AnneinMpls

MomScouter - sounds like you're putting the emphasis in the right place

While there's a whole lot I dislike about the way my council does things, we apparently are really blessed to have the financial assistance program we've got - vests, some insignia, and handbooks are all provided for families that apply, and they can also apply for money towards troop dues. Most of our families receive $20-$35 each year towards troop dues - comes as one check that I deposit directly into the troop's bank account.

Do you know whether sewing patterns and fabric are still available for home sewing uniforms? Would be a neat project for the Cadettes to sew the uniform skirts...

Congratulations to Jon on his appointment! He has an opportunity to create something very cool for his troop from scratch - sounds like he's the right person to do this from what you've described of the initiative he's shown at summer camp

I wanted to comment a lil bit on the side issues you brought up regarding the difficulties at camp and how to acknowledge the good things you see the boys doing.

As the Scoutmaster (acting or otherwise) sometimes your most important job is too mentor the other adults! An important skill for the adults to learn is how to observe - BP called this boyology. So not only do you need to practice your own skills of observing, but you also need to bring this observation to the attention of the other adult leaders.

At some point during the activity I'll sidle up to one of the adults (whoever I think might be most approachable at the time - I'm also looking for those teachable moments!) and say, "Take a look over there - did you hear Johnny tell Kevin he did a cool job on his woodcarving?" or have them quietly watch with me as two who were at each others' throats at breakfast are working cooperatively together. It's a way of helping to draw the adult's attention to the positives that are happening around them - we're soooo focused on the problems - absolutely convinced that we're there to keep all hell from breaking loose that we forget to look for the good. Also, while you're engaged in this way side by side talking with another adult, the lil ones are less likely to come up to you with all the questions and pleas for assistance that they can really take care of themselves or have a junior leader help them with. (Sometimes it might take a brief redirection from you to the boy leader or a "wait a moment please, we're busy with something else")

Basically, in order to model this for the adult, you need to take the observations you may be habitually doing all the time and make it obvious to those around you. And if you are known to be in the habit of talking up the good things the boys are doing to the other adults, they won't mind if sometimes here and there you happen to mention your own kid (Mention their kid too!)

Whether or not to have other boys overhear these conversations, it really depends on the boy's personality and needs. The kid who's got it all together might in general find it a bit of an interference, but if that same kid had a rotten morning where nothing worked right, sometimes a compliment overheard can be just the thing. Occasionally you'll come across a kid who if they ever hear a compliment they just might react with a display of their absolute worst - thankfully these really troubled kids are rare - instead you might prompt them to make their own assessment of their work or progress without adding your own interpretation to it. Ok, I really got sidetracked here! Anyway, hope some of it's helpful in some way!

Peace out,

Anne

Yha, it's tricky to change a troop's culture if they havn't gotten into wearing the uniform... In our case, most of our families apply for financial aid through the council, and as part of that, their vests and some insignia to start off with are provided free. For our girls, to have something brand new and that represents their accomplishments is a very very cool thing. Also, if you were in GS yourself and have your old sash, etc to show off, the girls really really love this and it can help motivate them to wear theirs.

When we award badges, etc. I always say to the girls, whether or not parents are in attendance, when you get home, give this to the most responsible person in your family - and I go on to describe this type of person - never loses their keys, makes sure the dog gets outside - they're usually laughing by this point - and I always add - and if that most responsible person in your home is you then make sure to put these away in a safe place until you can get them sewn on. (For a lot of our girls, they truly *are* the responsible person in the family - combination of single parent households and the pressures of poverty and inner-city stresses. If that's the role they have to play, they might as well get some positive recognition for it - our troop also provides a safe place where adults *are* acting responsibly and the girls can set down some of the load they carry and just have fun for awhile.)

We also for a very brief time did a points system for wearing their shirt and vest, bringing handbooks and folder...only for a month or so when things were getting a little lax.

From my experience, if the uniform means something to the girls, it gets worn. A lot of families today are literally drowning in material possessions - it becomes harder to feel the significance of the uniform then I think.

Another thought, I know we're now in a phase in GS in which the vest or sash has become the standard uniform piece, but I'm not so sure this is really the right part of uniforming to be emphasized. I'd must rather see a similar shirt, and clean hands and face, shirt tucked in, and pants not torn or decorated with cartoon characters. More emphasis on pride in appearance and wearing the membership pin. Dunno. Talk it over with your girls and see what they have to say about it?

