Girl Scout Leaders: Your Turn to Talk about Badges

 I recently asked a bunch of members of Facebook groups for Girl Scout leaders to respond to a lengthy survey on Girl Scout Programming.  The final question was a free space for them to say whatever they wanted to say.  Since these folks were nice enough to participate, I think giving their comments space on my blog is important.  The comments I am putting on this post all deal with badges.  I have edited them for clarity, punctuation, and to make the post more readable, but the thoughts belong to those who responded to the survey, not to me.  Feel free to add your comment in the comments section below.

• Badges need to be more affordable
• We do a lot of retired & MYO badges
• GSUSA needs a skill based badge program with affordable badges.
• The badges they aligned with journeys do not fit the journey very often.
• “Girl led” is an illusion as long as we do not have badge books for the girls.
• Daisies have too many badges to earn and not enough vest space to put them all on.
• We need more variety in badges - less stem that feels like school and more actual skills.
• I wish the girls had badge/handbooks so it would be easier to earn badges on their own like we used to do. I don’t like the content of many of the new badges.
• Girl Scouts has become less skills based and more of a "hey you learned about this here have a badge"...they have less new skills to show of for the badges earned.
• Bring back the basic fun badges. Sewing, cooking, outdoor cooking, and horses, They get enough STEM in school. They don't like those badges because it's too much like school work.
• I am an engineer and would love if my girls chose STEM badges to work on, but the appeal isn't there. Journeys, in general, feel to complex and the requirements are often scattered.
• I wish there were more practical life skills badges. Sewing is a way more useful skill than book binding.
• As Daisies we tried to follow all the steps to badge earning. Now as Cadette’s we try to make any activities relate to any badge. There is no Girl Scout police unless you are earning the highest awards. Do what you want!
• Why cant they add badges for older girls. All the new stuff stops at juniors. And why can't the badges match grade levels. I feel like many of the newer ones are for 2 grades higher material wise than the girls earning them
• I am a firm believer in really completing a badge and understanding it. I do not understand how so many troops can earn a badge a meeting and think the girls really have learned something. My girls earn fewer badges, but that's OK.
• I miss the range of badges under the previous (pre-2011) program; also wish that vtk offered more explanation for leaders to understand topics we're supposed to present. Would prefer if VTK had the badge booklets  and not just the wordy scripts.
• At the Daisy / Brownie stage I have each girl pick a badge and I figure out how to earn it. When they get to Juniors, I want to get them more involved in picking steps and planning out the meeting. I also wish they were all scripted to be earned in 1 meeting.
• I like the old badges much better since there was a lot of variety and girls could easily earn badges on the same subject all through their years if they were interested. Also there were just so many more choices for the girls to be able to do different things.
• When it comes to the badges, I love having flexibility as a leader to hit the general requirements, but the activities to get there can be developed by my troop. My son in BSA does not have that flexibility, and I think it's made a huge difference in retaining girls in my troop.
• When my girls read the current badge book when new as Cadettes, they said their previous Brownie try its were harder as Brownies than the new badges as Cadettes. They also did NOT like the badge experiences and wanted to learn skills. I pulled badge requirements and skills from my 1963 badges for them to earn.
• Some of the ideas on the steps in the badge booklets are outdated or unrealistic. For some I easily come up with a replacement, but for others I do not. I am fortunate to be an educator/curriculum specialist so I don’t need much guidance, but I could see it being hard for others to veer from the badge booklets or VTK.
• GSUSA needs to give girls a chance to learn skills. Every year i have girls asking to learn how to sew, bake, crochet, knit. And they can't earn badges for that. Put out a badge book. That is 1 thing BSA does better. They aren't always tweaking based off the new CEO. STEM is important. BUT it's not the only skill with value.
• The girls want sewing badges. And nursing. They do NOT come to Girl Scouts to do more of what they do all day in school. I have no problem with STEM (BS in Physics) but not all girls want it shoved down their throats all the time. And not all girls want to be CEOs. Girls want to explore interests, not be seen as products to be pushed into a "pipeline."
• I think in general, the program is going too far into the territory of being school like. Too many of the badges feel like homework – particularly the cadette level ones. My girls love to help other people, do projects, and be outdoors. They don’t want to sit around and learn about the same stuff that they could get in class. We need to get back to more activity, less theory.
• The skill and service aspect of badge earning has mostly disappeared. JGL wanted girls to give service in their earned badges’ skills—if they earned the badge, they could give service in it. The application of taking a skill (Junior Gardening or Flowers) and going out in the community to do a project seems to have been completed disjointed from the experience of Girl Scouting.
• My girls are now Cadettes, and have informed me that they are not interested in earning most of the badges, as they are not at all "fun". They feel like an extension of school. So we are in the process of designing our own activities that follow the program, but are more hands on. And they really dislike the journeys, but have agreed to finding one they can live with so they can pursue Silver.
