What Girl Scout Leaders Think of the Brownie Program?

 This is the second post in a series that involves surveying members of Girl Scout Facebook groups about their opinons of the current program. You can read about the Daisy program here.  

Who Replied?

With any survey, knowing who responded is important.  My gut feeling, based on replies to other surveys I've done and responses to posts on those Facebook groups was that people who responded tended to be more experienced than most leaders, and probably had a bigger committment to the program than most leaders.  

What Do Girl Scout Leaders Think of the Daisy Program

 

One part of Girl Scouts that has changed a lot in the last 15 years is Daisies.  Originally it was a one year program focused on learning the Girl Scout Law.  The only "badges" were the petals and since it was often October or November before troops were up and running, they were really enough for the year.  

When my sixteen year old was in kindergarten, the current program started and Daisies became a two  year program.  The awards expanded to include the leaves and the three original Journeys (actually one was added per year for three years so my daughter could have only earned two).

A few years later GSUSA went though a couple of years of "girls' choice" badges and added Buddy Camper and Outdoor Art to the Daisy portfolio.  Then they substantially expanded badge choices at all levels focusing on STEM, and Daisies got even more badges, an Outdoor Journey and three STEM Journeys.  

I was curious what badges and Journeys Daisies work on, how they do them and what they think of them.  Since surveying Daisies is hard, I surveyed leaders who are members of various Facebook groups for Girl Scout leaders and at the time I started the post, I had 168 responses.  While I did not gather data about the leaders, in past experience with surveying members of these groups, I have found that those who reply tend to be older than the average Girl Scout leader and tend to have been leading longer than most.  Whether that is true of the respondents to this survey I do  not know.  

How Much Does Girl Scouts Cost, and How Should We Pay?

Girl Scouts is a multi-level organization that has councils all over the USA and on military bases overseas.  It  is headed by a  national organization--Girl Scouts USA---which sets direction, develops programming, does research and otherwise handles high-level big picture items.  GSUSA is headquartered in New York City and is staffed by paid professionals. 

Under GSUSA are separately incorporated councils, which are local non-profits that own and operate Girl Scout camps or other properties and which recruit, train and support adult volunteers and girls.  Councils also have paid  professional staff. Most Girl Scout programming is led by volunteers who serve the object of the organization--the girls.  

Budding Entrepreneur vs Inventor

One complaint I have about recent GSUSA programming is that it seems to be much of the same. The Think Like a Programmer Journey, Robotics progressive badges and Coding for Good progressive badges all focus on algorithmic thinking and simple programming concepts like looping. You could run a troop focused on programming and fill eighteen meetings following VTK plans. I realize few if any troops would do that, but especially as the activities repeat (move something through a maze) I have to wonder if that's what GSUSA thinks troops want.

One of the new badges this year for Brownies was Budding Entrepreneur. While I've never done the Inventor badge, I've looked at it a few times, and when I looked at Budding Entrepreneur I thought they looked similar, so I decided to do this post as a comparison. 

Brownie Bugs Badge

 

Because other troops have enjoyed it and because our troop did not do it during their Daisy years, I started my "Brownies only" meetings this year with the Bugs badge.  According to Badge Explorer, there are the requirements: 

Find Meeting Plans Online

 One thing I know people read this blog for is ideas for meeting planning.  If you poke around, you'll see what my troops have done for various badges over the years.  I wrote a post a year or so ago with links to on-line resources, but I decided to write another one because in the last year, some councils have put up resources for badge earning. While most of those resources were aimed at individuals or at troops meeting virtually due to Covid-19, looking over the plans could spark ideas for those meeting in person as well.  

Junior Digital Photography and Outdoor Art

My troop is Brownies and Junior and for reasons of no interest to any of you, we have one fifth grade Junior, eight fourth grade Juniors and six second grade Brownies. If you review this blog you'll see that for the last two years I've run joint meetings for Daisies and Brownies, relating Daisy petals to what the Brownies were doing.  It worked well, but resulted in a very leader-directed group.  While I polled the girls about the badges they wanted to do, in order to make things work for both groups, I was the one making most of the decisions. 

I wanted to change that this year, however, I didn't want to commit myself to running two troops   The compromise I reached, in part due to my desire to meet outside due to Covid, was to continue to have one joint meeting per month on the same night when we have always met, and one meeting per month on Saturday morning when I split the troop and meet with the Brownies at 10 and the Juniors at 11:15.  My goal is to make the Saturday mornings much more girl-led.