Scouts.  I couldn't help but smile (and breathe a sigh of relief! Because earning the Gold Award is no joke) and feel proud of what I accomplished.

Many days I left school early to work on my project, which was to teach African and African-American history to 5th and 6th graders. My friends see me and ask, "What are you doing this for?" And I would try to put in a concise form exactly what the Girl Scout Gold Award was, because after the 5th person would ask you it became annoying, but I would tell them, "To earn my Gold Award for Girl Scouts." Some would ask, "What's a Gold Award?" Then I would have to say, "This award you get by earning certain badges and then working on a community service type project." But really the Gold Award is so much more than that. Its something whose value can't be explained in passing or talking for a minute; espeically to those who are unfamiliar with Girl Scouting and only remember you're a Girl Scout during cookie season.

The Girl Scout Gold Award is  really what you make of it. It's a chance for Girl Scouts to be in charge, learn more about themseleves, and do something we enjoy. From earning career experience hours to the final project, it's what you want to do. It's time consuming, from filling out the neccessary paperwork to just thinking about what you want to do. It allows you to be creative and to lead. It showed me what I am capable of and how to manage my time and money. And then at the end its rewarding, to recieve your Gold Award Pin. And to those adults and other girls who know what it takes to earn your Gold Award, you feel proud. All tis can't be expressed in passing or explained in one minute. Thats' what the Gold Award means to me.

 

Each Girl Scout Council has the option to offer its own badges, called "Council's Own" badges (this is a link to a wiki of sorts listing many of them available). Troops, in theory, can have a Troop's Own as well, but for the most part, I've only seen council's owns. GSEM has a few, but what always fascinates me is the variety of badges available nationwide to registered scouts if only the leader knows where to look.

For instance, my juniors love archery. They love it. They keep asking when we'll go again, if we'll have a chance when we camp (in January!!). I picked up my badgebook and found that there isn't an archery badge. So I hunted online and found that the Girl Scouts of the Jersey Shore, a council in Georgia, and one in Massachusetts offer archery badges. I took a look at requirements, made them a little harder in some cases, and presented it to my girls. Three of the 19 have earned it already (they were juniors last year and had a head start) and I expect the majority to earn it by springtime.

Girl Scouts of Northern California has a self defense badge that I am tweaking a bit for my two juniors who are very involved in tae kwon do. Central Indiana has several interesting badges available, including Animals in Our Community, which my troop will most certainly earn this year; bicycling; and archaeology. There's a wide variety across the US. All these badges are worn on the front with official insignia--they are not simply participation patches. There are some brownie try-its available, too, although not as many, and interest patches for older girls.

Several times in the past year a girl has asked me "do they have a badge for...?" and I haven't known for certain. It takes some digging, but almost always I can find something that fits. There are all sorts of badges out there--nearly all that are listed at that wiki page above are open to all GSUSA scouts; some councils limit who can earn their badges, but many offer them to any scout that completes the requirements.

I wish that our council had more to offer in this regard--especially considering changes coming in the next year, it might be good to consider offering more of these options. But until that day comes, I'm happy to hunt and find options for my girls when their interests and expertise don't fit exactly into the GSUSA materials and requirements.

My juniors spent Sunday afternoon earning their wildlife badge. A few already had--this is the second time I've run this meeting, so I changed it up a bit. One thing the badge book doesn't focus on is the use of field guides, which I think are a wonderful gateway to conservation and knowledge about wildlife and natural history. I had several bird guides, some with plates and some with photos. Since it was already afternoon and we were unlikely to see many birds about (plus, 17 juniors can be noisy!), we did this part of the activity with several photographs I had, either from my own collection or from sources online. Each group was given a few and I explained what to look for on a bird and how to use the guide their group had. Some pictures were very easy, like wood duck and red-tailed hawk, but others were tricky, like several differen species of sparrow ("little brown jobbies" or LBJs, as they are often called). Girls debated on some of them, and in the end one group was never sure if they had a picture of a white throated or white crowned sparrow. I told them that out in the field, keen observation before picking up the book was key. Watch the bird perch, watch it fly, listen to find out if it has a distinct call.

My goal there is to spark interest. Some of my girls will probably never pick up a field guide again, for birds or trees or anything like that: they just don't have interests in this area. But others I know will ask me on our camping trips to borrow one, that they've found this or that flower and just have to know what it is.

