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Nicole: I did the WoW as a overnight I helped plan the Get Moving Journey and the Sow What Journey as an overnight. I've done TLA Citizen Scientist and played so much with Sci-Starter, which I love! I've done Breathe and Amaze as well as Amuse. I've done Agent of Change and Brownie Quest as long-format Journeys over a few months. I don't have a lot of experience with Daisies, but I have helped new leaders get over that yuckiness of how the programming looks for them. I've also done the Outdoor Journey on all levels as a Journey in a Day with a Take Action starter that groups took home to finish.
Ruth: Have you ever done any of them on a long-term basis? You know, they were originally supposed to be the backbone of a year-long program. Have you ever done one on all year basis, or even a six-week basis?
Nicole: For the most part I did Journeys when I was coordinating outreach programming. So, not only was I doing Journeys over a longer period but also, it worked really well. Leaders tell me "I don't know who's going to show up that day", and that's the position I was in. We would spend several sessions going over the discover portion, and whether a girl came to one or all three, or all four or whatever, they had a little bit of that knowledge under their belt. This gives a facilitator time to kind of catalog things like "What negative emotions are happening here? What positive ones? What are the seeds that are going to become our take action project?"
So if you're doing the advocacy journey (It’s Your World, Change It) and you're doing a couple minutes of brainstorming at each session and you notice that like time and again, everybody is really concerned about helping the homeless, then maybe that is what you put into your connect portion of that advocacy journey and informs the people that you invite or the library books that you bring or things like that.
A Journey in a Day works great for getting acquainted with the structure and for the younger Girl Scouts but I recommend just upgrading to like Journey in a Weekend to offer you as the facilitator a lot more wiggle room in making it girl-led and making sure that your Girl Scouts really get the great Girl Scout Leadership Experience that was promised at them. By doing it over a weekend you can, for example, send somebody off in the evening to go grab the things that you need to, for example, break a yardstick in half with just air pressure or whatever they're interested in. One weekend we took the seniors to a food and agricultural museum. So there was a field trip built into the Journey, which can be really impactful.
Building badges into the Journeys is super cool too. If you notice that everybody really wanted to knit blankets or hats for newborns, but they're not really sure, then bring in a hospital person who is talking with you or coordinating with your troop to figure out what if that's actually something that the hospital needs, and then how to do it. If you have a group of Cadettes and you say "I'm going to teach you how to sew because that's what I learned in Girl Scouts", it won't go very far. But if you know that your Girl Scouts are really into the outdoors or really into costuming or whatever, and find a way to merge sewing and those interests together, then you are partnering with your older Girl Scouts instead of just leading them.
Ruth: What I hear is that you like the concept of Journeys. You like the idea of learning about something, and then saying "Now that I know about this, I see that problem, and now I want to solve that problem, and here are some things we can do to solve the problem." I don't know how anybody could say that's a bad idea, but the fact of the matter is that while that may be the goal of the Journey program, it isn't a goal that is being met--it isn't even a goal that many people realize the program has. Again, in preparation for this conversation, I reviewed the VTK plans for the Daisy Flower Garden Journey, which is the what my council recommends to new Daisy leaders. There was NOTHING in the VTK plans or in the links supplied that would make me think this was where the program was supposed to take me.
Emily: While it would be against the agreements we have with GSUSA, the amount of money Nicole and I could make consulting with Girl Scout troop leaders to make this easy for them and coming up with ideas that are based on the input from their girls is not small.
Ruth: I understand why GSUSA has those rules, and yet, I think this proves my points. You two come across as intelligent people who are passionate about what you do, and that's great. You work with the programming and do it in a professional sense. You put the work into this program and you can make it into something wonderful, but as a volunteer, I don't think I should have to re-write GSUSA's programming or pay someone else to do it. If I try GSUSA's recipes, they should work. I shouldn't have to know enough about cooking to see that the recipe is way off, and to know how to fix it before I ever get started.
Emily: People do Journeys really badly because they have no idea that they can change the sample. There are leaders who think you have to do every single thing and every single sample session And that's just not true.
Ruth: But as I said in a post about badges, if I read a badge requirement that says take the girls out and have them jump off a 50 foot cliff with no safety equipment, I'm going to pass on the badge. I'm not going to say, oh let's adapt it to jumping off a five inch step, or let's put on safety equipment, because I think there is a reason it was written that way. I think it's stupid and unsafe, so we're not doing it. I think that rules mean something and if you write a program that says do a, b, c, and d, in general, that's what I think I should do. If you tell me to paint a picture, and painting isn't the point of the activity, and I don't have paint, so I give the kids crayons, okay, I get that. You're putting color on paper. Paint may be more fun but I have crayons. But if you're telling me to take my girls on a 10 mile hike, I don't think taking them around the block is the same thing. And at some point when you say you've adapted this badge or Journey to your needs but it doesn't look anything like the original, have you adapted it or if you've written your own program?
Nicole: So I would say with the badges, there's a lot less flexibility for leaders to come up with their own things, and that's kind of the purpose of the two or three options for each step, but with the Journeys, they're meant to be that flexible. They're meant to look nothing alike from troop to troop and meant to be totally girl-led completely as much as possible. They are supposed to give our girls the opportunity to explore what they want to explore, how they want to explore it. But again it takes that support to let your Daisy leaders know that. Also it is going to look a lot different in a few years.
Ruth: It's one thing to say that the that the goal is good--and I can see where the goal of the Journey program is good-- but the program isn't.
Emily: I am on the total opposite end of the spectrum from you. I say this a lot. I say there are no Girl Scout police. As a STEAM professional, I say, if we got the heart of the badge, we got the badge. My ultimate goal is not cheat girls out of the leadership and education, my ultimate goal is give them the leadership and outdoor and stem and entrepreneurship education. That is truly my goal. And if I truly believe that we got that concept, and we didn't fulfill the badge requirements in some way, that's okay. I do believe that I have the ability to assess whether or not my group has learned the concepts. It is my goal to give girls an experience that is girl-led, cooperative and hands-on.
Nicole: I also think that part of the reason that I involve myself in the long Facebook threads is just because I want to show the other side of things and explain to leaders who have had a bad experience or to new leaders that Journeys can be a great experience. You can seek out the support and training that you need to be successful and give your girls that awesome experience. I want to change the narrative a little bit, not from like, they're bad to they are great but rather, they are decent at the core. They are an educational framework for teaching leadership backed by data and it works really well. And there are people out there who want you to have a great experience with your Girl, Scouts and get this education. Sometimes we just need a little help finding each other.
Ruth: Thanks for taking the time to discuss this with me. While I can understand where you are coming from, and while I share your goal of teaching girls how to make a difference in the world, in my opinion, if I pick up a program from GSUSA (or any other group), and follow the directions, it should work--maybe it won't be ideal, maybe a tweak here or there could make it better, but in general, I should be able to execute it as written, and if I can't, then the program, in my opinion, is bad.
Nicole: My last thoughts here would just be that, while I love a good venting session, if there’s bad programming from GSUSA, I want to focus my efforts on making the world better for our leader and Girl Scout participants. “Scouting rises within you and inspires you to put forward your best,” after all! Our Girl Scouts, our world at large, needs the skills taught in Journeys - I can’t just sit back and not teach them!
Ruth: Thanks Nicole and Emily. I enjoyed talking to you and your council is lucky to have people like you on staff.
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