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'k, so this is going to be Elayna's third year of Girl Scouts. She was a Daisy in kindergarten, and a Brownie last year.
The troop leader last year was just incompetent. Mind-bogglingly so. It may be that she just had too many girls to handle; I don't know. But the woman drove me up a wall on a weekly basis. As the year started, the girls were having only one meeting per month. Now, this is a 22-girl troop with only two leades, and one meeting a month wasn't cutting it - the girls weren't able to get anything done.
So I volunteered to help out so they could have two meetings per month.
You must understand this: I work. The meetings were every other Tuesday from 3-5. So I was willing to take unpaid time off of work to go help out so the troop would run smoothly.
The leader did not seem to understand the whole having a job thing. Throughout the year, she never gave me more than 24 hours notice of a meeting. She never answered messages or e-mails about troop-related things. She never gave me the oppotunity to prepare for a meeting - she wouldn't tell me what I was supposed to be discussing or doing until I got there, which was pretty stupid, as half the time I was unable to carry out her orders. I found out two minutes in advance that I was supposed to give a speech on Mardi Gras. All I know about Mardi Gras I learned from "Girls Gone Wild". No usable information in this context. :) I originally offered to be Cookie Mom - then she told me there was a mandatory Cookie Mom meeting on a certain day, and that there was another mom who wanted to be Cookie Mom. I said, "I'm going to be in Ft. Lauderdale that day, so let Sandy be Cookie Mom." Came back from FL to find out that *no one* had gone to the meeting and that I was Cookie Mom anyway, with no training or materials. And so on.
Throughout the trials and tribulations of trying to deal with this nitwit - and trust me, I have far more stories, including her insinuating that Elayna was too immature to go camping (she ended up being one of the best-behaved kids there) or that she had "learning problems" (she's brilliant, but fidgety - oh dear lord, the kid fidgeted, must be ADD!) - I just kept saying that we were escaping this troop next year. Origoinally, I asked the troop leader if she'd be splitting the troop into one Brownie troop and one Junior troop, as some of the girls are going into fourth grade. No conclusive answer. Then I thought, hey, the Daisy troop will be a Brownie troop next year! And I signed her up with them. But then I saw, in the school newsletter, something from the service unit director saying that they were thinking of creating a third Brownie troop at the school if the demand was high enough. I volunteered. And now I've found that I really am getting my own troop!
This is especially great because I'll have Mouse as a coleader - we're on the same wavelength. No comflicts. :) So I'm now looking forward to a well-organized, conflict-free Brownie Girl Scout year! And yeah, it's more work to be a leader than a co-leader, but it's worth it. :)
The troop leader last year was just incompetent. Mind-bogglingly so. It may be that she just had too many girls to handle; I don't know. But the woman drove me up a wall on a weekly basis. As the year started, the girls were having only one meeting per month. Now, this is a 22-girl troop with only two leades, and one meeting a month wasn't cutting it - the girls weren't able to get anything done.
So I volunteered to help out so they could have two meetings per month.
You must understand this: I work. The meetings were every other Tuesday from 3-5. So I was willing to take unpaid time off of work to go help out so the troop would run smoothly.
The leader did not seem to understand the whole having a job thing. Throughout the year, she never gave me more than 24 hours notice of a meeting. She never answered messages or e-mails about troop-related things. She never gave me the oppotunity to prepare for a meeting - she wouldn't tell me what I was supposed to be discussing or doing until I got there, which was pretty stupid, as half the time I was unable to carry out her orders. I found out two minutes in advance that I was supposed to give a speech on Mardi Gras. All I know about Mardi Gras I learned from "Girls Gone Wild". No usable information in this context. :) I originally offered to be Cookie Mom - then she told me there was a mandatory Cookie Mom meeting on a certain day, and that there was another mom who wanted to be Cookie Mom. I said, "I'm going to be in Ft. Lauderdale that day, so let Sandy be Cookie Mom." Came back from FL to find out that *no one* had gone to the meeting and that I was Cookie Mom anyway, with no training or materials. And so on.
Throughout the trials and tribulations of trying to deal with this nitwit - and trust me, I have far more stories, including her insinuating that Elayna was too immature to go camping (she ended up being one of the best-behaved kids there) or that she had "learning problems" (she's brilliant, but fidgety - oh dear lord, the kid fidgeted, must be ADD!) - I just kept saying that we were escaping this troop next year. Origoinally, I asked the troop leader if she'd be splitting the troop into one Brownie troop and one Junior troop, as some of the girls are going into fourth grade. No conclusive answer. Then I thought, hey, the Daisy troop will be a Brownie troop next year! And I signed her up with them. But then I saw, in the school newsletter, something from the service unit director saying that they were thinking of creating a third Brownie troop at the school if the demand was high enough. I volunteered. And now I've found that I really am getting my own troop!
This is especially great because I'll have Mouse as a coleader - we're on the same wavelength. No comflicts. :) So I'm now looking forward to a well-organized, conflict-free Brownie Girl Scout year! And yeah, it's more work to be a leader than a co-leader, but it's worth it. :)
