A Skills-Based Program Reset Button

“Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.” — Maya Angelou

Unless you’ve been under a rock lately – a really big rock – we’re currently looking for a National CEO. Considering we’ve gone through three National CEOs in the past ten years, it goes without saying that we need to get this next hire right.  The incoming CEO will have a big job on her hands dealing with the fallout from a pandemic and the upheaval it’s brought.  But while it’s certainly an intimidating situation, it’s also a good opportunity to hit the reset button and get back on the right track. 

I believe it’s time to refocus because we’ve had our current program in place for twelve years now, and well, it’s a little lacking for a variety of reasons.  Program changes have occurred throughout Girl Scouting’s history as women’s roles and girls’ needs changed.  Our organization is constantly evolving – but at the same time, it needs to stay true to its roots and stick to a foundation that successfully guided us for over 100 years. I think what worked in 1912 can most certainly work in 2021.  Not the material itself, but the concept.  And going back to Angelou’s quote – I actually don’t think we’ll be stepping onto a brand-new path.  We’ll be going back to the path that works.

Obviously, one of the primary goals for the new CEO will be boosting membership.  So, I think the emphasis should be on what Girl Scouting brings to the table compared to other activities.  We have to offer something that girls can’t get elsewhere like in sports or dance or even school.  Promoting Girl Scouts as a “leadership” program like we’re doing now doesn’t cut it with parents because it’s too vague of a concept. By and large, parents today are focused on the short term and have to SEE what their daughter is getting out of Girl Scouting TODAY.  What can she do now that she couldn’t do yesterday before her meeting?  Use a knife?  Sew on a button?  Cook a meal from scratch? Change a tire?  Start a fire?  Can we show that Girl Scouting does things that aren’t offered elsewhere like participating in various outdoor experiences? Can we highlight that Girl Scouting gives girls and young women opportunities to connect and share experiences in girl-centric ways that they wouldn’t be able to do in other organizations?  We’re competing for time amongst shiny trophies and athletic scholarships, so just telling parents that their daughter will be a better person with leadership skills if she’s a Girl Scout doesn’t speak to a lot of them these days (unfortunately).

So how do we do this?  Here are my thoughts as a leader who started in 2010 when the current program was launched.

I don’t think it’s necessary to completely throw everything out the window as was done back in 2008-2010 because that would be too much to do all at once, especially with everybody just trying to keep their head above water right now.  But we need to go back to hands-on, skill-based programming that will appeal to both girls and leaders. Girls want to DO and LEARN things – and show them off!  “Look what I can do, Mom!” They want to MAKE things.  Leaders get excited teaching girls HOW to do them and watching the lightbulb go off.  We all know that learning new skills and figuring out how things work develops the courage to stretch your boundaries.  This translates to other areas of a girl’s life.  A big component of leadership is confidence plus the ability to think through a situation to come to a workable solution.

Our program is based on four pillars – the Outdoors, STEM, Entrepreneurship, and Life Skills.  We should stick with those, but add Art into the mix too.  These five pillars should be the basis of our programming moving forward.  Addendum 4/21/21:  Nope, I rethought it and they need to be changed too.

Let’s start with the easy part.  I say keep the Journeys.  WHAT!?!

Yes, keep them.  Well, maybe not all of them.  We need to review which ones are popular and which ones aren’t.  However, I believe instead of being a necessary component like they are now (especially when it comes to the higher awards), they can be used as supplemental material.  I’ve had success using them during a weekend getaway like what we did for Brownie Quest and Mission: Sisterhood. Keep the Journey Summit Award as an add-on incentive for them.

And now everybody’s favorite – the badge program.  This area is what I think needs the most work and overhaul and where the skills-based aspect should come into play.

The current badges (and Journeys) were initially structured to accomplish the following five Girl Scouting outcomes:

1. Sense of self: Girls have confidence in themselves and their abilities and form positive identities.
2. Positive values: Girls act ethically, honestly, and responsibly and show concern for others.
3. Challenge seeking: Girls take appropriate risks, try new things even if they might fail, and learn from mistakes.
4. Healthy relationships: Girls develop and maintain healthy relationships by communicating their feelings directly and resolving conflicts constructively.
5. Community problem solving: Girls desire to contribute to the world in purposeful and meaningful ways, learn how to identify problems in the community, and create “action plans” to solve them.

GSUSA measures these outcomes via the Voices Count survey that comes out in the spring.  I think we can keep this concept.  In fact, I believe a skills-based badge program would successfully accomplish these goals better than anything else.  So in order to do this, we should take a hard look at what badges we have now and ask ourselves if they really teach a skill, or is it just given a cursory glance in a requirement?  Can we pull it out and make it its own badge in order to learn the skill as thoroughly as it should be?

