Badges and Levels and Journeys Oh My -- and Patches Too

 One question that makes the rounds on Girl Scout leader Facebook pages is how the various program parts fit together and how to use them with multi-level troops.  

Honestly, the program we have now was developed with the idea of single grade troops.  There was no consideration given to making the program easy to deliver to multi-aged troops, particularly those at different levels.  Pretty much everyone who has run a multi-level troop has figured it out on her own or learned from through unofficial sources--though recently Volunteer Toolkit has started giving ideas for multi-level troops.  

Journeys

Journeys are the leadership curriculum.  No matter which one you pick, the overarching goal is to teach girls to identify problems in the world to to solve them via "Take Action Projects"--the type of projects GSUSA wants for Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards. 

The three original "book" journeys did this via the process of Discover --learn about a topic that was trendy 15 years ago; Connect--team up with people/organizations in your community that are involved in that area and Take Action---create a sustainable solution to a problem you found that relates to the topic of the Journey. 

These Journeys were designed to be the backbone of a year's programming.  Badges and the outdoors were "side trips" along with cookies.  The Journeys took between six and 12 meetings to complete according to plans--but you might take a badge "side trip" after a couple of meetings, or maybe one for some outdoor activity.   These Journeys were supposed to be a new way to "do" GS, as opposed to the badge-centered prior program.  

These maps give you an idea of the creator's vision. but based on what I heard at the time I think the plan was for Journeys to take the entire year, and ideally all activities would tie into the theme in one way or another.  Maybe you'd learn to sew, so that you could make something for your TAP, or take a field trip to the zoo, but question the girls about how water affects animals (WOW Journey) or what animals live near the girls in the WOG story. 

I read somewhere that originally they were only going to have the legacy badges, and the others were an afterthought when those piloting the program protested the loss of badges.  So, GSUSA came out with three sets of five badges at all levels except Ambassador, and claimed each set was related to one of the Journeys.  However,  any connection was tenuous at best.  You do not have to earn the badges to earn the Journey nor do you have to do the Journey to earn the associated badges.  Today's materials categorize those same badges by the Pillar under which they fall, rather than by Journey.  

These Journeys were also designed to correlate with Common Core, which led to all those stories in Daisies complete with vocabulary lessons about the difference between a spruce tree and sprucing up and a leader's guide that gave the types of questions reading teachers would ask in class.  The topics were covered at the same age the girls would get them in school.  

This Journey-Centric program was an abject failure.  Members have been clamoring for more badges since day one.  For a couple of years GSUSA ran a "girls' choice" badge contest.  Girls were asked to pick the topics and instead of picking STEM badges like they were supposed to, they picked outdoors and art.. That gave us the Camping,  Outdoor Art and Eco badges.  Then GSUSA ended that program.

However GSUSA heard loud and clear that members wanted more options and didn't like Journeys. They also heard about the problems with multi-aged troop.  In 2017 they came out with the Outdoor Journey (three already existing badges plus a TAP) and the Think Like a Journeys. 

The Think Like a Journey are  six sessions long and consist of three meetings in which girls learn a way of thinking and apply it to STEM-related activities and then one meeting to plan a TAP, one to do the TAP and one to celebrate it and share with friends and family.   While different activities are given at each level, the goals are pretty much the same and the VTK plans offer a multi-level choice which is the same as the Brownie or Senior plan. 

Again the goal of these Journeys is not to learn Engineering, Programming or Science, but rather to learn a way of thinking and to apply that way of thinking to conceiving, planning and carrying out a TAP. 

In Think Like an Engineer girls learn to #1 identify the problem, #2 brainstorm and plan, #3 build, #4 test, and #5 improve. 

In Think Like a Programmer, they learn algorithmic thinking-how to break a task into component parts and put those parts in the right order.  While girls may choose to do programming activities on the computer on sites such as code.org, the VTK plans do no require the use of a computer and generally it is the leader talking points that turn the activities into learning about programming.  

In Think Like a Citizen Science they learn observation and data recordation and put it to work in a Citizen Science project--one where ordinary citizens make observations and gather data and send it to the scientists running the project. 

