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Elementary School-Aged Kids
Reply to "Were you a girl scout or brownie leader? Give me your advice..."
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[quote=Anonymous]I am just finishing a year as a leader. I won't be returning. Despite my repeated requests for parental involvement, only one family participated in any way at all. I had one family who never paid troop dues. No one would be the cookie parent so we did not sell cookies. Which means we must exist on the troop dues which I told them I would keep low since I anticipated that we would have cookie sales to pull us through the second half the year. Wrong. I have tried to come up with interesting things to do in each meeting. We have done some service projects for the school, some really neat crafting, some outdoor stuff. Several of the families have told me how much their daughter enjoys being in the troop and any time anyone has asked, "is there anything I can do to help," I respond with a list of three or four choices and a smile and I get nothing. I work full-time and don't have time to continue this process for another year so I am not returning. And then there is the service unit BS. Beware. In the middle of the year, there is International Day which is a thinly veiled fundraiser for the service unit. If you have older kids in the troop, just know that the event is scheduled during a Saturday morning, you know, prime game time. It is mandatory and if you don't show up the entire service unit knows since your table display will be empty. So there isn't any, "oh I must have totally missed you there it was so crowded!" Your troop is assigned a country which the girls must research and make a poster about. The girls must also make crafts representing that country to sell. If you have Daisies or Brownies, have fun with that. We spent 2 meetings on the poster and one on the craft and I spent a morning that I will never get back at the horribly managed event. We sold out of our craft and our proceeds HAD to be donated to the service unit. Our contribution was less than $30. I would have written the check myself in order to avoid going. None of the girls from our troop were able to attend except my daughter and my co-leader's daughter because they all had basketball games or other sports commitments. And my family paid for all of the supplies since I did not want to spend our paltry troop funds on the supplies and none of the other families, except my co-leader, paid any share of the amount or responded in any way to my request for contributions. Also, I would caution you. One of the girls in the troop takes up about 90% of our attention. She needs constant supervision, redirection, boundary setting, etc. Be aware of kids who require extra effort and consider asking an older girl scout to help out at your meetings. I didn't realize the problem until too late in the year. If I were to return, I would find an older girl scout to come and help with every meeting.[/quote]
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