• I would like to see the older girls C,S,A badges merge. They wear one uniform for several years and often don’t get to do the activities in the level they are currently. For example, I have a multilevel troop. We did sewing (textiles) this year. It’s a Cadette badge but my seniors didn’t earn it until this year. There isn’t a badge for Seniors for fabric or sewing. There are also so many less badge options as they get older.
• Bring back Badge Books!! In order to make it girl led, girls need to have access to the badges and concepts and Girl Scouts takes place outside of meetings. As a girl growing up, I loved to read and learned so many skills from our Worlds of Knowledge Book. It’s also where traditions can be handed down. Our troop has binders and I was going to ditch them as we bridged to Juniors, but overwhelmingly the scouts said they wanted to keep them.
• I miss the old days and complete handbooks. I resent having to use my ink and paper to print things. The girls want to DO, not talk. They do not want Girl Scouts to be like school! The uniforms and badges and insignia cost WAY too much…should be sold at cost. Make money off branded merchandise! The new maker badges seem like STEM-in-disguise! Too many shops are too far away from the leaders! Too many camps are being closed! Thanks for asking!
• I don’t agree with having to pay for badge packets especially now that the girls are older and starting to lead badges. There is no way I can make it through a VTK guide, let alone a middle schooler. It’s too long and way too much talking. So much of the badges now are research or discuss or make a poster or do a skit. This isn’t teaching any skills. The most memorable badges they’ve done are things like cooking or building. I miss the way it was in the 90s.
• I wish we had more arts badges. At a time where they are cutting back on arts and music in school, it baffles me that we only have generic "maker" badges at the Daisy and Brownie level. It's very strange that there's absolutely nothing offered for music, too, while there are so many robotics/coding/computer badges. Also, I wish there was a campfire badge for Daisies and Brownies. Fire safety is a real skill to learn at that age, so why aren't we recognizing it as such?
• I think it's a shame they retire good badges like Brownie philanthropy and Junior drawing badge. Those two in particular were my girls favorites. I also think more outdoor and life skill badges are needed and useful. Kids today are inundated with STEM. Also, for girls younger than Cadette level almost ALL of the planning for any activity, TAP or community service, has fallen on me the leader. Mainly due to time constraints and girls not understanding the assignment or being realistic with plans.
• As a leader of older scouts, we find that most of the badge work doesn't appeal to our scouts. If they don't find it interesting they lose interest and focus. Even if we continue to move forward, I will not award a badge to a scouts if she attend if she wasn't engaged during the activities. We also do a lot of our activities and work on life skills. GSUSA is slowly forgetting that is where this all started. Our scouts need this support in their lives, I would rather do these activities than any badge work any day.
• I work with older girls. They are not interested in doing badges anymore. They rather do community service or go to learning events, like the Global Leadership Conference. They also want to learn more life skills which will get them ready for the real world. For older girls this should be more of a focus. I also find the GS is geared for younger girls. Though it is true the most girl scouts are younger, if we could do something that keeps them interested and more engaged, then we might be able to keep them in longer.
• I think the requirements at the older levels are completely ignoring the fact that teen Girl Scouts are involved in many other activities. They don't meet as often as they did when they were younger. They have other commitments. Spending multiple meetings on a badge means they earn only a few. We spend more time on experiences that don't necessarily tie to specific badges, but take advantage of the resources we have available in our area. The front of the vests may be sparse, but the back is full of fun patches tied to what we've done.
• Overall, I'm very happy with the GS program and the resources available. I do feel that Seniors and Ambassadors have too few badge options, and especially desire life skills (they know they're coming up on high school graduation and are afraid they aren't ready to manage their life themselves). I think we could do better to have more career option badges - things that expose scouts to a variety of career options (not just STEM) as well as more mature hobbies, because we should be building leaders who have rich lives. I'd like to see retired badges (and the build your own badge) program returned to active duty.
• Badges that don’t teach specific skills are not memorable to girls. Most of my girls can’t even identify which earned badges were which from the badge picture. Whereas (for example) if there was a sewing badge, and the picture on it was a needle and thread, it would be readily apparent that was the badge we earned by learning to sew. My girls love camping and the outdoors, but they have no clue which badge was camper and which was eco camper, nor which activity led to earning which one. There’s also way too much overlap in badges between levels- too much repeats and they don’t want to earn badges that seem largely the same as ones we did in daisies or brownies.
• I disagree with people that say there is too much STEM, but we need more outdoor/life skills. While camping this weekend, a third grader asked for help cutting up her pancakes (I assume this is because her parents do this for her at home), and my girls get wide eyed when I pass out knives to cut fruits and vegetables (some say they aren’t allowed to use them at home). I will keep teaching safety and proper knife skills, but GS should add this to the program. I also would love a badge that asked the girls to learn common trees/plants in their area, they could start at 3 or 5 plants as Daisies and build on that number each year. The girls love identifying plants with the app on my phone while on hikes.