One frequent question on leader Facebook pages is "What TAP did you do for ____Journey"  With the STEM journeys, the answer can be any TAP that interests the girls.  The relation to the Journey is in the process to conceive and carry out the TAP. For example, if your girls want to help stray cats by making a Youtube video, if they did TLA Programmer, they would brainstorm what they need to do to complete it, and put those steps in the right order and  "de-bug" their program by figuring out if they forgot anything.  If they did TLA Engineer, they'd brainstorm things they could do to help strays, design the video, shoot it, and edit it, and splice in any needed improvements.  For TLA Citizen Scientist maybe they saw a bunch of strays when they were doing their Sci Starter project.  As part of the video they could share how many strays they observed in a local area.  

Besides the book Journeys and the Think Like a Journeys, there is an Outdoor Journey.  Rather than developing new content for the Journey leaders were requesting, GSUSA just picked three outdoor badges at each level and said to do them, plus a TAP.  

Basically I think the developers saw Journeys as leader-guided versions of what would be expected for the higher awards.  I think they wanted troops to take on significant TAPs and to spend a lot of time on them (since they wouldn't be chasing badges). Using the stray cat example, the girls might count members of a feral colony and note how many are ear-tipped, learn about how many kittens can come from one cat per year,  meet with local rescue organizations to find out what they need, help put out traps for a TNR day, make posters to advertise for donations to the rescue and then do a video teaching others about what they have learned about stray cats and how people help.  Instead, what they get is troops running supply drives for the rescue and handing out flyers about cat care to make the project "sustainable". While spending a Journey doing such things may sound good on paper, most girls did not become Girl Scouts to become activists, and most leaders are looking for an easy-to-deliver program, not one that requires major planning.  Instead of becoming dry runs for the Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards, Journeys have become hoops to jump through and in my experience, few of the projects are truly girl-chosen.  

Badges

Original Badges

Badges focus on a single topic and according to the plans in VTK, can be finished in two meetings.  All levels but Daisies have five requirements per badge.  The original badges were written with five short requirements and a "When I've earned this badge I'll...." statement on the front of the packet and inside, for each requirement there were three listed activities and the directions said to pick one.  Until I got on Facebook I thought the requirement was to pick one of those activities, but evidently the requirements are those short statements on the front. 

Progressive Badges

The same year the Think Like a Journeys came out, so did the Mechanical Engineering progressive badges.  Development of these badges was underwritten by Goldiblox, a company that makes Lego-like toys aimed at girls.  Those badges came out as five-step lesson plans, not in the format of five requirements, three choices per requirement.  The plans were in VTK and if you purchased the badge packet you found that it did not include the activity choices, just background information.  

Perhaps because the badges came out at the same time as the Think Like a Journeys and the three badges plus TAP Outdoor Journey,  and because they pushed the same design process used in the Think Like an Engineer Journey, some people wondered if doing the three badges and a TAP would count as a Journey.  The answer is no.  

The following are the progressive badges.  Hypothetically they build on each other so you don't do #2 before #1 but I for one have not found that to be true. Also while the plans for these are written as two meetings per badge, I've seen programs by councils, troops or vendors to do all three badges in some series in two to three hours.  

• Automotive Engineering
• Cybersecurity
• Coding for Good
• Robotics
• Math in Nature
• Mechanical Engineering

If you use the search box at the top left, you can find posts on most of those badges.

New(er) Badges

GSUSA has heard the cry for more badges that can be done across levels.  In recent years they have come out with some badges with very similar goals at each level, so that leaders have an easier time doing them with multi-level troops.   The Space Science and Democracy badges are in this group, along with some of the STEM badges above.  

Higher Awards

The Bronze, Silver and Gold are Girl Scout's higher awards for Juniors, Cadettes and High School girls respectively.  The Bronze and Silver require the girls to complete one Journey before beginning work on the award.  The Gold requires two Senior/Ambassador Journeys or completion of the Silver Award.  Once the Journey is done, girls conceive, plan and implement a TAP.  The Bronze can be done as a troop, the Silver can be done individually or with a partner and the Gold Award is an individual project.  

As I said in the Journey section, Journeys were supposed to be a new way to "do" Girl Scouts.  In my opinion, those who developed the requirements for the higher awards basically wanted to say that a girl should be in a level for a year before working on the award.  However, as things have worked out, Journeys have become hoops to jump through and the associated TAPs tend to be very leader-directed.  

After the Journey is complete the girl(s) identify a problem they want to solve, learn about it (Discover), team up with a local organization that deals with that issue, and then develop a project that is a sustainable solution to a problem.  In other words, the project should outlast the girls in some way, and for the most part this requirement seems to be met through some sort of educational program, be it a flyer, a video or by making the project itself educational, like a career fair.  