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

Sigh

Alpha, how would you and I go about getting the needed changes made to the uniform? I have noticed in the last few years they've started placing little tent icons next to uniform options most suited for camping - that's a step at least.

I think the Brownies in brown is such a tradition, I wouldn't want to mess with that. (And I think the Daisy program as a whole ought to be realigned closer to the Brownie program but that's a whole nother topic for a whole nother thread!) But if we could come up with a basic uniform design for Juniors on up through Adults, practical for outdoor activity, that would be really cool.

I'm toying with the idea of putting all of us Juniors, Cadettes, Leaders into that $19.95 blue 3/4 sleeve shirt - what do you think? Actually - nix that - not my decision - gotta let the girls work on this one at our meeting this week. But you know us leaders - place a subtle suggestion on the table and...

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

Awwww, you hijacked my whiney thread!

Hey, I was never one to avoid quick paths to madness, sortof like ripping off a bandaid - the faster the better, right?

I do find it humorous how much complaining Boy Scout folks do about their uniform - do they even know how good they got it?

Put a bunch of Girl Scouts in a room together, and anyone actually in uniform is in the minority. The fewer uniforms they sell, the more expensive they get, and we're cycling towards no longer being a uniformed organization. Which is truly sad. There are so few uniforms being sold now, that it's getting very hard to find used uniforms locally at all. Our troop is pretty rare in encouraging uniforms beyond just a vest or sash, but I had no qualms about going with our own shirt style for the Brownies because no one else is wearing a matching shirt anyway.

Well here's what our official publication, Girl Scout Uniforms Insignia and Recognitions, has to say:

"Since its earliest days, Girl Scouting has been a uniformed movement. Today, our continued commitment to the uniform, its insignia, and recognitions signifies Girl Scouting's trusted relationship between outward appearance and inward strength and ideals.

"The Girl Scout uniform symbolizes a large and vigorous worldwide organization, devoted to the development of girls and grounded in these essential values: Identity...Growth...Unity and Equality...History...Community...Service...."

Umm, that is the most convoluted load of... Sorry, I just think we could really do a much better job of giving a clear rationale for uniforming and a much better job of actually using the uniform. In my years as a Girl Scout, I have worn some pretty ridiculous excuses for a uniform, including that horrid lime green thing with the multicolored printed plaid weirdness. And after 3 years had to switch the weird plaid for a *different* ugly weird plaid. We did our level best to wear it with pride too.

Uniforming for the Girl Scouts has never been and won't be in the foreseeable future as simple and easy as the Boy Scouts' shirt and pants. We started back in the day when women only wore long skirts, and were very daring by putting on matching bloomers under our skirts. Girl Scouts playing sports were shrouded from view back in the 1910's because they actually took off their skirts and wore just their middies and bloomers. Shocking. Course at that time Boy Scouts were swimming nekked and camping out in breechclouts. So our uniform designs will always have a skirt option lest our girls' parents think we're turning them into a bunch of Communistas (and I think skirts are nice for formal occasions like award ceremonies, Girl Scout Sunday, etc.) but, damn, can't we just pick a shirt and go with it? One single simple shirt. What is so hard? Instead they churn out these truly odd ensembles every 2-3 years, completely different designs and colors. Our troop back in highschool was accused of being airline stewardesses for heaven's sake. (Along with the terrifically witty comments about coffee tea or me offered up in gutteral German.) That was the event that spurred us to ditch our offical uniforms for travelling and come up with our troop travel uniform. The current uniforms are really not *too* bad, but still not exactly "uniform" - put a bunch of girls and leaders in a room and you'll see probably 8-10 different looking outfits, designs and colors, even if they all show up in a full official uniform. That's just dumb.

Arrgh.

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

Hehe, I thought I was kinda cuckoo using a stapler, but it really does work great! Holds everything very nicely in place in the sewing machine. I set the zigzag stitch to fairly close together and the width to the same width of the border. If you've got a good color match, the stitches disappear into the border. My friend Cathy & I used to sew our badges on by hand while riding the overnight train to Munich - got our uniforms spiffed up on our way to the conference. Thimbles are fabulous if you're hand-sewing, but the sewing machine is soooo quick. (Not so great for sewing patches to pockets though...) Also, if you've got problems with sashes falling off the shoulders, you can sew a snap at the shoulder seam of the corner of the sash, and the other end to the shirt just under the collar. Or use a nailgun...

