AnneinMpls

Many apologies folks...I didn't know that my back button would resubmit the posting.

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

(Don't encourage her! She'll just say it again!)

("Looking for a sampling"? No, first you determine your sampling method, and then you obtain your samples. Ethically. Either with full disclosure or with a firmly defended and approved research proposal requiring non-disclosure. Hence my asking whether you've put anything before your IRB)

Hi Gary, not sure what your background is in terms of becoming a Family Life Merit Badge Counselor.

Do you think Genograms or an introduction to Family Systems theory would help in getting them to think about their place in their family? Family Roles can be a good one to get started with - this theoretical model of the family grew out of research on military flight crews and how their success was dependent upon having someone who was technically talented, and one who provided a nurturing role to the crew - cf Family Theories by Klein & White. Mayhaps too technical...I did a presentation on Family Social Science as a career path for our GS Service Unit - it incorporated an introduction to social science research which is probably beyond the scope of the merit badge - give me your address and I'd be happy to send you the descriptions of the stations I had set up - they're in Word files. One of the stations was GORP as a model of a family Every family has someone in it who's a little nuts...

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

For any joint activity to work and be worthwhile, it needs to meet the goals and needs of all the groups involved. I can see the needs of Brownies and Juniors being met by learning outdoor skills. I can see the Cadette and Senior needs being met through leadership experience in planning the program and providing instruction. I guess you'll need to determine (the PLC rather) whether the program meets *their* goals and needs, and if it doesn't, see if there is some way to offer input toward making the joint venture more profitable to both (although I do have to kinda laugh at the turnabout- Girl Scouts are often asked to provide snacks/meals/etc for Boy Scout projects...I think these girls have a sense of humor :) )

I'm frustrated that I'm not reacting more positively to this - I am one of those who would really really love to see more cooperation between our organizations. On the other hand, if your troop wants to do this simply out of doing a good turn, that's awesomely cool of them.

As far as why other potential joint activities are not coming to fruition, I think we got a real typical Mars/Venus butting of heads going on - in order to make the activity a success, the boys are offering up more and bigger and more exciting and adventuresome ideas in the hopes of getting some interest drummed up, and probably the harder y'all try to come up with the really cool totally exciting can't miss idea, the less interest they show! Heck, they don't know y'all - girls are used to getting heckled by guys when they try the new stuff (this is gradually changing I hear but not real fast). Do a "First Contact" low-key activity - a cookout and a hike - show em you're "fine young men" who don't heckle/harass/point at their boobies/make farting noises with armpits - then you'll probably find they're much more interested in the canoeing/rock-climbing/spelunking

Peace out,

Anne in Mpls

There's also one in the Junior Leader Handbook (mine might be a slightly out of date edition...havn't seen the newest ones since I'm not currently a Boy Scouter...)

Sctmom, I'm not sure I could ask him to come do the fire safety talk for our girls with a straight face

Ozemu's got a good idea there - one I'd already considered. Unfortunately, by the time he gets back from his turn on the fire crew, it will be hunting season for the woodies, so we can't be trapping and banding them then. (Can you tell I've been learning way too much about ducks lately? I am sooooo all about the ducks now!) He did however give our troop a large display area to work on and was almost specific about not wanting us to get it put up too soon Big blank space in the visitor center just waiting there, but he'd rather we come back in a few weeks to put it up. hehe.

peace out,

Anne

Hmmm, you don't sound like any academically trained researcher I've encountered before. Has your research proposal been shown to your institution's IRB? What is your research methodology? Where is the informed consent? *Who* or What is your institutional affiliation? What has your review of published literature told you so far? What's your sampling method? How bout your hypotheses? You havn't even given us a barebones understandable description of the purpose of your research, thus you're not even close to obtaining informed consent. Go away. Come back when you grow up and have a clue.

Anne in Mpls (Dept. of Family Social Science)

Hmmm, you don't sound like any academically trained researcher I've encountered before. Has your research proposal been shown to your institution's IRB? What is your research methodology? Where is the informed consent? *Who* or What is your institutional affiliation? What has your review of published literature told you so far? What's your sampling method? How bout your hypotheses? You havn't even given us a barebones understandable description of the purpose of your research, thus you're not even close to obtaining informed consent. Go away. Come back when you grow up and have a clue.

