Milestone
The Girl Scout Journeys are a required piece of Girl-Scoutdom, if you have any interest in earning the Big Girl Scout Awards, much like camping is a required piece of Boy-Scoutdom, if you have any interest in earning the Eagle.
The Girl Scout Journeys are terrible.
For the younger girls, there is way too much reading and book work. There's way too much for the older girls as well, but at least it's more reasonable to expect that older than 3rd graders are likely to be decent enough readers that having a task that requires reading, and recommending reading out loud to a group, won't be age-and-ability inappropriate. Zoë's Girl Scout meetings have general been in the evenings, on a weekday, so you have a group of kids who've already used up their school-abilities on school, and half of them haven't eaten dinner, and the other half haven't had a chance to run around and get all their wiggles out.
Fortunately, for Zoë's Daisy (K&1st) and Brownie (2nd&3rd) years, we were at a meeting place with a wonderful playground that wasn't being used by anyone during our meeting times, and we made liberal use of it. I did not ask the girls to read, since I knew many kids in our troops had reading issues, and it just seemed like Girl Scouts shouldn't be yet another place where their struggles were made public. I would read to them from the Journey materials, and they would chatter about it, while playing. They always really enjoyed the Take Action projects, and coming up with ideas for them, which I figured was most of the point anyway. Who cares if they talked about how important water is to the earth while hanging from the monkey bars?
Her Junior leader did the Journeys more officially, which made sense given the kids were now 4th and 5th graders. But again, many of the kids suffered through the Journey materials, and only really got invested with the Take Action projects. That's the point at which Zoë declared herself finished with Journeys. Except she'd need to do one as a Cadette before she could do her Silver project. She wanted to do her Silver project (she'd really enjoyed her Bronze project as a Junior) so she dealt with the Journey. She absolutely refused to do any other Journeys as a Cadette, even though Cadettes are a 3 year program (6th-8th) and she completed her Cadette Journey as a 6th grader and her troop did at least one Journey each year. She skipped all meetings dealing with Journey work.
In order to be able to do her Gold project, Zoë is required to do a Senior (9th&10th) or Ambassador (11th&12th) Journey. Zoë wants to do her Gold, and has mounds of ideas, but has felt very discouraged by the Journey requirement. She has said on a few occasions that it's just not worth doing another Journey.
Zoë's probably an extreme - she's terrible about making herself do things she doesn't want to do even if it helps her get to the point of being able to do something she wants to do. But she switched troops this year, and not a single kid in her new troop did their Silver project because none of them ever wanted to do a Journey.
I volunteered to run a Senior Journey for her troop. I bought all 3 of them and went through them with the girls in broad strokes, letting them look at the materials, and we've narrowed it down to what seems like the least objectionable. And I've been working on a plan to make it interesting for them. Zoë only needs to do one Journey in order to do her Gold project, but all the other girls will have to do 2 (earning your Silver Award counts as doing an upper level Journey). My goal is to make this Journey connect with them enough that the other girls who want to work on a Gold project would be willing to go through one more Journey in order to check that box.
We're going camping, and we're going to push through this. Doing a Journey in a weekend has been the most successful format so far and I'm going to have the kids trapped at a campsite so they can't do half the work and not come back the second day. But it also means I have to have all the materials there. I can't forget the glue, or only have one pair of scissors, or accidentally bring a deflated basketball instead of the pumped up one. I'm finding that more stressful than I should. On the plus side, I think I happen to have enough hula hoop making supplies that I don't need to buy anything except maybe some more colorful electrical tape. And for any girls who don't want to keep the hula hoops they make, I have a person willing to take donations so we avoid the whole "make something just to throw it away" thing so common with required craft projects.
I really hope I can make this interesting. Some of our girls would love to work on a Gold project. I think Girl Scouts is shooting themselves in the foot with this Journey requirement. But at the very least, I just need to get Zoë to power through this.
The Girl Scout Journeys are terrible.
For the younger girls, there is way too much reading and book work. There's way too much for the older girls as well, but at least it's more reasonable to expect that older than 3rd graders are likely to be decent enough readers that having a task that requires reading, and recommending reading out loud to a group, won't be age-and-ability inappropriate. Zoë's Girl Scout meetings have general been in the evenings, on a weekday, so you have a group of kids who've already used up their school-abilities on school, and half of them haven't eaten dinner, and the other half haven't had a chance to run around and get all their wiggles out.
Fortunately, for Zoë's Daisy (K&1st) and Brownie (2nd&3rd) years, we were at a meeting place with a wonderful playground that wasn't being used by anyone during our meeting times, and we made liberal use of it. I did not ask the girls to read, since I knew many kids in our troops had reading issues, and it just seemed like Girl Scouts shouldn't be yet another place where their struggles were made public. I would read to them from the Journey materials, and they would chatter about it, while playing. They always really enjoyed the Take Action projects, and coming up with ideas for them, which I figured was most of the point anyway. Who cares if they talked about how important water is to the earth while hanging from the monkey bars?
Her Junior leader did the Journeys more officially, which made sense given the kids were now 4th and 5th graders. But again, many of the kids suffered through the Journey materials, and only really got invested with the Take Action projects. That's the point at which Zoë declared herself finished with Journeys. Except she'd need to do one as a Cadette before she could do her Silver project. She wanted to do her Silver project (she'd really enjoyed her Bronze project as a Junior) so she dealt with the Journey. She absolutely refused to do any other Journeys as a Cadette, even though Cadettes are a 3 year program (6th-8th) and she completed her Cadette Journey as a 6th grader and her troop did at least one Journey each year. She skipped all meetings dealing with Journey work.
In order to be able to do her Gold project, Zoë is required to do a Senior (9th&10th) or Ambassador (11th&12th) Journey. Zoë wants to do her Gold, and has mounds of ideas, but has felt very discouraged by the Journey requirement. She has said on a few occasions that it's just not worth doing another Journey.
Zoë's probably an extreme - she's terrible about making herself do things she doesn't want to do even if it helps her get to the point of being able to do something she wants to do. But she switched troops this year, and not a single kid in her new troop did their Silver project because none of them ever wanted to do a Journey.
I volunteered to run a Senior Journey for her troop. I bought all 3 of them and went through them with the girls in broad strokes, letting them look at the materials, and we've narrowed it down to what seems like the least objectionable. And I've been working on a plan to make it interesting for them. Zoë only needs to do one Journey in order to do her Gold project, but all the other girls will have to do 2 (earning your Silver Award counts as doing an upper level Journey). My goal is to make this Journey connect with them enough that the other girls who want to work on a Gold project would be willing to go through one more Journey in order to check that box.
We're going camping, and we're going to push through this. Doing a Journey in a weekend has been the most successful format so far and I'm going to have the kids trapped at a campsite so they can't do half the work and not come back the second day. But it also means I have to have all the materials there. I can't forget the glue, or only have one pair of scissors, or accidentally bring a deflated basketball instead of the pumped up one. I'm finding that more stressful than I should. On the plus side, I think I happen to have enough hula hoop making supplies that I don't need to buy anything except maybe some more colorful electrical tape. And for any girls who don't want to keep the hula hoops they make, I have a person willing to take donations so we avoid the whole "make something just to throw it away" thing so common with required craft projects.
I really hope I can make this interesting. Some of our girls would love to work on a Gold project. I think Girl Scouts is shooting themselves in the foot with this Journey requirement. But at the very least, I just need to get Zoë to power through this.