How To Handle a Multi-Level Troop

 

Unless you limit your troop to girls in one grade, you are going to have a multi-level troop at least some years.  So, how do you handle having girls at more than one level?  There are probably as many different ways as there are troops.  This post will take a look at some of the most common and try to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the choice.

We Aren't Multi-Level (even if we should be)

Yes, some people just ignore the rules.  Yes, that goes against Girl Scout policy and therefore the "respect authority" part of the Girl Scout Law, but for a troop that has an odd girl out--one girl who is a grade ahead of or behind all the others, this seems like the most simple solution.  Everyone wears the same uniform and does the same activities.  Who cares?  Are the GS police going to come arrest you?  

No.

The place this can catch you is on the higher awards.  Girls are placed in levels by their grade in school and if Susie is a third grade junior in a troop with fourth grade juniors who are earning their Bronze Award, she won't get one because she is technically a Brownie, not a Junior.  If the higher awards are a goal, then the girl who is not the right age for the troop needs to know when she qualifies and why.

A Cub Scout Pack Approach

There are some large multi-level troops that basically operate in the same manner as Cub Scout Packs.  All girls begin and end the meetings together, but spend most of each meeting working with girls in their level under the direction of age-level assistant leaders.  

Some troops like this are of relatively normal size and became multi-level because they started off as a single level but two grades, so the troop is still pretty much run by two leaders.  Other troops, no matter how they started, have made a deliberate decision to accept girls of all ages and to become more or less permanent institutions.  One leader handles the paperwork. Another plans camping trips or field trips. Age-level leaders direct badge work or other meeting activities.

A major advantage to this method is that it allows new parents to come into an established group with built-in support for new volunteers.  Troops like this can acquire significant equipment and supplies.  Leaders can find a niche and stay with it--the camping leader doesn't have to be the one running meetings and if Daisies are your thing you can be a permanent Daisy leader and groom a new mom to take over the Brownies when her daughter bridges--or  you can leave your Brownie with Crafty Cathy while you teach canoe skills to Cadettes.  

Make It Work for Everybody

GSUSA must have heard the complaints of troop leaders about the two year levels because the new program materials developed in the last five years, while different at each level, have significant overlap.  In short, particularly if your girls are in a relatively small age band, you can find a lot of programming that they can do together.  This programming includes:

• Think Like A...Journeys:  At each level, girls can earn "Think Like an Engineer", "Think Like a Citizen Scientist" and "Think Like a Programmer".  The requirements get more difficult as the girls get older, but the Brownie version is recommended for multi-level use for Daisies, Brownies and Juniors, and the Senior version for Cadettes, Seniors and Ambassadors.  While the Journey activities in VTK get more complex as the girls get older, the format is similar across all levels such that if you have a troop with girls in two adjacent levels, there should be  no problem doing the same version with both groups.
• Democracy:  The five basic requirements for these badges are the same on each level, though the recommended activities are different.
• Space Science:  There are versions of this badge for every level, and many activities could work with more than one level
• Outdoor Art:  This is another badge that was developed for all levels.  While the requirements vary, if you have girls close in age, you can do activities from both badges, and/or find things that meet requirements for one badge or the other.  
• Camping:  Each level has a camping badge 
• Financial literacy:  These "cookie" badges get progressively more complex as girls get older but the same activities can check boxes for more than one level.
• Coding For Good This series of progressive badges is for Daisies, Brownies and Juniors and each level covers much of the same material

My Experience

In our parish, girls normally bridge to other troops as they grow older.  I took over the Daisies seven years ago, and had a mixed K-1 troop. When the first graders bridged to Brownies, I went with them and left the Daisies with a co-leader.  She took new kindergarten girls.  When her daughter bridged to Brownies, I went back to Daisies and planned to basically do the same thing again.  I had the girls she left behind, plus some new recruits.  It was a big troop that year but for a variety of reasons I lost a bunch of those girls.  When we recruited kindergarten girls  we only got one--and due to changes in the local schools we did not see that improving.  The next year, all my girls but one bridged.  I didn't figure I could abandon her, and one of the  leaders of our older girls had a new Daisy, so I was going to have Brownies and Daisies.  Therefore I recruited some more Daisies, thinking I'd try to train a mom to take them over.  That didn't work out, and some of our older girl leaders left or decided to follow their  current girls.  So, this year I have second grade Brownies and fourth grade Juniors.

When the girls  were Daisies and Brownies, I basically ran a Brownie program and would relate what we were doing to Daisy petals, with the idea of doing five per year.  We picked up a couple of other badges that worked on both levels.  I'm sure there are troops that earned more badges than my girls did, but I know my girls had fun and learned.  

The  one problem with the way I've been doing things is that in order to work things together so that everyone gets a badge, the badge choices have to be very leader-directed.  In order to give the girls more choice and ability to plan their own programming, I changed our meeting schedule this year.  We are meeting as a whole group once a month and that meeting will continue to be very leader-directed.  I moved the other meeting from Monday nights to Saturday mornings.  Brownies will be from 10-11 and Juniors from 11:15 yo 12:15.  My goal is to get the girls involved in planning their level meetings.  

How do you handle a multi-level troop?  Why do you have a multi-level troop?