Journeys: The Other Side of the Story

I'm a criminal defense paralegal and one of the opening lines my boss uses in court is "Every piece of paper has two sides, and I want to make sure you look at both sides"  If you've read other posts of mine, you are probably aware that I'm not the biggest fan of Journeys and Take Action Projects.  In short, I think Journeys are two-headed monsters.  While I like the content of the "Think Like A...." and Outdoor Journeys, I think the original Journeys, from what I have seen (and I haven't looked at many of them), if done according to GSUSA's plans, do not do a good job with content, and I think they are all seriously lacking in directing the leaders on take action projects--and I'm not convinced Take Action Projects are appropriate for younger girls anyway.  

Nevertheless, I'm all for listening to the other side, so I posted a request on several Girl Scout leader Facebook pages for someone who liked Journeys who would be willing to be interviewed for this article.  I got one volunteer. Rhiannon, a Cadette leader who is an engineer who lives in Maryland.  Rhiannon and I spoke over Zoom and the result is this post.  

The post is not a direct transcript.  While I have formatted it as Q&A, the exact questions were composed while I was writing the posts and the answers are an attempt to summarize what Rhiannon said during an hour-long conversation.  I sent the post to her before publication and she has not indicated any problem with the post. 

Which Journeys have you done?

As Daisies we did Three Cheers for Animals and as Brownies we did Brownie Quest and Think Like a Programmer.  As Juniors we did Amuse and as Cadettes, Amaze.  

So tell me about your experience with Three Cheers

It was our first Journey and I followed the provided plans to a "T".  We were kind of rushing through--it was the end of the year and we only had one year as Daisies and I thought we needed to do one. I don't think the girls got the overall idea of what a Journey was supposed to be about.  

What about the Brownie Journeys?

Brownie Quest. I don't know that it was a great journey. I think that the I think the information they were trying to get across to the girls was a little bit too abstract for Brownies, but I think they had a really great way of leading the girls through finding a TAP.   It's actually a method that I've used for other TAPs.  It was on a poster. First you would brainstorm some of the things that you are concerned about.  Then you would look look at what you could do and then  narrow it down.  The girls ended up deciding they wanted to help the library, so we talked to the library about the girls' ideas,  but the library said told us what they could really use help with.  

We ended up doing service project/TAP. We went to the library, we helped clean up the kids section, wiping all those cards, those hard books down all the toys they have, we wiped all that stuff down, cleaned everything, or helped organize the books. But then we also provided them with these little packets that they could give to the kids who came to visit the library. It was a bookmark they could put together. So has the bookmark had some stickers that were like, you know, here's how to take care of your library book. And it was like, you know, don't draw on the book. Don't steal stuff on the book. Yeah, don't rip the book. You know, it's just a couple stickers and you know, piece of yarn and some smiley faces. But that way our take action project is spreading that information to kids.  We probably made about 100 of those for the library to give out,  I think this was one of our really good take action projects, and the girls really enjoyed it.   

My girls liked Think Like a Programmer because of the crafts.    I thought the developers did a good job with providing crafts that kind of showed you how to do the activities. Some of the games in the Journey were ones the girls would ask to play over and over again, even after that meeting. For our 

TAP we participated in the middle school STEAM fair.  I had a couple girls who did Think Like an Engineer as well. So we had tables at the STEAM fair., and the girls talked about what they learned. They put together  a crossword or word search or something to give, to give people .  

How did you do Amuse?

As Juniors, we knew  we wanted to do the Bronze Award.  The girls chose the Amuse Journey.  By this point, I started to realize that we didn't have to follow that book word for word. I started tweaking it, and looking for fun activities on Facebook groups, which made it a much more enjoyable journey.  Amuse is about breaking stereotypes.   The big project that we were focusing on that led into our take action project was sports -- was it  a guy boy sport versus was it  a girl sport. for our  TAP each girl found a female in a male dominated sport.  

One of my girls was a wrestler and another was a trick horse rider.  One of my girls looked at female football players.  Showing these pictures of real live women was much more powerful than just saying "You can do this because you can do anything."   But not only that, we were able to say "This girl right here, she did it, and here's this team of female wrestlers at a high school.   That's why I feel like they actually got something out of that Journey, applicable to what they were doing in their life. 

What did you think of Amaze? 

Amaze has been one of our best Journeys.  It's exactly where they are right now. It's learning about relationships, how to have relationships and it's focused mostly on friendships, but he lessons that you learn are going to go into all your relationships including your parents-child relationship and teacher-student relationships.  

I know the girls don't want to fill out worksheets or spend a lot of time listening to me talk, but one activity from the book that we did was the Peacemaker Kit.   It was an ongoing thing.  Each week, we would learn about a topic like bullying, cyber bullying, friendships, conflicts, or  I statements. And we would try to write down those things that they learned and put them in that Peacemaker kit.  By the end of the Journey, they had this kit that reminded them of the stuff that they had learned such as how to make an "I" statement and what it meant to hear what that other person was saying.  They learned how  you could have conflict, and that was totally fine, and  how you could have more than one BFF. 

One of my girls said "I have two friends, and I don't know which one is supposed to be my best friend".  This one makes me laugh, but this girl always listens to me so I saw it as my goal to get the girls to realize that you didn't have to have one BFF. And that was it. You know, and that was actually, you know, kind of a shocker to a couple of the girls. They came out of that Journey  knowing that different people serve different purposes in their life. No one person was going to be their everything, and that's okay.  

I would never have been able to put that stuff all together for the girls.  I took a lot of the Journey book, and said to myself, "This is the information I'm trying to get to them, put together in a logical chronology with some ideas of how I can do it."  The book included some crafts we could do, some games we could play and some scenarios that could do. 

Our TAP happened during Covid-19 lockdowns when we were not allowed to meet in person so we hosted a virtual friend fest. The girls created games, I've got girls who are military, well, they were able to invite girls from past military posts, I sent them a little package of the stuff. And, you know, the girls used that as a way to show their friendship. One of the things that girls that the girls had their guests do was those little Peacemaker kits.

How much of that TAP was your idea, and how much of it was theirs?

It was theirs.  When we started to talk about things, and we got into the discussion of what was what was lacking in their lives right now, and it came down to not being able to be around their friends and not being able to interact and meet people,. My girls have all just started sixth grade, all  just started new schools but they haven't had an opportunity to meet these kids in their classes, you know, to start making friendships. And so that developed into like, well, what if we were to do something where we could kind of let people meet? 

My Comments

I'd like to thank Rhiannon for visiting with me to talk Journeys and TAPs.  I had fun visiting with her and got a chance to look at Journeys through different eyes.  Her troop also did an awesome Bronze Award project during Covid lockdown and since this post is so long already, I'm going to write about it in another post.