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

Seems like smaller (tiny) troops will be more likely to need to reorganize patrols as they grow than larger troops. Some reasons I can think of..

1. Simple growth may require new patrols, as the troop grows from the size of one fairly small patrol to enough members to make 2 or 3 pretty stable patrols.

2. Recruiting might only bring in 1 or 2 new scouts at a time, rather than enough to start a whole new patrol. Until recruiting is stepped up, trying to form new scout patrols may not be the most efficient use of troop leadership. And in the tiny troop, they are not generally overwhelmed with having lots of leaders looking around for something to do.

3. In a smaller troop personality conflicts can tend to be magnified. Divide and conquer thinking often is applied here.

Now, there are good and bad ways of reorganizing patrols. The bad ways are fairly easy to tell: "Y'all are a squirrelly excuse for a Scout troop, so, Bobby and Tim, we're separating you, " etc etc. In other words, the reorganizing is communicated with a sting, is done from a top-down mentality, and is prompted by negatives.

Some good ways of reorganizing - offer an opportunity to a scout who is needing a challenge, have the PLC determine if/when new patrols should be started up, ask the one or two new scouts coming in the door if they have 2 or 3 friends who'd like to join with them and form their own patrol.

As far as how often reorganizing is happening, it really depends on what the reasons are, but if things are being shaken up too much, that's not good. And sometimes if a troop is constantly reorganizing it's because the leadership is really unsure of *what* to do and they'll keep tossing things around in different combinations hoping to stumble onto something that works - obviously, this is not the best of situations, but I've seen it happen! (Actually, our local GS Council did this for a while back in the '80s - they were absolutely ridiculous. Staff changes, personal infighting, despotism, retreats, a new organizational chart, more retreats to explain the changes, more staff turnover in response...it was nuts.) Anyway, stuff that happens in troops are all examples of things that happen in the other organizations you'll encounter, good and bad, and can all serve as a learning opportunity

Hi Alpha! Neat to see you hanging out in this forum too I think perhaps there's more than a few of us Venusian beauties picking the brains here for use in our Girl Scout troops - and the natives here appear friendly and patient

You are dead on when you say the GS program lacks the opportunity for leadership development by breaking the program up into 3 year spans (and, truthfully, most GS troops break it up even further into 1 year groupings!). I'm feeling better and better about deciding to do a combined Junior-Cadette troop (4th thru 9th grades). When my bridging 4th graders came in and sat down with the 7th & 8th graders at the table, they did their best to sit up realllllllllly tall So I think with this configuration we'll be doing well.

More to the point of this thread specifically, I have seen an awful lot of GS troops that are badge mills/try-it mills - well, what else are you going to do when you have a group of all girls the same age - looks and feels like a typical classroom setting to me. I do like the idea of using merit badge materials to support themed activity in the troop's program - the youth get a taste of a new area of interest, and if it's something they find they like or are motivated to do (for rank advancement, etc.) they can take it further. I guess my biggest question is, within the boy-led/girl-planning model, how do we encourage broader interests? We *could* just generate a bunch of ideas ourselves as the leaders out of our vast experience (ahem). Do the "simpler" more basic scouting experiences (pitch tents, cook smores, etc.) contribute to increasing/expanding interests? I think sometimes we as leaders don't have enough trust in the youth's motivation to grow - this is something I continually come back to in my own preparation for working with kids (rather than putting on a program for them).

Kinda rambling thoughts tonight, if they can even be called that! Might be short on oxygen - my asthma's acting up...

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

I'm taking a look at the new catalog thinking over uniform options for our new Junior/Cadette troop. I've already determined that whatever we do, we're gonna look like two different troops thrown together - there just is no middle ground between the Junior and Cadette uniforms (not that I really had any expectation of that anyway...)

For the Brownie troop we gave up on the uniform shirts - poor quality, hugely expensive. We went to light blue polo shirts that we got on clearance at Old Navy for $4 each. One of my co-leaders found a whole bunch of Brownie jumpers on clearance also - some for $4 and even some for $1! So they're good to go - I still have some of those polo shirts to sell off for the new girls.

Juniors are easy enough - especially this time of year we can easily get affordable white polo shirts for them.

Since I've got such an enthusiastic bunch of new Cadettes coming in, I thought I'd revisit the idea of official uniform pieces...what a shocker!

The official blouses are $31.50

The official polos are $26.50 - who pays $26.50 for a polo shirt???

