Your Turn to Talk: Junior Maker Badges

I hate it when I take a survey, and at the end, believe that even though I answered all questions honestly and accurately, I didn't really get to express my opinion about whatever because of the questions that were asked (or not asked) or the choice of answers.  For that reason, whenever I do a survey, I put a "say whatever you want" question at the bottom so no one has to feel that way--despite any other problems they may have with my survey.

I recently surveyed members of Girl Scout leader Facebook groups who led Juniors about this year's new Maker badges.  This post is a compilation of their "say whatever you want" answers.

•  Keep these and bring back the retired ones - my girls are crafters!!!
• I know that this is mainly about Juniors, but we really liked how we could combine the Brownie Craft and Tinker with some things our Juniors were doing.
• Our troop didn't like these badges. We originally thought they might and planned to do more but pivoted. They love crafts but these strayed too far from that. They much preferred the drawing and jewelry making from year 1.
• My troop already completed the drawing badge and the jewelry badge, so when I reviewed the new tinker badge requirements they seemed so general and I wasn't inspired to plan anything with the girls. We additionally already had a pretty full schedule.
• Co-Leader had planned the drawing badge. We did the Maker badge because it was closest fit to what was already planned for the retired badge.
• I like the idea of these badges, but they feel really similar to many of the other design badges (how is the art and design badge at all different from digital game design or app developer??). The broadness of the scope makes it more difficult to plan, rather than easier.
• I only look at VTK a couple of times a year if I'm truly uninspired in how to lead a badge. I prefer to use the badge booklet materials as inspiration and design activities that accomplish the intended learning goals.
• We did not do any of these new badges. My girls would be bored to tears with all the talking to do the badges as written! Luckily I had ordered Drawing and Jeweler badges last spring in anticipation of them being discontinued. We did Drawing badge over 3 meetings this winter and it was one of the girls’ favorites this year! Jeweler is on track for next year.
• I have girls who are asking me to learn to sew. I may try to work either Art and Design or Craft and Tinker around to try and teach them to hand sew a fleece hat for next cookie season, and I’ve been thinking about a string art project too. It’s going to take some thinking to figure it out. Tin punch art is also another possibility.
• We went to a Roller Skating workshop that advertised earning Craft and Tinker, but taking wheels off and skate and putting them back on didn’t seem like earning a badge, and the girls were bored with all the talk before we got into taking the skate partially apart. I did not purchase the Craft and Tinker badges for those girls who attended. Not a single craft to take home! At least they were given a Roller Skating back patch, which I felt much more appropriate.
• The old craft specific badges were great, these new ones feel like homework
• This survey makes me feel like I missed the point of the badges. Maybe I only saw the badge steps and not all of vtk. And adapted to cover the steps
• We completed the retired drawing badge and plan to do the jewelry badge next year.
• I like the idea of badges that can be flexible to use with different projects. The basic goals of Create and Innovate were exactly what we were focusing on in our robotics team work.
• I cannot understand why they would retire some of the most popular badges and replace them with these. There is no reason they could not coexist. I do have girls interested in some of them and probably will do next year, but looking at the VTK and the badge booklets, there’s way too much talking and analyzing and not enough doing.
• These badges are all LONG with many required projects that make them take many meetings, like journeys. Our scouts were not interested in spending that much time on one badge.
• My troop had actually voted on both the jeweler and drawing badges at the end of their last year as Brownies. The interest in jeweler was on the lower end, but drawing was very high, so I planned to do it. Once it was retired, though, I wasn’t going to bother - I just don’t have the energy to hunt down retired badges - I thought I might do a drawing fun patch or something instead. However, I did find someone in St Louis who is doing art and design with a drawing focus, so I’m hoping to give that a try as a virtual event. We may have been interested in the new badges had they been available when we voted, but since they weren’t out yet they weren’t included in the voting.
• My troop was not interested in these badges because they seemed too generic. We were disappointed to see specific skill badges retired and replaced with these catch alls.
• These are engineer design process badges, not art badges. Nothing wrong with them. However. 1. We already Have plenty of design process badges and so these badges do Not fill a need. 2. They retired perfectly good and well-liked art badges. And apparently many leaders didn't get the memo, based on how many are on FB saying their girls earned the old artistic badges and now are desperate to buy the actual badges.
• The girls each chose their own project and therefore did different things for the form/fit/function step. They had a great time working on this. We have a professional artist as a troop parent volunteer with a wide variety of material expertise so that parent actually picked the badge to lead, not the girls, and this was the first badge they actually completed as a troop (the troop just formed in January and we have primarily been doing the Outdoor journey badges). The hardest part of this badge, since everyone was working on their own projects, was allowing them enough time to complete everything. We ended up sending some work home for some folks and still needing filler work for others.
• Any badge that has more “doing” than talking I’m here for! Hoping these new badges have a significant amount of hands on activities- I’ll definitely be looking for that when I consider them for next year.
• Thanks for asking!
• The old badges encouraged a variety of experiences and skills for the girls. Many troops are using the new ones to fit what they were planning to do anyway.
• Some of the new ones sound more like science than art…our girls are not interested in that.
• Judging by internet posts, many leaders find the new badges too open-ended and are not sure how to implement them. The old badges could always have been tweaked for local situations anyway.
• They should have left the other badges and added these as new badges.
• We read through the badge descriptions & they were very vague. I much prefer to have a more narrow focus & more clearly written directions. Because of this, we chose not to do these new badges & we likely won’t do any next year.
• We looked into the maker badges but they seemed so extensive and complicated. The girls opted to pick other badges because of how difficult these badges appeared.
• My girls chose to do things like painting, jewelry making, baking, etc. and I found older badges from previous times and we did those.
• I am torn on the rewrites. I do like the flexibility so that you don't have to draw at the Junior level, you could paint or do ceramics or make jewelry or etc. While we did Art & Design as a program through the local art museum, it is one we could also easily have designed on our own for our troop.
• The Create & Innovate one is a little more intimidating with the portion "think bigger." Given the language for the step, it sounds like girls really have to make the thing at this bigger scale. Once you read the material inside the brochure, you discover that that is not necessary, they just have to think about how they would do it. This is one of many places on many badges where I think they get ambitious with the language for the five steps but really don't expect as much as those steps imply.
• (I would also cite some of the step language on the Flowers Badge, where the last step has to do with "flower code," but that really goes more with step 4, and step 5 is really just about learning how to create an arrangement of some sort. This is not directly analogous to what is happening on C&I, but I think it is a wider problem, especially given that our council's attitude is that the five steps are the important part rather than following the specific choices for each step outlined in the brochure.)
• We will almost certainly do Craft & Tinker next year in 5th grade.
• I like these badges, although I miss the badges they replace (and also miss the badges from years ago with SO many options and ideas!). I think the focus on designing and making things for other users is helpful at this age--it gets the girls thinking about other people and their experiences.
• Your survey is wayyyyyyyy to long!!! Engagement will be way down for the lower part of the survey because people will want to be finished then your data is skewed (double master in this)
• We got the badges they retired and did them drawing and jewery making
• We read the badges and frankly they were crap. So we went ahead and earned the retired badges while we could still get badges for them. The girls were very happy with both Jeweler and Drawing. This change was a huge miss by GSUSA.
• Prefer the jewelry, painting, drawing pottery badges, not Sue if these even need to be three separate badges
• My troop focuses on outdoor adventures and outdoor skills. We wish Girl Scout would put more resources into camps and camping.