I Decided to Become a Brownie Troop Leader
When I was younger I was a Girl Scout. We were a semi-serious troop that did some typical Girl Scout things like selling cookies and earning badges, but mostly we did fun stuff like play games, hang out and laugh with our friends, go on camp outs, and have fashion shows with our Cabbage Patch Kids. These memories with these girls are some of the happiest of my elementary school years so when my oldest daughter became an elementary school kid I eagerly signed her up to be a Daisy, which is the youngest designation of the Girl Scouts. This did not work out well. I am not sure why the person that chose to be her leader did so, but she was more interested in the academic side of Girl Scouts than the fun side. So, Ellie lasted 1 year as a Girl Scout. When my youngest became the same age I chalked Ellie’s experience up to just bad luck and eagerly signed Charlotte up to be a Daisy. Again, not the best experience. Though these leaders liked the girls much more than our other leader seemed to, their meetings mainly consisted of after school crafts in a classroom and for my active kid I was hoping for more. Charlotte spent 2 years with her troop and when the leaders decided to disband the troop it seemed like a good time to just be done.
About a year later I was approached by a friend of a friend with a daughter that would also be starting 3rd grade in the fall about being a co-leader with her and starting a new troop. I was not excited about this prospect at all! I had just wrapped up 4 years as a board member with their elementary school’s and was not looking for another serious volunteer position. I was really looking to be the class party mom that showed up with paper plates or a bag of M&Ms. Thankfully, my now co-leader was not taking no for an answer. We talked extensively about how we wanted the troop to be run, we met with other troop leaders that ran the spectrum from super serious to super casual, and I did a ton of soul searching.
I am now the proud co-leader of Brownie Troop #44616. We have 9 carefully selected girls in our troop, that may sound exclusive but we wanted to make sure that we had a troop with girls that had the same interests and expectations. These girls are fun, smart, entertaining, and caring. Our troop motto is Fun, Friendship, and Service. They have helped plan activities that will benefit an animal shelter. I have watched them help each other learn new things, come up with a code of conduct that includes a rule #3 that says “We will always have each other’s back,” they worked hard to come up with, make, and sell an item to at the Holiday Bazaar earning $100 for their troop. I am happy to say the I have no regrets about my decision and am looking forward to being with these girls for the next few years!