• This survey raised a lot of good points I hadn’t thought about before. I believe that GSUSA programming has become too STEM focused, and I say that as a professor of science education! Many of the badges are fun and open doors for my girls, but getting rid of the badges they most want to do in arts and turning it into yet another STEM rooted badge is too much. The arts are a very legitimate way for people to learn about and understand the world and to take action. Having the current program so lopsided in excluding the arts, and to some extent social science that is anything besides civics, does the girls a disservice in exposing them to different ways of thinking and knowing. But maybe I am just an old school Girl Scout who misses the Worlds to Explore program.
• I like the old program with Brownie try-its. Brownies literally could try 45+ different things. Badges were earned as COMPETENCY awards. Girls would demonstrate that particular skill to earn that badge. I personally didn’t care for the interest projects then, but girls could really hone in on their interests. Today’s programming doesn’t focus much on Community Service and the VTK leaves little room for just fun things like songs and games and just for fun crafts. I think that focusing more on community service would be a better way to get girls interested in and make connections for these take action projects. Young girls at the Daisy and brownie age are concrete thinkers and take action projects require abstract and critical thinking. They are too young to introduce these concepts but they’d clearly understand simple service projects.
• I love girl scouts and what it offers girls. However I am not a huge fan of the current programming materials. Unless you spend a ton of your own time, the girls don't get much out of it. It's way too much like school - between the badge topics offered (stem, etc.) the steps (my girls often do the exact same activities listed in the badges IN SCHOOL the year prior, so it's not new, exciting, or anything for them). The curriculum is too broad and nebulous, especially for you g girls who need concrete based on their developmental stage. Then you get to order girls and the badge offerings are just blah and need to be hidden within a fun "theme" to be palatable for them to even consider. Our biggest wins have been in the building friendship bonds/self esteem/and offering new experiences (fire building, camping/trailblazing pin/road trips, etc.).
• I feel like GSUSA needs to put out a survey/questionnaire to get feedback from the girls on what they would like to learn in Girl Scouts. It is hard sometimes for the girls to find badges that they would enjoy. I also feel that GSUSA needs to come out with more badges that can go across all levels, with girls digging in deeper as they get older. I also wish they would have released more of the art badges for our older girls because they still enjoy art and creating things. They get to do these activities in our multilevel troop, but don't get a badge to symbolize the work and learning they have done. Not all girl scouts start out as daisies or brownies and they miss out on the fun badges. CSA badges feel too much like school which leads to many of these girls dropping out of girl scouts at an age where they really need positive female interaction and activities that help them grow to be good women.
• Badges are good for Daisy through Junior, but we never follow the booklet or VTK exactly, focusing instead on the intent. Cadette and older I find badges to be lacking, either to simple and boring, or too complex and drawn out.
• I have two daughters in Girl Scouts and two sons in Bot Scouts. I HATE BS merit badges. The "requirements" are gate keeping, overly school-like, and my sons hate them. Scouting is an extracurricular. Why be so serious and uptight about it. It should be engaging, not off-putting. In BSA leader groups, I see waaaaay too much semantics and arguing over the "requirements." Adults are more focused on preventing boys from earning badges than in facilitating the earning of the badges. I love that Girl Scouts does NOT gate keep and badges are more laid back. There is absolutely NO reason to try to prevent girls from earning badges by making them more stringent. We already have a hard time retaining girls when there are more fun options like sports available in higher grades. Let's not get overly legalistic about our badges. And that's from a rule-following, attorney who definitely sees value in requirements where they are valuable and needed. Girl Scouts doesn't need stringent requirements. It is not like they are lying on a job application; Girls reap no "benefits" like money or jobs from individual badges earned.
• There is a lot of discussion points and main concepts I try to cover, but having two or three meetings to cover one badge is not feasible or optimal for my girls among many levels who want to try to earn all the badges they can in two years. I usually read through VTK and review examples and compare to the badge print outs (which I find way more friendly and concise). I plan accordingly to hit all required steps. What I really dislike is that badges are just basically given after all steps are completed. This is great to feel accomplished. But they fly through steps quickly and sometimes the topic is not mastered at all, just the foundational knowledge gained, if that. I also feel like STEM is emphasized too heavily and majority of progressive badges are coding, engineering, and robotics. Could they just simplify these three badges for each topic into one and be more hands on rather than discussion points for girls with much shorter attention spans? These are important topics but hammered too much. You bridge and then they are back again. With that it seems like art/music and craft subjects dropped off and these are also important skills, more specific yes, but still skills. I also feel like there is like 1000% less emphasis on anything outdoor skill related, e.g., cooking, knots, hiking/camping, fishing, etc. because “this is what Boy Scouts do”, which is total BS in my opinion. I have a multi-level troop and I appreciate the addition of the new badges that are more fluid across D-J. I wish more badges were like this and a mix between the progressive badges. You start on at daisy and build up knowledge as they bridge to a new level. I think girls try these progressive badges and get off put at the beginning level then have no interest in cover the higher level concepts for the appropriate age groups or think “oh I already did that as a Brownie, why do I have to do that as a Junior again.”