Patches

At some point "fun patches" became a thing.  They didn't have them when I was a Girl Scout in the early 1970's.  They did have them when my daughter started GS in the early 2000's.  They are often given as souvenirs of events like, for example, father-daughter bowling or  trip to a museum. Girls put them on the back of the vest or sash.

Another type of fun patch is one with requirements.  Some councils put these out, as do some private vendors.  If you want to do it, chances are someone sells a patch with requirements.  For example one badge many leaders seek is for sewing.  GSNCA has a patch with requirements.    Despite the fact that this comes from a council and despite the fact that it has requirements, GSUSA still sees it as a fun patch to be worn on the back of the vest/sash. 

Council's Own

The previous program, retired about twelve years ago was very badge-centric, as opposed to today's program which was designed to be Journey-cenric.  In that older program councils were encouraged to develop badges related to local subjects. The original idea was that the badge would be for that council only--like a dog sledding badge in Alaska-- but some councils put together robust catalogues of badges not always related to very local topics and by the end of that program (and beyond) the internet had make obtaining information about other council's offerings easy and leaders would send off for badges that interested their girls.  

Retired Badges

Prior versions of the Girl Scout program have offered a more varied badge program.  One common response on Facebook when someone asks for a badge about ____ is that there is a retired badge, and "once official, always official".  

There are a couple of problems with this.  First, no girl currently in Girl Scouts was in it when the prior program was in effect.  Girls who graduated this year were the first to do two years of Daisies and to do Journeys.  Simply put, just getting your hands on any number of those retired badges is tough.

Second, someone on a Facebook group actually asked GSUSA and was told that no, girls should mot put prior program badges on the front of current uniforms.  The "once official" rule, until the inception of the current program, basically meant that girls who were in a level when programs transitioned could keep their old badges, and stores could sell their old stock.  Until the advent of the internet and until the development of a very different GS program, there was no ability (or need) to locate old program badges on any scale.  In other words, using old materials is a solution to a problem that is newly-created, and it is a solution that most definitely is not supported by GSUSA. 

Working Across Levels

As I said earlier, the creators of this program clearly envisioned single grade or single level troops.  While there are a few badges with significant overlap between levels (camping, first aid, cooking, many of the STEM badges) most topics are only covered at a single level and trying to have everyone in a multi-level troop (even if "multi" means "two" ) doing the same thing means going outside the program materials for ideas or focusing more on the spirit of the badge than the requirements. 

Brownies do pottery, not Daisies or Juniors.  Juniors do jewelry.   Obviously the more familiar you are with the materials, the easier it is to put things together.  GSUSA does have a chart, but outside of STEM many of the badges my girls want to do have no direct counterpart at other levels. 

I've had a multi-level troop since 2018 and if you check my archives, you can see how I've worked with these girls.  When they were Daisies and Brownies I had the whole group doing the same thing.  I can relate a Daisy petal to just about anything.  Now with Brownies and Juniors I've been trying to have some separate meetings and some together.  I must be doing something right, 10/11 girls are coming back next year.  

As far as GSUSA is concerned there is no difference in "first year" and "second year" girls at a level.  There is nothing that has to be done at any level or in any year, though, for the most part, girl who want the Bronze, Silver and Gold will not generally do them the first  year at a level. 

Putting It All Together

One advantage to being in Girl Scouts rather than that OTHER group, is that nothing is required.  Don't like camping?  Well, don't camp.  Do your girls groan when they see craft supplies?  No crafts required.  Do your girls want to X?  There may not be a badge for that but as long as it is allowed in your council's Safety Activities Checkpoints, you can do it.  

While it is nice to "get a badge for that", and while I am definitely in favor of a more varied badge program (as were most other people I surveyed across all levels) especially as the girls get older, I think it is more important to follow their interests than to get bling for their vests. 

In my opinion, troops with Juniors and above should offer a Journey at least every other year and the girls should understand the concept of a TAP, so they can decide whether or not to pursue the higher awards.  However, "offer" could mean "make it known that the council is offering a local program".  

I think troops should touch on all four pillars used in the program today but especially for older girls, I wouldn't be concerned if they don't want to spend time on an area.  

Photo Image Credit: 

Image by Jeanene Fisher from Pixabay