Silver Award Journey

 

 

The Silver Award is one of the highest honors a Girl Scout Cadette can earn and helps for the next phase when I work on my Gold Award in high school. Since getting my Bronze Award, I've known that I want to continue Girl Scouts and reach my Gold Award. 

 

I started with a plan to work on inclusion in my school after coming back in person from the remote learning period and finding racial and LGBTQ+ tensions had drastically increased in my middle school. I came up with developing pins that students could put on their backpacks to show support for various groups. I even had a plan where all up front costs would be covered through cookie sales and how these could be sold. Unfortunately, after multiple instances of being sent to different people and months of trying to get approval I was turned down. I tried several other attempts to be creative in order to get these on campus but eventually had to give up because every alternative I came up with was not sustainable. It was frustrating and I had so many wonderful people who loved the idea and tried to help me. I learned a lesson that things don't always work out at first, but I kept trying. 

 

My next idea was developing a tutoring program between the middle school and elementary school. Again I had to get out of my comfort zone and work hard to get busy adults to respond and see the value in what I was hoping to implement. After months of planning, engaging with both schools, developing forms and paperwork, arranging training and making an announcement to peers, I went live to get volunteers starting with quarter three this school year. The Elementary School Principal connected me with Kindergarten and First Grade teachers and we had 6 teachers request middle school students participate in their classroom, most requesting multiple middle school students.  All slots were filled within minutes of posting the application for students to commit to the next 6 weeks and more students found me to express interest in the group  for the next quarter. I was very excited and nervous, but luckily my amazing mom was there to offer advice and comfort on the late nights where I had been working nonstop. 

 

Unfortunately, the day of the training 5 people quit, some less than an hour before it would start. I did everything in my power to adjust and be flexible, including reaching out to friends and people who were willing to substitute in for those who had quit. I learned a valuable lesson about how difficult it is to arrange a group of volunteers, and think that in the future I will be able to do this much more easily. 

 

Finally, the day had come that we began the training and it was a mess. I realized that in my correspondences with my school's AIG teacher who was to lead the training, I had forgotten to mention that we were working with younger students, so the presentation was about dealing with peers who are our age. Luckily, everyone was flexible and we worked with what we had to make a training session that was still beneficial. 

 

The next week, we went over to the elementary school for the first time, and nobody seemed to be happy with their classroom assignments. I had to put my foot down and eventually everyone settled in and went to their assigned classrooms. The teacher I was with was very welcoming, and the kids were super sweet. They all viewed us "big kids" as role models and we encouraged them to learn. All of the teachers who filled out the survey after our group volunteered, indicated they appreciated our help with the kids, and after reassessing at the end of the quarter, all of the middle school volunteers said that it was a great experience and that they wanted to sign up again. Out of the teachers who responded to the survey, 100% indicated they would like middle school students to come back either for the fourth quarter of this school year or the 22/23 school year to volunteer. It makes me very happy to hear this, because this tutoring program is about sustainability. I have worked with my Project Advisor, and she is willing to find a rising eighth-grade volunteer to lead the program next year.

 

Here we are now, in the fourth quarter and things have gone much more smoothly this time. I had people last quarter who had been on standby in case somebody couldn't make it, so I gave them priority to sign up as tutors for this quarter. There was even one tutor who the teacher invited back to her classroom. Once again, when I posted the sign-up it was full in a couple minutes.

I really appreciate all of the volunteers and everybody who has helped me along the way.  -Lilly