Girl Scouts have lost their way

[Anonymous]

Can you recommend specific outdoors-y Council's Own badges (from other councils) we could order and work on before they're eliminated?

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I hated girl scouts. Hated hated hated it. I was a brownie and jr two years each, only because my mom and older sisters were scouts. I wanted to be a campfire girl because they had better uniforms. Ha. [b]I really have very few good memories of scouts, but thats probably because I had little to no parental support, was fairly shy and have always hated anything remotely related to camping[/b]. Oh and I hated all the crap we had to sell....ugly calendars, all those damn cookies and I was lucky to sell 20-30 boxes completely on my own, whereas other girls had dads who took the order form to work and would sell a couple hundred boxes and get the special badge and extra attention. What a crap organization. Good riddance.[/quote]

Well, you have stated the real reasons why you hated scouting above. It really wasn't about the GSA. I'm sorry that you had a bad experience, but just b/c you didn't like it doesn't mean you should condemn it to failure. It has been and is a great organization for so many girls. [/quote]

I had a similar experience. Selling cookies just wasn't for me. I liked Campfire Girls better. Now it's become coed Campfire Kids, which I really like because I have sons.

[Anonymous]

We need to fix the problems with GS though, because there's something very special and empowering about putting just girls together, with women leaders.

[Anonymous]

Where can I find a list of all Brownie Patches/Badges offered by GSCNC?

Maybe I'm searching for the wrong terms but I don't see it on their website.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of my daughters ultimately dropped out because they resented that their brother got to go camping all the time in Boy Scouts but their own troops never did anything outdoorsy. Damn shame.

If you wanted outdoorsy so much, why didn't you volunteer to be camp trained and take the girls camping? As a former leader, I can tell you it's a huge time commitment to be a leader and those of us who work full time can't necessarily do it all. If parents think a particular activity is important, they should step up to the plate instead of complaining.

I have to agree. Girl Scouts is voluntary and, like most things in life, you shouldn't bitch about how it is run or what is/is not being done unless you are actually doing it. Very few parents want to step up and volunteer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
To be fair, though... there is almost NO official programming in Girl Scouts that points to girls going camping or doing outdoor things anymore. There are no badges for swimming, water activities, canoeing, kayaking, "beach fun", horseback riding, rock climbing, outdoor cooking, fishing, etc.. There is ONE badge for hiking (Brownies), ONE badge for camping (Juniors) and ONE badge for backpacking (Cadettes). Oh, and there is a letterboxing badge for Brownies and Orienteering for Jrs -- but going on ONE hike, ONE letterboxing trip etc counts for these badges.

NONE of these badges are required for anything, though, or are used towards earning any of the "higher awards". It used to be to earn Silver and Giold awards you had to earn a certain number of badges and interest patches, at least.

In Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, outdoor skills and camping a certain number of times are required for advancement, which is why as a part of the official program, Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts go camping and hiking a lot more than most Girl Scout troops.

But you can create your own badges, you don't have to be limited to what Girl Scouts offers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where can I find a list of all Brownie Patches/Badges offered by GSCNC?

Maybe I'm searching for the wrong terms but I don't see it on their website.

Nevermind - found it. Boy, these patches are lame! Everyone inspired me to not complain and volunteer to take my dd's troop on a field trip to get a cool badge. Looking through the list, I'm not so impressed.

We can create our own badge? How does that work? I found the badge list for a council of Southern Alabama and one of the badges they had was a horse badge (learn how to groom and ride, I think). Could I offer something similar to my troop?

[Anonymous]

PP, you can do stuff just because its fun. You don;t necessarily have to earn a badge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where can I find a list of all Brownie Patches/Badges offered by GSCNC?

Maybe I'm searching for the wrong terms but I don't see it on their website.

Nevermind - found it. Boy, these patches are lame! Everyone inspired me to not complain and volunteer to take my dd's troop on a field trip to get a cool badge. Looking through the list, I'm not so impressed.

We can create our own badge? How does that work? I found the badge list for a council of Southern Alabama and one of the badges they had was a horse badge (learn how to groom and ride, I think). Could I offer something similar to my troop?

You *can* create your own badge, but it is expensive --- $3.99 +shipping PER badge. You're only supposed to do it once per year, but my understanding is that no one is actually counting how many times you use that system, so you could do it more often. Yes, you can do things without earning a badge. You can buy fun patches and put them on the back of your daughter's vest. But, there is a difference b/t "earning" something --- requiring learning, and just showing up to do something with no structure (where you get a fun patch). We do both kinds of events, but you don't want to have a vest with NO badges! If you are a leader, I suggest you google "baby center Girl Scout moms" and you will find a very supportive group of leaders who will give you all sorts of ideas and help. (NOT a DCUM-type of group, and not entirely annonymous). These are leaders from all over the country.