I guess those make the navy blue 3/4 sleeve t-shirt look like a bargain at $19.95.

It's frustrating. I'm looking over the BSA catalog too - their official uniform shirts are about the same price as the blouses but you don't have to then also get a separate uniform piece for wearing insignia. Guess I'm just in a complaining mood today... (BSA'a polo shirts are a lot cheaper)

Well, if you're going to go to the trouble to cook up a mess of beans, might as well make a meal of it...

1/2 lb Canadian bacon, cut into 1" pieces

1 lb. hamburger

1 small onion - chopped

cook all this together - brown well, drain fat (in a skillet or in the bottom of the dutch oven)

Throw that all into the dutch oven and add:

1 can butter beans

1 can kidney beans

1 can baked beans

1 T dry mustard

1/4 cup vinegar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

let cook slowly till it smells good

(Nope - this is not my recipe - it's my uncle's girlfriend's...they also make a mean venison jerky. He's now in business selling morel mushroom soup base....yum.....)

Anne in Mpls

"I'm assistant troop leader in a Junior troop. Half the girls are in sixth grade, half in fifth."

There's a lot of information you've packed into your post, so I'll try going at it, point by point...

Anytime you have a "half this half that" situation you have what is called a dichotomy. Human dichotomies are inherently conflictual as each half is unconsciously trying to define itself as "not the other half" - if one half of the group is compliant, active, taking part in discussions, your other half will take their perceptions of that group and pull towards the opposite pole. (This is partly why racial conflicts tend to be strongest when there are predominantly two main cultures - more diversely multicultural communities tend to have lower rates of conflict. Yup - it's the social scientist in me talking again!)

"The problem is the older girls are pretty unmanageable. They just wander off instead of participating in whatever the troop is doing and disrupt everything."

Yup - it sounds to me as though they have defined themselves - their group - as the ones who *don't* participate - they may even see it as "babyish" to act like those 5th graders... Ask em...they might tell you so straight up.

"Getting them to do kapers involves following them around continually and telling them to do each tiny task."

Dang that's annoying! Ineffectual - wears you guys down as the leaders - makes for meetings that are a big headache. Not what you signed up for, for sure.

"They aren't learning responsibility, and they are a terrible example to the younger girls."

Problems are owned by whoever perceives them - you see the two problems that they aren't learning responsibility and are not serving as an example to the younger girls. (I'm not saying it's only a problem to you! I agree these are serious problems, but I'll bet these girls are not going home nights crying into their pillows over how they aren't learning how to be responsible!! I'm also guessing these are not the problems perceived by your younger group, either - but you'll have to ask them what problems they see - ask the older ones too! The problems they see are the ones they'll be able to work on.)

"In fact, they sometimes pick on girls who don't go along with them."

I think this is your most telling statement of how these older ones have defined themselves. A definition becomes a rule for a group, and they're now enforcing this rule!

"I can deal with most of them one on one, but as a group they feel the need to show off and ignore the leaders."

Yha- the Gestalt of the group is way different from the sum of its parts - individually, you surely have some fabulous girls there. Within their group's definition, they are a seething pit of malcontents. Continue to develop your relationships with them one-on-one in the meantime while you explore solutions to the bigger problems.

"The parents don't strike me as too able to influence their daughter's behavior nor likely to back up any discipline we might want to institute."

Yup, you can't fix the parents, you can only fix what is within your control (and the girls aren't yours to fix either! Only the leadership of the troop and the structure of the group dynamics come under the heading of things you can control.)

"I've seriously considered having a pre-arranged halfway point at our next weekend campout where the goof-offs will be driven back home for their parents to pick up while the rest of the troop continues the weekend -- I suspect we'd only have to do it once if it worked, but I have visions of being stuck waiting in parking lots with kids whose parents are unavailable despite being warned of the possibility of having to pick up their daughters early."

I'd only suggest this tactic on an individual basis - since you have a whole group that is acting up, this plan is pretty unworkable. Also chancy -sending one girl home *might* make the rest of em shape up, but is just as likely to fling them all into an even worse attitude. Better to look for solutions that work at the group level.

"It's a small troop, so if they were no longer in the troop at all we might not have a critical mass to remain a troop at all."

Do you want them to remain in the troop for numbers or.....? It's important to clarify what your motivations are - they'll help key you in to some good solutions. If numbers are your motivation, then all you need to do is cut them from the troop and recruit a new batch "I want to keep them in the troop because ________________."