I drew some other activities from my 1953 Girl Scout Handbook. It makes me sad that we have "Wildlife" and "Plants and Animals" but we used to have Rambler, Trees, Garden Flowers, Wild Plants, Mammals, Birds, Insects, Reptiles & Amphibians, and Saltwater Life. And in order to earn some of those badges, like "Tree", a girl had to complete 10 of 16 requirements, including identification of 15 trees out of doors. It's ridiculous that the Wildlife badge doesn't include something like this--maybe not specific to trees, but that we don't even make it one of the options, to learn, say, 10 common trees, flowers, birds, or mammals that are indigenous to the area where the scout resides.

So we took a walk. Just around my block. And by the end of it they knew dogwood, sycamore, maple, American basswood, gingko (sure, it's not indigenous, but it's pervasive!), red oak (just the classification, we didn't get into specific oak species), mulberry, ash, sweetgum, and birch. I know it will need reinforcement and mnemonics in order to stick, but I think in this day and age, too many young people (and old people!) just have no clue what's in nature around them.

They also learned the 5 poisonous snakes of Missouri, the 2 spiders, and how to identify poison ivy. We did a few of the other activities in the badgebook and ended the meeting with smores around my fire pit and learning a couple of bird calls (what chew, what chew, birdie birdie birdie; and my favorite: OH sweet Canada, Canada, Canada Canada!).

Next month's regular meeting: the sewing badge. We'll rock that one out, trust me.

Journeys. The elephant in the living room. For a long time I felt like I was being needlessly cynically and put-upon, that it was just my fear of change. Then this summer, knowing I was going to have to bite the bullet and ntroduce them anyway, I decided to take a look at a daisy journey, since my younger daughter would be starting daisies in the fall.

I had looked at brownie and junior journeys, but knowing I had time and liking the way things were going, I ignored them. But I picked up the daisy leader guide and started flipping through. It seemed ok. Really. Too scripted for my taste, but I could see how I could use it. I could envision a set of 6 meetings or so, centered around a common theme. I liked the "daisy garden" idea and I thought to myself, "what was I so afraid of?"

Two of the things I'd read about how the journeys came about involved increasing membership, especially in urban areas, and having a more consistent girl experience. I knew the second was completely valid--so much depends on your leader and her enthusiasm, tolerance for paperwork, interests, and goals. It would be a hard one to change, though, because training can only do so much. You would need to move to an almost scripted program: in kindergarten you cover these things, in 4th grade you do this and that, and so forth. I have heard from friends who are boy scout volunteers that this is more like the boy scout program, that it is pretty consistent in comparison to girl scouts. But I liked the freedom--a close friend was a leader for a few years until her daughter joined my troop, and she focused on careers and safety;  I was always more interested in the outdoors and crafts. But as my girls got older, I let them make the decisions and guide the planning (which means a yearly trip to the City Museum, a place that makes me break out in hives but they love it). But you do have to have some sense about you to be a leader who can guide girls until they can guide themselves. You have to know how to use GS resources and classes and training in order to do the things they want to do. And often you have to do things you might not have wanted.

From what I saw of the journeys, even standing there in the shop glancing over the daisy leader's guide, I could see the consistency of outcomes. I could see what they were going for.

So I stood there and browsed and then saw references to work girls should be doing in their journey books. I looked back at the shelf and found them, slim workbooks designed to be one-per-girl consumables. And I have to admit I kind of flipped out. So much for trying to entice urban girls, many of whom can't afford the $12 membership fee to even join girl scouts. I thought about all the other things we could do with the money we'd need to buy 12 of these workbooks for my daisy troop (a daisy troop based in a montessori school with no workbooks present).

That's when I decided I needed to find another way. I know, there are work-arounds. I know, there is scholarship money. I could probably make a bunch of copies or be creative in other ways. I know all these things. I know there are creative people who do wonderful things with journeys and I applaud them. And I'm not leaving--I'm not throwing my hands up and walking away from girl scouting. I also know that many, many people who volunteer for girl scouts are upset with these journeys, for so many reasons, and I won't spend the time to sit and complain because it's easy to stand against something.

Instead, I've decided what I'm going to do. What I'm going to stand for and do and how I will draw my girls into a positive girl scouting experience.