Recently the discussion turned to the Girl Guides in Canada (essentially the Girl Scouts of Canada). They have a great collection of outdoor badges -- probably more like Campfire girls. Our GS in the USA can earn the Canadian badges and wear them. There is also a nearby council (I think it might be Council of the Chessapeake Bay??). they have a series of outdoor "council's own" that have four "levels" of skill to earn and I think it is also differentiated by GS level (i.e. brownie, junior, cadettes). Here's the link: http://www.gscb.org/02_for_girls/awards_recog/councils_own_awards/council_awards.html (they put our GSCNC earned patch programs to shame).

I also belong to a nation-wide Facebook group that is a GS Swap and Sell where you can find the "retired" badges and get ideas. Some councils still sell the retired badges (but every year they get harder to find).

when I have done the CO's from other councils, I've adapted to our area. So, we did the North Carolina council's "Every Vote Counts" last year (election time) and just adapted it to our state. For my girls who are doing Oceanography (there are three councils that offer it -- Massachusettes, Oregon/Washington state and Gulf Coast Florida) -- we just adapt it to our ocean areas where necessary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm the PP who is doing the Aerospace badge, etc.

The new programming is too much like school b/c they made a decision to align it with Common Core -- i.e. SCHOOL principles. So they made a decision to get rid of a lot of interesting badges to focus on more school curriculum types of ideas. We find that our FCPS students have done a bunch of the badge/journey requirements already.

PP, OP here. I agree with the rest of your post 100% except the changes in GSUSA have, IMO, nothing to do with "Common Core" (which focuses on reading and math.) I know that somewhere on the GSUSA website there's a link to each Journey and badge activity and how it correlates to Common Core standards but (a) they don't really (b) most badge requirements are optional anyhow and (c) Girl Scouts has also tried to link badges work to earlier state standards -- something about trying to convince principals and school districts and grant funders that Scouts is about more than just "crafts, cookies and camping" -- that it can be educational and result in increased test scores for girls.

I only mention this because a lot of people have a knee jerk reaction against "Common Core" and I just think it has nothing to do with what is wrong with Girl Scouts! They made these mist

That said, the new badges and especially the Journeys are WAY too much like school. We just finished the Brownies Wonders of Water and the girls were so bored -- they studied the water cycle in school this year so there was nothing new for them. We had to change it up a lot to make it interesting.

For people who don't know what the new Journeys look like, take a look here at the Wonders of Water. This is one council's suggestion of how to "teach" the "lesson plan".

http://www.girlscoutshcc.org/gshccadmin/site1/adult/pdf/adult/Brownie_WOW.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP, you can do stuff just because its fun. You don;t necessarily have to earn a badge.

Sure, but you don't have to be in Girl Scouts, either, for that matter!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where can I find a list of all Brownie Patches/Badges offered by GSCNC?

Maybe I'm searching for the wrong terms but I don't see it on their website.

I can't find it for Brownies, but this is a great list of all the retired Junior badges (two pages)

If you click on the names, you will get the actual requirements. There used to be so much more variety!!

http://server.ellenbecker.net:4272/html/junior_badge_requirements.html


I think what GSUSA did was they retired a bunch of these badges, but took one or two activities (a sampling) from many of them and put them in the Journeys. So some of the Journeys are supposed to be the "Environmental" ones and so there are a whole assortment of activities from several of the outdoorsy badges. But the activities don't really make any sense -- they don't hang together in a cohesive way because they are coming from several completely different badges/areas of interest. You get whiplash reading through the "requirements" of the Journeys. And then we were told at the Journey meeting we went to that no one likes the Journeys and that everything at this point is optional, you just have to SAY you are doing a Journey but you can change the requirements completely if you need to. It's a total mess.

[Anonymous]

Problem with Girl Scouts: girls are taught to sit around and TALK (and talk and talk) about things while boys are our DOING things. Not a fan of Girl Scouts.

[Anonymous]

When I was a GS, they did have more outdoor badges for sure.

To me, the Journey's seem to be written to be used with kids who are in less well off areas. I am not be snobby but if you read them, they include very basic activities that are normally covered around here in school, after school programs, or extra curricular activities. It was tough to Daisies and Brownies interested in the activities because they were often dumbed down repeats of activities they had done many times.

Thanks for the links PP to the other badges btw. I am going to share them with our troop leaders.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was a GS, they did have more outdoor badges for sure.

To me, the Journey's seem to be written to be used with kids who are in less well off areas. I am not be snobby but if you read them, they include very basic activities that are normally covered around here in school, after school programs, or extra curricular activities. It was tough to Daisies and Brownies interested in the activities because they were often dumbed down repeats of activities they had done many times.

Thanks for the links PP to the other badges btw. I am going to share them with our troop leaders.

You can do those badges, PP, but be forewarned they have been retired and most shops are out of them! It is very hard for me to find any of the ones I want now -- they were phased out maybe 2-3 years ago.

Girl Guides in Canada look like they have great badges but they will only sell to leaders in Canada.