"Besides, I have no reason to believe my cooperative 10 year olds won't be just as oppositional when they are older."

Yup, it's a big unknown - all we can do is give the best we have to offer.

I have some more ideas, but I'd like to hear more from you first - you might be arriving at better solutions than I could suggest.

Peace to you and yours,

Anne in Mpls

Don't know if this one has been posted here before, but it's a good one that can bear repeating

MAKING MUSIC WITH ALL YOU HAVE

AND WITH ALL YOU HAVE LEFT.

By Jack Riemer of the Houston Chronical

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches.

To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is a sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do. People who were there that night thought to themselves: "We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to either find another violin or else find another string for this one."

But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone, "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the way of life - not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings. So he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left

How many months did he actively serve? A month in the spring or two or 3? Was the troop meeting regularly through the summer? Then I'd count it, including summer camp. Otherwise, if the troop didn't meet during the summer, count his time in the spring, add in however long summer camp was (I'd probably round it up to a month), and have him finish off the rest of the 6 months now this fall.

Anne in Mpls

My best guess at how to do this would be to base your number of incoming Webelos on the number of New Scout Patrols your troop is able to provide high-quality ASMs and Troop Guides for. So if you have enough personnel to handle 3 New Scout Patrols, then you can take in about 30 new Webelos (assuming 10 per patrol, allowing for some attrition you may end up with 8 or so per patrol. PLC can help identify who you have for troop guides.

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

Scoutnut, I've seen patrols not work well at all in small all-same-grade-level troops. From what you've described regarding your girls earning program aide, silver, and now working on gold all together, can I assume you're working with a all-same-grade-level troop? The patrol system utilizes the varying experiences of older and younger Scouts, so if you don't have that, then, yup, town meeting is about the best you can do to ensure girls' participation in the planning process.

I agree with you, that simply having patrols is no automatic guarantee that a troop is youth-run - whatever form of government still will require a leader who can sit back and let the process happen, and can offer guidance as necessary (and run interference with the other adults around who would want to do it themselves!)

Actually, at this point I'm now beginning to laugh at myself - to think I was worried about whether this new troop had potential to grow or not...last week I had 3 girls show up at my door after I posted a recruiting yardsign, the oldest had wanted to join, but no one ever returned her phone calls! Tonight the 3 girls returned with 4 of their friends to pick up more info - came in asking, "Can we start yet?"! They are chomping at the bit for Thursday night - new member night.

So, we're now potentially at 4+3+4 = 11! before we've even started At the same time, I'm mightily disgusted as I continually meet more and more girls who were turned away because the existing troops didn't want to take in anyone new.

Peace out,

Anne

Does anybody know where I can go for more information or pictures of the old patrol crests? These were black felt ovals with red borders embroidered with usually flower emblems, some trees and birds also were in use. So far I've only found one site - it has a full page of troop crests but only one example of these original black felt ones and it is only a scan of a picture in a book.

Back to hunting ebay...

Anne

Army bases I've been to always served sweet tea - love the stuff. Army cuisine in general seems to me to have a very strong Southern influence - is this true?

Sigh - the US military sure treated us Scouts well over in Europe - we had Army cooks at our resident camp dining hall, and we were feasted at our conferences at Garmisch - steak dinners, etc.

I miss the contact with the Army chaplains too - fabulous models of respect for all faiths - I hope that some of that rubbed off on me.

Scoutnut, I'm not sure what your specific concerns are? I see Girl Scout troops folding every year - sometimes after only a couple of months - because they aren't taking the time to build a foundation. Almost *daily* I meet a girl who says either no one called her back when she asked to join a troop, or she thought she was in a troop but it dissolved soon after. If I'm telling girls we're going to do scouting, then I have made a commitment to help them build a program that is sustainable over the long term. Small troops are neither sustainable or a good way to do Scouting - a small troop is possibly better than no troop at all, but...a lot of the girls I serve have had to deal with a lot of losses in their young lives already. A troop that disappears overnight is not what they need. Having been involved in both programs for a very long time, I can see that a lot of the problems with these short-lived GS troops just don't happen in the BSA because of the clearly thought out organizational methods that the BSA has adopted.

