u/No-Kaleidoscope-4699

There aren’t many council events where I live so my troop hardly ever participates in them. We’ve only done 2 in 4 years. We drove 1.5 hours to a council event last weekend and it was a disaster due to the behavior of the majority of participants.

Council booked a field trip program at a museum that was 1/2 outdoors, well organized, engaging, and skillfully led. I’m a public school teacher and this was a good program. There were about 20 girls and 14 adults.

At least 10 of the girls were poorly behaved. Things like climbing on museum exhibits, constantly asking the tour guide what time she was stopping for lunch, refusing to walk (we walked maybe 1/4 mile the entire morning) and demanding to be carried, shoving other girls like they were trying to start a mosh pit, cutting in line, interrupting speakers, ripping props out of the tour guide’s hands, screaming while playing during breaks, constantly complaining loudly.

Their chaperones were entirely tolerant of this. They carried 8 year olds around on their backs who refused to walk. They didn’t intervene when girls toed the line or crossed the line, they only stepped in when a girl had gone way to far over the line. For example, hanging on the arms of the tour guide was not corrected, so the girl escalates to slamming into the tour guide causing her to drop the prop she is holding. Then the parent of said girl, from 15 feet away, quietly asks the girl about 4 times to stop doing that. Adults held conversations with each other and girls at normal speaking volumes inside the cluster of people, making it impossible to hear the tour guide, so the tour guide is straining to project her voice and be hard by the small number of people who cared to hear her.

Next is lunch, then a bunch of science experiments in a classroom. At lunch time, nearly every troop ate lunch inside the classroom. The weather at lunch was 75 degrees, partly cloudy. The museum is in a gorgeous park. There are a dozen empty picnic tables. They did not leave the windowless classroom. I’m not sure what they did for an hour in there. Maybe they had phones to entertain themselves with?

When it was time to go inside for the science experiments, my troop begged to not go back. I am a science teacher and the science experiments were all set up and were worth doing, but I didn’t want to spend any more time with the group either. We found a trail map for the park and went on a lovely hike to a swinging bridge, got rained on, sang songs, and turned the day around for ourselves in spite of getting wet. We encountered another troop of 4 girls and their leaders who had also abandon the program.

At the museum, there was a flyer advertising the field trip for $12 and we paid something like $21/girl. There was no council staff there. I’m inclined to never go to a council event again if I can help it.

I have a troop of Juniors and we are working towards being more girl-led. One thing I love about the BSA program that my son participates in, is that the handbook contains actual information and there are extremely well-written merit badge booklets that contain actual information. This access to information gives BSA Scouts so much more independence.

Sure Juniors can choose which badge they want to earn, they can choose from among 3 options for each requirement. But, without background information or how to complete badge requirements, my Girl Scouts are largely dependent on me to provide all of that.

I could find books on their level and buy them to use at meetings, but they won’t be tailored for the badges and will be burdensome for the girls to pick through. I’m not putting them on laptops at Girl Scouts. I’m not printing the VTK and telling them to read it.

I’ve been a public school teacher for 15 years. We have the troop culture, great behavior, enthusiastic girls, but I struggle so much with the lack of learning resources provided by Girl Scouts. It always comes down to me working on Girl Scouts like it’s my second job and them remaining reliant on me at a point when they are capable of being more independent.

Then I go to a BSA meeting and the boys are so autonomous and working in youth-led patrols toward their goals. They have the information they need packaged in the BSA program materials. They have to work for it somewhat, but it doesn’t involves filtering massive amounts of information to get what they need to make progress toward a goal. These are middle school boys with middle school-age patrol leaders.

My juniors could start doing something similar. I’m debating using the BSA handbook and merit badge booklets with them next year as informational resources. I don’t want to use a different organization’s program, so if you can point me toward any great resources for Girl Scouts who are systematically building skills, that won’t require dozens of hours of sifting, hunting down handbooks from every decade (I have 5 already), and piecing little bits together - I’d be so appreciative!