1. I won't be tossing my books come next autumn when they're phased out. I have books dating back to the 1940s on my shelves and they are all good resources. My favorite is the 1953 Intermediate Girl Scout Handbook. When my juniors earned their wildlife badge, I wasn't impressed enough with the current guidelines, so we drew them from this book. And they learned something.

2. I won't be purchasing workbooks for my daisy troop. I'm going to take out my brownie leader's guide and draw on my experiences of being a first grade teacher (I am a once-and-future teacher). We will do a canned food drive and caroling in December. We will sell cookies in January. We will go on field trips and learn the girl scout law and sing songs and go on a day trip to the country.

3. I won't be purchasing workbooks for my junior troop. I won't hide the journeys from them, since they are juniors, and I'll borrow a guide from the resource center. If they want to give it a try, we'll give it a try (next year: this year is pretty much set due to our bronze award). Over half my girls come from a montessori school where child-led learning is the name of the game. They picked their bronze award project and have planned out the year. I can't see them going for a scripted workbook-based system, but if they do, we'll give it a try. But we won't buy workbooks because one of my girls pays for things from her allowance (in quarters); another's mom keeps her home when things cost money, even though I've talked to her time and again about not worrying about such things, please, that's what troop funds are for; and several other families (including my co-leader Clarity) are on tight budgets. I'd rather spend troop funds on experiences.

4. I will continue to work within the system as best I can to give my girls the kind of experience that matches my goals for girl scouting: experiences girls can't get in school, at home, or on the playground. I will take small watercraft training so we can canoe when we want and not just when there's another troop at camp with the adults we need. I will fill my little green card up with certifications, and use them. I will go to neighborhood meetings and help my other leaders at my school as TO. I will be a part of girl scouting and stay hopeful.

My junior troop has grown each year it's been in existence. It's an urban troop of girls who do not have access to camping and wilderness education via other outlets. Girl Scouting allows me to use their framework and bring these things, and so many others, to girls whose lives would be smaller without scouting. If GSUSA wants to know how to draw in urban girls, maybe they should come talk to me and Clarity. Something we're doing is catching on. And what we do, most of all, is go off-script. It may not provide a "consistent girl outcome" but why should we make ours worse to match everyone else's?

Brownie Elf: dates back to old English tales of Brownies who literally were elves: tiny creatures who did good de eds and helpful work. (How To Guide Girl Scout Brownies on Brownie Quest, p.7)

 

ELF: Explore, Link Arms, and Fly Into Action

 

ELFing: to ELF

 

I have had the opportunity to help get a brownie troop started in one of my neighborhoods. In helping the leaders it was decided to introduce the girls to the idea of ELF. We decided that whenever the girls needed to find a buddy or we need to move to the next activity we would tell the girls to ELF. Last week was our first opportunity to try the ELF idea out as the girls were going to go outside and do scavengers hunt. After explaining to them what ELF was and practicing how to ELF during our Brownie circle we transitioned to the scavenger hunt. I stood up and said, let’s ELF and the girls quickly found their buddy and linked arms. On our way outside I told the girls that what we were doing was ELFing and so whenever you need to find a buddy you will go ELFing. With that the girls giggled and went on their way to find the parts of the law. Later on in the meeting we needed to transition to the next activity and the leader of the troop said, “it is time to go ELFing.” The girls quickly stood up and found a buddy and flew to the next activity station. So after the meeting it was decided that ELFing was now officially a troop verb to be used generously.

 

*This Girl Scout idea brought to you by the first Journey, It’s Your World Change It, Brownie Quest.*

A few weeks ago we found out that there would be some moving around the Girl Scout offices. The whole reason for the movement is for departments to work cohesively so the powers that be decided that there were going to be some changes in the floor plan. So I am getting ready to move my stuff from cube A to cube G. Now, I am not a big fan of moving. In fact I despise it. But it is necessary and that is why I started packing today. The only reward that comes from packing is the purging or de-cluttering. It actually feels good to go through files and folders to decide what needs to be saved, shredded and recycled. My desk has never been cleaner and my recycle bin never fuller. I have decided that once the “move” is over I will be able to work more efficiently which can only make everyone I work with happy. And while this might not sound all that exciting I will share with you that in the process of purging we (the membership department) stumbled across a hammock in one of the empty cubes. Yes, a hammock. It never ceases to amaze me the awesome stuff found when one is “moving”