Anne in Mpls (Dept. of Family Social Science)

Hmmm, you don't sound like any academically trained researcher I've encountered before. Has your research proposal been shown to your institution's IRB? What is your research methodology? Where is the informed consent? *Who* or What is your institutional affiliation? What has your review of published literature told you so far? What's your sampling method? How bout your hypotheses? You havn't even given us a barebones understandable description of the purpose of your research, thus you're not even close to obtaining informed consent. Go away. Come back when you grow up and have a clue.

Anne in Mpls (Dept. of Family Social Science)

Just to clarify, there have always been lone Girl Scouts, by reason of no troops close by, girls living in isolated areas, etc. It's only been in the last couple years that they have had a special "Juliettes" patch to wear. But, it sure seems to me, that if your town doesn't have even *one* Girl Scout troop, you should have no trouble recruiting to fill one! Keep in mind, you are not limited to one age level either - in our Council multi--program level troops are called "group troops" - you can have any range of girls meet together from Daisies on up to Seniors - you simply need to follow the Safety-Wise guidelines according to the needs of the youngest members in your troop.

Recruiting in schools at the junior high and high school level is a tough sell...one strategy they've tried here is to post tear-off cards in the girls' restrooms at school.

If you don't have the resources to begin a troop, don't write off the opportunities available to your daughter as a Juliette - she is still eligible for all the Council events and camps for her age group, as well as the Wider Ops, national and international, when she gets to Jr High and High School.

Best wishes!

Anne in Mpls

The Religious Awards available to Girl Scouts are detailed in each of the Leader Handbooks, which is a really stupid place to put the information, because Leaders are proscribed from having direct involvement with the Religious Award programs in their Leader capacity. They really ought to put the information in the *Girls'* Handbooks, so it is accessible to the girls and their families.

Hops_Scout, do you think this is as it should be in your unit?

Such incidents are perhaps less common in our part of the galaxy but do happen.

I was helping out with my foster daughter's troop at a Service Unit Encampment many years ago, when the troop leader noticed a Brownie (2nd grader) had poured too much ketchup on her plate (I think we all understand about young people and occasional lapses in fine motor control, eh?). The troop leader handed the girl a spoon and made her eat all of it...My foster kiddo and I spent the rest of the weekend hunting for a new troop to join.

I'm especially disappointed in myself though, because while I did say to the leader and her asst. that this was a wrong thing to do I didn't press the issue to the point of stopping it. At the time I was thinking if I did I might be setting my foster daughter up for similar bad treatment while my back was turned, but fact is, I was a lot younger then, and didn't have quite the self-confidence to stand up to the situation as I should have.

This same leader had her girls pull a prank on the oldest troop at the Encampment, resulting in retaliation where the older girls snuck in and stole all of the younger girls' teddybears, etc. (We found them stashed away a day later.) Icky. Scouting on two continents with 7 different leaders, I'd never encountered such behavior before. Heck of a way to introduce a bunch of kids to Scouting. For most of them, this was their first overnight.

I strongly agree with Mr. Steele - there is so much *good Stuff* to do under the auspices of Scouting, that if you're engaging in this cr*p you're kids are going to miss out on, and maybe be driven out of the program for good.

LOL!

Alright, long as I got y'all reading,

Call or not call? He insisted on giving me his cellphone number but that was before the fire crew thing came up...

rotflol!!!!!! Only a guy would take that as a compliment

No, seriously, I meant that in the *nicest* way, really I did :)

Mel Brooks' To Be or Not To Be

Bringing Up Baby (Baby is a lion cub...)

The *new* Freaky Friday (normally I boycott Disney - Forgive me Father for I have sinned...I was given free tickets and it was ...really good)

Only You (not sure how this one would play in this testosterone-smogged room )

Hehe, well, I sure havn't been expecting to meet a great single guy in Girl Scouting If I were being methodical about this, I'd get signed up again to help with a Boy Scout troop

Speaking of Eagle Scouts, I woulda married one, except he was too nice to insist when I was a silly person way back when...couldn't handle the intensity of being in love with him, so went off and married someone who was a real jerk There's a summertime blockbuster film in there somewhere I'm sure!

So, anyhoo...we git ourselves up at 6 this morning to do the birdbanding, even though we were getting a stand-in, and guess who got himself up early too to do our birdbanding classroom session himself He was leaving later this morning for Montana, but came in for our girls I had him do a little spin - he was already wearing his official fire crew shirt. Sweet guy.

Talk amongst yourselves - 2/3 of Scouting is Outing, so what do the SC stand for? I'm feeling a bit verklempt...

