Patrol Method in Girl Scouting

[AnneinMpls]

Hi folks - I've already gleaned all I can from the Girl Scout forum so here I am to partake of your advice!

 

General idea here is, how do I build up my 3 bridging 3rd graders into first, a strong patrol, and then a good strong troop?

 

Background: I lead a Brownie troop of mixed ages - 1st 2nd and 3rd graders all together - this is what I like best because they get the experience of learning from one another - older and younger. I prefer larger troops - right now we have 15 and that's not quite big enough for my tastes. Bigger numbers allows greater opportunity for girl leadership.

 

Current situation: after seeking desperately for a good established troop for my 3rd graders to bridge into, I came up empty. (One leader said "the more the merrier" but after she *screamed* at our Brownies at encampment for not dishing food fast enough....uh huh...) So, I'm thinking I'll do what I can.

 

This week was our first "patrol meeting" - the three girls and I set up chairs in the hallway during the brownie meeting. I did an overview of how patrol method works - put the bug in their ear that we will want to do some recruiting this fall to get our numbers up so we can have a strong troop (hoping for eventually 3 patrols of 6-8 girls each) Then for their first activity let them have the task of fleshing out/finalizing the menus for our troop campout this month up at Lake Itasca (indoor camping with outdoor cooking - we're staying at the Youth Hostel - coolies!!)

 

Questions...what's our next step?? These 3 are going to be 4th graders....do I only recruit other 4th graders this year, or do I bring in all 3 grades (4th 5th and 6th)? My thought is that these 3 girls will make primo patrol leaders but not if they'll be the youngest ones in the new bunch...or does that not matter so much? What ought to be our focus right now? So far it seems to be a good fit to have them practicing some leadership skills with the younger brownies. One of the 3 girls right now is on a big health & fitness kick so we're looking at building program and badge work around that interest. One of the girls is a super-quiet introspective type who's mom is single - she's a carpenter and loves deer hunting, etc - wants to help the girls learn orienteering etc. Great girls - lots of good potential - but I'm just sitting here pouting over how to do "good scouting" with just three (kinda silly of me! I know!)

 

Thank you kindly for your words of wisdom!

Anne in Mpls

[SagerScout]

Yep, I'd say you need more girls to go with your existing ones. I'd try to focus on 4th graders, maybe 5th, but not 6th if you can avoid it as the 6th graders will already be at the jumping-off point for Cadettes. And frankly, they'd most likely be better off in an older girl troop since there are quite a few opportunities that are open to Cadettes that are not open to Jr/Br levels. You'd almost surely find yourself having to compromise on SOMEONE's program, unless the good Lord has issued you 36-hour days while the rest of us only got the 24's.

 

I agree with you on the larger troops, I find them both more fun and easier to handle, but as the girls get older it gets rather trickier to keep them large. I also really approve of multilevel troops and have had one for 4 years - but my 2 Sr. scouts got a bit of the short stick several times because of the juniors in the troop - which is where I'm coming from on my suggestion that you try to stay Jr./Br. The age range you describe could naturally age into Cd/Jr, so you would only be dealing with 2 programs at a time, which is quite doable.

 

All that said, be aware that attrition at 6th/7th grade is immense and the girls get very into cliques and exclusionary thinking no matter how hard you try to avoid it. So you end up with a smaller troop that is very difficult to keep focussed. I checked with other leaders and all report the same thing: Brownie's and Juniors are MUCH easier to manage and generally act in a more mature fashion than Cadettes. You'd think it would be the other way around, but IMHO you'd be wrong. Don't sweat it now, just be aware that those awesome 4th graders that can do their whole campout menu in a meeting may dissolve into a group that argues with tears and drama for an hour over what one girl thinks she heard another girl say to some boy in third period. Menu? What menu? Did we need to do that TODAY?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[AnneinMpls]

Thanks for your reply!

Good thought on maybe 4th and 5th. Let me clarify what I'm planning on doing...keeping the Brownie troop going inperpetuity (sp?) and adding a separate Junior troop - I like the 3 year age spread, much beyond that and I'm a bit lost )

 

I think you're right about not recruiting 6th graders right now - we would be shortchanging them. I'll let our Service Unit registrar know More 1sts and 2nds for the Brownie troop and more 4ths and maybe 5ths for the Junior group.

 

Any of the rest of you reading, I still would like more guidance on omplementing patrol method with this tiny group - can it be done??

Anne in Mpls

[Bob White]

Hi Anne,

 

I recieved your pm and am happy to reply, however I don't know if I can be much help. I am fairly ignorant of the methods and goals of the Girl Scout program and I am not sure that the patrol methods of Boy Scouting that are designed for 5th graders and up (let alone for boys) would be usable methods for third grade girls. As a father of a son, and having grown up with 4 brothers, my knowledge of of the female pschy is limited to my wife, and as any honest married man would tell you, that means I know nothin' about how women think.

 

If the needs and characteristics of third grade girls are similar to third grade boys I would have to say that the patrol method would be inappropriate to use. Which is why third grade boys still operate under a Den system with two adult leaders.

 

Sorry I could not be of more help,

Bob White

[AnneinMpls]

Thanks bunches for your reply - yes, I agree patrol method is not appropriate for younger 'uns. And I apologize for asking you to compare Martian apples and Venusian oranges!