Regarding the patrol system of troop government, this is the most basic form of scouting - the skills learned in the patrol method can be applied in any other form of government our girls will encounter over their lifetimes - from serving on neighborhood committees to City Council to congress. All too frequently, GS troops are adult-run - it's way too easy to do it for them - a patrol system puts that little bit of space in there that helps the girls run their own program. Yes, there are other forms of troop government. These were developed as troop sizes began to shrink. They were *not* developed specifically because they were great ways to teach leadership skills to girls. Like I said, I've made a commitment to give these girls the very best - we've already talked about it - they *want* their own patrols - I'm not clear as to why you are insinuating that I'm not allowing them to make their own decisions, but that's a whole nother topic for a whole nother thread

As to why I'm asking advice from "the Dark side" I find that the folks here have a lot of wisdom and a lot of heart - I've especially liked hearing from Scouters working to make Scouting happen in the inner-city like where I am. A lot of our girls usually don't get enough to eat at home (as in, most days they go hungry). At school they're on the free lunch program. At Girl Scouts, they can plan their own meals for outings with their own funds that they've earned themselves - they feel like masters of their own destiny - they take this game of Scouting *very* seriously - I take them seriously - and the folks here support that.

Peace out,

Anne

From what I'm reading, it sounds like it is absolutely vital to balance youth recruiting with adults - this is the "scary/difficult" for me - I don't feel a great deal of confidence in pulling together the adult leadership. Adults can be fickle and tempestuous It feels a bit like I work 5 times as hard to keep the adults happy for half the result I would get for my effort from the youth.

I'm also surprised to hear how rapidly your troops have grown...still reflecting on that bit,

Anne

I put out my GS recruitment yard sign from last year...tonight 3 girls dropped by to find out how to join So we are now potentially at 7 girls for the new troop. Just hoping now for their parents to follow through...that's always the hard part. I actually do home visits to get registrations done!

Ok, so right now, we're at 1 7th, 1 6th, 1 5th, 4 4th - if they can each bring a friend, we'll be at 14. (The 7th 6th and 5th graders came together - 2 sisters and a best friend) The sisters are from a family we sold cookies to last year - I never realized cookies could be a recruitment tool... They said they have never been camping before - it's the top thing they want to do. So....I guess we'll do some camping Next Thurs is new member night - hoping to pick up some more then - new troop's looking like it'll have not much trouble growing afterall

I tried to email to you but your address bounced: "host unknown". Can you recheck the address you gave me?

Peace out,

Anne

I've been reading "Delivering the Promise" and it says there is a huge qualitative difference when a troop reaches 21 members. I'm trying to analyse this - I'm assuming once you get to 21 then 3 patrols becomes possible (7x3=21) and that this makes youth leadership a reality rather than a "we'd do it if only we could get it to work".

Was your troop tiny? Have you managed to get to 21? How did you do it? How long did it take - months or years?

Do you actively recruit only younger ones, or across the board? I'm concerned that if I recruit older ones, we won't have enough of a program for them before they age out - we're planning big doings - international travel, etc. but it's not going to be happening for maybe 3 or 4 years (we have a younger batch on the way up).

Do you think 21 is an appropriate goal for a tiny troop? Are there smaller goals - more doable - along the way that you've found to be good markers of success? (We're starting from 4 or 5....yikes!)

Thankee kindly as always!

Anne in Mpls

Has anyone utilized Hilcourt's "Green Bar Patrol" method of training patrol leaders? I'm currently trying to pull together as much information as I can find because patrol leader training is completely missing from Girl Scouts in this day. Patrols get at most a paragraph in the handbooks and leaders' books now. Yikes! Green Bar Patrol sounds easily doable to me, the main thing being the extra time involved to do it.

Anne in Mpls

Apologies folks - I may have overstated things - it gets squishy in my mind sometimes which policies are local and which are from GSUSA. Here in my local council, we are required to sign the council's "Principles of Inclusiveness" which prohibits any specifically religious activity at a Girl Scout event. Uh huh...I live and work in a Council where we are forbidden to sing Johnny Appleseed. I abide by this prohibitions at all Council events. Our troop elected to have a moment of silence before meals which we do at all troop functions whether or not we get frowned at a bit. Religious services are no longer provided at our Council's resident camps - this is a *big* change from when I was a Brownie in this Council. I had to make the drive myself to pick up and sign out my kiddo to bring her to Mass. As a member of the Council's training staff, that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

Peace to you and yours,

Anne in Mpls

PB&J? How unenlightened...

Make mine a big bowl of Manhattan clam chowder, especially on Fridays

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

Newbie Catholic (raised Baptist/UU/Methodist/Hindu...it was the 60's. ok?)