Anne in Mpls

Hi Jamie - I had another thought about your Gold Award project...

There already is a whole lot about general camping knowledge available in libraries and online, but what's *really hard to find* are guides to how to get into the outdoors in your own community. It took me a full year of researching to find a "cabin camping" situation that would be workable for our very large Brownie troop (we found an awesome youth hostel to stay at a state park)

You could help families in your community by pointing the way to the really neat stuff in your area - and you could have different chapters on "first-time" adventures, and high-adventure opportunities, and chapters for families, and for youth groups. In the index you could have all the local contacts for your state and county parks, local volkssports chapter, hostelling association, area businesses that sell outdoor gear, groups that offer classes like canoeing and rock-climbing...

You'd be doing your community a real service, helping them to experience the outdoors

Anne in Mpls

Hi Jamie - I had another thought about your Gold Award project...

There already is a whole lot about general camping knowledge available in libraries and online, but what's *really hard to find* are guides to how to get into the outdoors in your own community. It took me a full year of researching to find a "cabin camping" situation that would be workable for our very large Brownie troop (we found an awesome youth hostel to stay at a state park)

You could help families in your community by pointing the way to the really neat stuff in your area - and you could have different chapters on "first-time" adventures, and high-adventure opportunities, and chapters for families, and for youth groups. In the index you could have all the local contacts for your state and county parks, local volkssports chapter, hostelling association, area businesses that sell outdoor gear, groups that offer classes like canoeing and rock-climbing...

You'd be doing your community a real service, helping them to experience the outdoors

Anne in Mpls

Hi Jamie, I'm wondering in your Council do they allow Gold Award projects to serve the Girl Scout community?

So tomorrow morning, my Brownie troop was going to get to do bird banding with this...sweet guy at the fish and wildlife service...he called me this morning to say someone else would be filling in because he was leaving today to go fight a wildfire in Montana. (Yha...I'm a single mom, he's a single dad, we got to talking at youth fishing day and he invited us to come do the birdbanding thing...he loves working with scouts.) Doesn't help my friend is pointing out that he's very nice looking, good with kids, and the type that drops everything to go do big strong manly things like fighting forest fires... my co-leader, without my knowing took a picture of him for me Anyway, prayers please if that's what you do for the fire crew in Montana the next couple weeks.

Ok, this hardly compares to what's already been shared. I am in awe!

But, ok, so, I had this favorite parka that I always wore on campouts and hikes and things, and it had this long burn mark right across the front of it across one side pocket. Now the truth is, I had left it over the back of one of the kitchen chairs, and my stepdad had pushed the chair up against the radiator overnight. But what I always told the girls was, that it was Struck by Lightning jacket. No one ever questioned it. Not sure quite what that says about me....

ARC Lifeguard Training has absolute *no* boating safety components to it at all. (I just recertified a couple weeks ago). I would expect it would cover topics in Safe Swim Defense, except...well, I think every organization needs to maintain responsibility for putting forth their own policies...Also, not every ARC Lifeguard course includes the Waterfront Module, so kinda useless unless you're at a swimming pool.

A couple concepts come to mind:

Scaffolding - this is a term from the child development field to describe behaviors of parents training their children - young toddler wants to build a tower of blocks - parent steadies the tower as necessary so the kiddo can do the part he is capable of doing and most enjoys. As proficiency develops, parent provides less and less "support", perhaps moving physically away too, giving words of encouragment where once it was a physical support.

progression - breaking tasks down into manageable portions and simpler tasks preceding more difficult ones. With my Brownies, I first teach them how to safely light a match, then a candle (these generally immediately follow each other - "good job with the match - I like how you blew it out when it was burning close to your fingers instead of getting scared and dropping it - let's try lighting the candle now") and then later applying these smaller skills to building and lighting and tending a fire (again, lots of skills in there to be broken down managably - kinds of firewood, types of fires, wind direction...) breaking it down builds competence - obviously match this to the maturity of the person! I work with Brownies - the steps would be sped up a bit for older ones of course!

To see these as positive techniques, contrast them with the "sink or swim" approach, or the "you're not old enough to do the whole thing, so I won't let you do any of it" aka the "all or nothing" approach.

Does anyone have links to specific information on the agreement between the ARC and BSA?

Thanks!

Anne in Mpls

Yes, I know we have many different options for how we can register. I've laid out the plan we've chosen, as well as specific questions that I have

Thanks!

Anne in Mpls