Survey Results: Junior Journeys and TAPs

 This is one in a series of posts about a survey I did of members of a number of Facebook groups for Girl Scout leaders.  The other posts published to date are:

• Survey Results: Badges
• Comments re GSUSA Programming
• Daisy Journeys and TAPs
• Survey Results:  Journeys and TAPs
• Survey Results:  What I Ordered, What I Got
• Your Turn to Talk About Badges
• Your Turn to Talk About Take Action Projects
• Brownie Journeys and TAPs

While I have other posts summarizing the data as a whole, this post is looking at what they said about Junior  Journeys and TAPs--Take Action Projects.  While the What I Ordered...post more fully described those who responded, in general I'd say the people who did had a higher than average involvement in and commitment to Girl Scouting. 

Silver on the Horizon: An Interview With a Troop Leader

 I recently spoke to Sarah about her troop's experience with the Bronze Award and published this post about it.   We also talked about how the girls in her troop grew through their experience with the Bronze award.

This post is taken from the same  conversation. As with my other interview posts, I spoke to Sarah and recorded the conversation.  I then formatted the post as a Q & A, using her words for the answers, but composing the questions while writing the post.  

Badge Insert or VTK?

 

The basic steps for Girl Scout badges are freely available on Badge Explorer, but those short steps don't really tell you much about what GSUSA has in mind for the badge.  To dig more deeply, you have to go to VTK (Volunteer Toolkit) or you have to buy the badge inserts from GSUSA.  The bones of today's program came out when my college sophomore was a kindergarten Daisy.  However, a lot of parts have been added since then.  While there are a lot of copies of the Girls Guide to Girl Scouting and the badge inserts from it floating around, there are also a lot of badges and Journeys which have come out since then and are not part of the binder (unless the previous owner downloaded them and added them).  40/64 Brownie Awards are new since the GGGS came out.  That leads to the question:  "Do I buy the badge insert or do I just use VTK?  Is there a difference?"  This post will try to answer that question by looking at and comparing the badge insert for Brownie Art and Design with VTK.  You can read this post about VTK's plans. 

Growth Through the Bronze Award

This is the second post regarding my interview with Sarah about the Bronze Award. In the first post we talked about her troop's Bronze Award project.

This post is going to focus on the growth the girls experienced because of the Bronze Award.

Q: How would you say working on the Bronze Award has helped your daughter?

Cleaning Up: Bronze for a Troop

I posted on several Facebook groups for Girl Scout leaders asking for people to contact me if they or their daughters had an extraordinarily good or bad experience with the higher awards.  I've read different times over the years about girls who felt run ragged by council or who felt that much of their project was put in place to please a committee, not to really serve any useful purpose.  No one like that responded to me, but I've had two people reach out about the great time they had with the Bronze Award.  

Survey Results: Brownie Journeys and TAPs

 This is one in a series of posts about a survey I did of members of a number of Facebook groups for Girl Scout leaders.  The other posts published to date are:

• Survey Results: Badges
• Comments re GSUSA Programming
• Daisy Journeys and TAPs
• Survey Results:  Journeys and TAPs
• Survey Results:  What I Ordered, What I Got
• Your Turn to Talk About Badges
• Your Turn to Talk About Take Action Projects

While I have other posts summarizing the data as a whole, this post is looking at what they said about Brownie Journeys and TAPs--Take Action Projects.  

I Love Girl Scout Journeys --Part 3

This is the third of three posts covering an interview I did with Nicole and Emily about the Journey program.  Here are links to the other two posts:  Part One.  Part Two. 

Ruth: So, which Journeys have you personally led, and in what kind of formats?