 

If I might suggest a (necessarily flawed) rubric,

GSUSA BSA

Daisies - Kdgn. Tigers - 1st grade

(both have parent and kiddo participating together)

 

Brownies 1st-3rd Cubs/Webs 2nd-4th+

(pretty differently structured - for Brownies, every meeting is like a pack meeting, kinda-sorta - GSUSA recommended troop size at this age is 15 to 25)

 

Juniors 4th-6th Boy Scouts 5th on up

This is where we introduce patrol system (or method as called on Mars!) and looks like with our fairly frequent rotation of PLs works similarly to the New Scout Patrols but without the milieu of the experienced patrols.

 

So this is where we're at, this is the girls' summer before starting 4th grade (roughly developmentally most similar to entering 5th grade Martians) - if you look at 4th grade class pictures, you'll typically see the girls kinda head and shoulders above the guys at this age). I guess our situation parallels that of a brand new troop of incoming Webelos with no experienced SPL around - how to do it without the built-in modelling from older scouts?

 

(And thank you muchly for putting up with me on this forum! A lot of GS'ers have simply given up on using the patrol system, and I'm beginning to see that maybe it's tied directly to our brief-tenured troop structures - I hear BSA folks complain once in a while about the huge age range they have to deal with, 10-18?, but maybe that's what it takes to have successful patrol method?)

[sctmom]

As someone from Venus who works with kids from Mars -- patrol method with 3rd/4th grade girls is like the denner system in 4th/5th grade Webelos.

Unfornately I was not successful as a Webelos den leader in instituting the denner system.

 

BobWhite - to help you out a little, on Venus some of the goals starting from Kindergarten are independence, decision making and leadership --- things that seem to have to wait a bit in boy land or at least has different results.

 

[MomScouter]

We used the patrol method in our Brownie troop because it was quite large (28 girls) and we wanted an easy way to move groups from station to station (there were 4 adult leaders and 4 patrols). Patrol activities were limited to taking attendance and dues, and planning 1 meal for a weekend campout, that type of thing. Then when my older girls bridged to Juniors and we formed a new troop of 9, we implemeted the 'town meeting' type of troop government where every girl had the opportunity to be the 'moderator' of the meeting as per the kaper chart. The moderator kept the meeting on track based on activities or badge work that the girls selected in previous meetings. They found that this was not as easy as it sounds. Now this year the girls will be 5th graders with 5 bridging 4th graders so we are going to try the patrol method again....only this time we are going to hold monthly Courts of Honor (kind of like a PLC meeting) with the PL's and try to give each patrol more responsibility. We (the leaders) hope to make this as girl-run as possible...I anticipate 3 patrols and am thinking about having each patrol plan a months worth of meetings to start. It's one step at a time, don't expect them to do everything but don't ever underestimate them either! Last year my 4th grade girls came up with some great ideas and used some good problem solving strategies, I am very proud of the way they work together on campouts and follow their kaper chart without grumbling!

[ScoutNut]

Your SU should be holding registration soon. Why don't you wait until you have your new Juniors? It is very hard to have a patrol with only 3 girls.

 

Our girls tried different forms of troop government, but they always prefered to simply discuss, vote, & do things as a group.

[AnneinMpls]

Greetings all! Hehe - yup, first thing I saw in my inbox today was the email from the Service Unit for recruitment night - I've volunteered for doing one of the parks, so I'm definitely on the lookout for those Junior age girls!

 

Brownies troops traditionally were often divided into smaller groups of about 6 girls each - hence the British term "sixes" to call the group, and "sixer" to name the girl taking care of such things as attendance (compares to "den" and "denner"). They're very careful to train Brown Owls that sixers are only in charge of "things", not other girls, because that is a responsibility that requires a level of maturity that Brownie age girls don't yet have. (I worry that we do girls - and boys! - a disservice when we call something "patrols" when they're really not - if it's truly girl/boy-led let's call em patrols, but if it's convenient grouping led by adults, let's better call it something else to help differentiate...) Current terminology in GSUSA is to call these smaller groupings "Brownie Circles" - now, that to me is pretty goofy when we've also got our main form of troop government at that age level called the Brownie Ring! But oh well...

 

Congrats and good wishes on your growing troop, MomScouter! I think 3 patrols is really great if you can do it - put the bug in the girls' ears to do some recruiting to get their patrols to full strength )

 

For our camping trip this weekend, we're grouping the girls into "cabins" - the junior patrol gets their own cabin to themselves, and is expected to be more self-sufficient.

 

I'm not at all certain our troop will be able to grow beyond one-patrol size this year, but I guess we'll see how things are looking with recruitment night coming up.....hmmmmmmm...I think I'll ask those Juniors of mine if they want a piece of putting together recruitment night...

 

I guess at this point recruitment is our big need! It's all becoming clearer

[AnneinMpls]

Well our new Junior troop has been growing - we had two nice-sized patrols at camp last weekend, and now this month we are adding 5 new fly-ups, and we've had a couple girls return after a brief time away, and we've picked up a couple more, so...we're looking at three patrols now for the coming year

I'm drawing up a written ballot for nominating patrol leaders - having the troop as a whole choose these persons, then in the next section, if they are wanting to keep their curret patrol, they can write that info in. If they are interested in regrouping or forming a new patrol, there's a list of all active and new troop members so they can circle 6 names for consideration in forming patrols.

Lots of outdoor plans for the summer....lots of difficult adult personalities to sort out...the girls are the easy part

Peace out!

Anne in Mpls