Luckily for me this last month has passed very quickly, because it has been full of moving stress at work as nearly everyone in our department packed up and moved to a new desk. The library, which I am responsible for, also moved, and that was a task to get done, believe me!
Girl Scouts has been going very well! Slowly our troop is growing, and now we have 4 total girls, though one is not super reliable if she's going to be at the meetings or not. My co-leader and I finally decided we needed to lay down some ground rules, which I am kinda glad that we didn't do that right away. Hopefully the girls have had enough fun so far that they want to stick around, and Bobbi and I were very honest about it all too. We made a group agreement that Bobbi and I agreed to as well, and then our next meeting will be a parent's meeting to share the group agreement with, and a court of awards ceremony, though I'm not completely sure that we've actually earned any tri-its yet.
I hope it's OK that we're making our juniors earn tri-its for the rest of this year. It's just easier to keep them as one grade level. Since we have 3rd graders and 5th graders who with the old model would have been a troup together we thought it would be OK. Our 3rd graders seem advanced and our 5th graders seem less so. Next year will be juniors and probably the year after unless we need to just bridge the older girls to Cadettes. It seems like it might be easier to do what the older girls need and find a way to fit the junior badges into the interest patches. And hopefully the journeys will align well enough that it's not like having two separate troops trying to accurately meet the needs of our girls.
As a trainer with Girl Scouts I always thought that I'd be the by-the book leader... HA! We're doing good by our girls as best we can, even if we technically aren't a troop yet (we need 5 girls I believe) or even if our 5th graders are doing brownie-level work. I think these girls really need us because their families seem a little bit less stable then what I grew up with. It doesn't seem like any of these girls have very many friends at school, which is so surprising. They seem like such sweet, nice kids. :(
On the whole I'm very much enjoying doing Girl Scouts as a leader. It's such a new experience from training and from being a leader. I'm starting to look forward to doing some more training since I'm getting an idea of how to actually lead now!
OK, off to work! Then veggie sushi with Adam and Stephanie for dinner!
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