For example, one of the choices for Step 4 in the Cadette Trailblazer badge is to practice navigating with a map & compass or a GPS unit.  This requirement should be a badge in and of itself.  Orienteering is a skill that takes a good amount of time to educate and practice.  This past fall, I taught a session on orienteering with our Trailblazer troop.  The session ran for about an hour and a half, but since it just covered the basics (I didn’t want to overwhelm them), it didn’t include actually putting what we learned to the test on a live course or in the woods (that’s coming at a later date).  In fact, I could have spent a whole day on this topic.  As an aside, I wrote an UNOFFICIAL orienteering guide if you’re interested.

We don’t need to start from scratch when it comes to overhauling badge work.  There’s nothing wrong with referencing some of the retired badge requirements and draw from them, and we shouldn’t feel like it would be backtracking to do so.  Use them as a guide and tweak them as need be.  To revisit the Trailblazer badge example, there is a retired IPA called Orienteering (pg. 166, Interest Projects for Girls 11-17).  As a leader, I would much rather give a topic its due diligence than presenting a shallow and quick overview.  Running through a topic or skill quickly doesn’t allow it to sink in and what girls did learn will soon be forgotten.  I’d also like to point out that there’s a reason for the popularity of websites that sell retired Try-Its/Badges/IPAs or UNOFFICIAL badges in the same shape and size of current ones.

We really need to consolidate the Cadette through Ambassador badge programming as was done with IPAs.  Many girls keep the same vest through all three levels anyway.  I would love to earn badges in our Trailblazer troop (8th through 12th grade), but with each level having its own set of badges, it just doesn’t work with the way we run things.  I wish I could give a Trailblazer/Backpacking badge to Seniors and Ambassadors, but there’s no equivalent.  Frankly, I’m tempted to just go rogue and toss the Trail Adventure requirements out the window and instead use the retired IPA requirements for Backpacking in their place. Don’t tell the Badge Police.

And how should we distribute these new badge requirements?

Have books gone the way of the dodo bird?  I hope not.  I like to write on them, and it’s easier for me to physically reference the materials than it is to pull out my phone and use up my battery, especially when I’ve told the girls they need to put their phones away.  Badge books are also easily accessible for both girls and leaders – and parents!  I like the relatively new Memory Books, but they only feature Badge Summaries.  Incidentally, some leaders are now using the summaries as the requirements themselves.  I don’t think that’s their intended purpose, but I digress.

However, many leaders like having requirements online and electronically, so that should be an obvious option too.  There should also be a way to download them locally to a phone or tablet in the case there’s no internet access for whatever reason – like staying at a camp over a weekend, for example.  I also think it’s very important that the girls themselves be able to easily access the requirements on their phones.  Something to consider down the road is an app wherein the Badge Summary serves as the framework, and then within it, the user can access the specific requirements.  The app could even include each level’s handbook.

If requirements are not offered in a printed format, then it’s got to be printer-friendly for us pencil and paper folks.  What I mean by that is that it needs to be light on the graphics and not 10 to 12 pages long like the current booklets.  Three at the max.  I would be fine with printing out material as long as it’s not something that eats up my ink cartridges.  They’re expensive!  Personally, I like the way the requirements are presented in the retired badge and IPA books because they’re laid out in a simple and straightforward format.  All that said, I do like the additional information that’s offered in the current booklets such as recipes or diagrams in the side margins and on separate pages, but those could be offered as supplemental downloads.  In fact, I’ve seen this done already in VTK with some of them so it wouldn’t be like we’re reinventing the wheel.

Note that I’m not saying we should throw out ALL of the current badges and start over.  Not at all.  I believe some of the ones (like the Robotics series) that have detailed VTK plans can certainly still be available.

I would also create a new pathway to Silver and Gold based on badges rather than Journeys, but that’s a discussion for another blog post.  Maybe I’ll write about it down the road.

So as you can see, I really don’t think a do-over for programming has to be an expensive or lengthy endeavor.  We can use both current and recently retired materials as our basis and go from there.

Welp, those are just my simple thoughts that I thought I’d throw out there for everybody to chew on.  This skills-based approach is what we used at the very beginning of our organization, and it’s what will work for us now (sans semaphores).  I realize we’ve got a hard road ahead of us, but I also believe that having a fresh set of programming will help matters in more ways than one – especially when it comes to enthusiasm.