It was too good to be true. My first year as the leader of a multi-level Girl Scout troop was too easy. I remember thinking to myself, it can’t be this easy.
What started out as a Brownie troop quickly grew into a Daisy-Brownie-Junior troop within a year, when one of my Brownies recruited her 2 sisters—you guessed it—a Daisy and Junior. Thankfully, all the girls got along really well, so we were able to meet as one whole troop twice a month without issue. During the meetings, two or three troop parents would work with the Brownies on their badge activities while I worked on petals with the Daisy and oversaw the Junior as she worked independently on her badges.
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That lasted about a year before our troop dynamic started to shift: some of the girls left our troop to become full-time swimmers, all of our Brownies bridged to Juniors, and my youngest daughter (along with four of her friends) joined Girl Scouts as a Daisies. I was now the leader of a Daisy and Junior troop.
I can do this—easy breezy! I told myself.
To make things simple, I decided that each level would meet once per month and that we would also have an all-troop meeting once a month. I thought this would be a great solution! The all-troop meetings would give the younger girls a chance to learn from and work with the older girls to learn all of the essential Girl Scout traditions. Plus the older girls got an abundance of mentoring opportunities—it was a win-win for all of us (or so I thought).
By the end of our second all-troop meeting, things were getting out of control. My younger girls were literally climbing and hanging off of the older girls, ignoring their directions, and of course, the Juniors were getting beyond frustrated. The result? I received an email from nearly every one of my Junior parents expressing how unhappy their daughters were with the situation. I was crushed.
Even though I felt terrible, I wanted my girls to enjoy their Girl Scout experience, and I had to respect the parents for coming to me. It was these emails that helped me realize that I needed to forgo the all-troop meetings and distribute my time so that I could meet with each age level individually.
Fast forward three years to today: my troop is now a Brownie, Junior, and Cadette troop and we still don’t have all-troop meetings. While I would love for all of the girls to get together at least once a month, what’s most important is for Girl Scouts to remain a positive experience for everyone, so meeting separately is truly the best option.
When I announced that we would no longer be having the all-troop meetings, we agreed that the girls would work cookie booths together as well as celebrate holidays and have end-of-the-year celebrations together. Last year, at our year-end ice skating party, several of my older girls were spotted helping the younger girls ice skate, holding their hands around the rink making sure they didn’t fall. My heart just melted at the sight. Even though many of our meetings are broken out by age level, there are still several times during the year in which we’ll come together. For example, during Girl Scout Cookie season, we’ll all work on similar financial literacy badges or, when we go camping over the summer, we’ll work on the outdoor badges as a group.
Now, since I have four Cadettes and one Junior, that group meets together once a month. Based upon the badges that the girls want to earn, we’ll work on similar activities during their meeting. There’s a ton of crossover in the Girl Scout badge programs between grade levels, since the badges are really built to help the girls progress through the topic areas as they age through the Girl Scout program (and thanks to the great resources available to me from GSNorCal, I’m rarely struggling to find activities for the girls to do).
As for my Brownies, we have a twice monthly Brownies-only meeting, where we work on their badges and other age-specific program. Next year, they’ll start a Journey so the Cadettes, who want to earn their Leader in Action award, will have the opportunity lead them through that programming.
All in all, running a multi-level troop has simultaneously been the biggest challenge and learning experience in my six years as a leader, but being a leader with so many different age groups allows me to do a wide variety of activities, challenges my creativity, and brings out varying sides of my personality. While I’ve been a working mom my entire parenting life, Girl Scouts has provided me unique opportunities to grow that I am extremely grateful for!
Angela Borchert—Angela just completed her seventh year as a Girl Scout leader in Vacaville/Travis Air Force Base service unit. She leads Juniors and Cadettes and loves the wide range of activities and interests that both groups have and the challenges they provide her along the way. Girl Scouts have helped her embrace glue guns and dirt while taking her on her first kayaking adventure. She’s been camping more times in the past five years than she has in her entire life thanks to Girl Scouts!
Great article Angela! I’m wondering if you needed to recruit more parents to help out with your need to break up the girls into smaller groups?
Wow! How do you find the time to have all these different meetings? This coming year I will be split with two troops (1st year Daisies/ 2nd & 3rd year cadettes) and I’m cringing at the time I’m going to need to run two different levels. Thankfully my Cadettes are excited to use my troop for leadership opportunities (ie PA)
Our older girls love helping out with the younger girl meetings to earn their leadership awards and the Service to Girl Scouting Awards. I have one girl who is leading a workshop on entertainment and script writing for the Juniors and Cadettes from start to finish. It’s great when they can use their passions to teach the younger girls.
Wow. Great job. I’m in a similar situation. We still meet together. We do opening and closing together but break out into adjoining classrooms for the lessons. I have daisies in one room and brownies/juniors in the other. I have two co leaders who take turns helping lead the break out groups. Next year we will try to have the older girls take on more leadership roles with the younger girls.
Have they allowed you to operate on one troop number. Our council forced us into four troop numbers with four bank accounts. It gas proven to be a paperwork nightmare Vince we do a lot of thing together
I originally started out as two troops. With 41 girls, it was becoming a nightmare to manage paperwork for two troops because we did a lot together when it comes to trips and such. I disbanded the lower number at the end of last year transferred all the funds into one account. It makes it a lot easier to not spend days on paperwork especially during cookie season!!
I’m the only troop leader with a mixed troop in my area. Everyone thinks I’m crazy. I think it’s fabulous! This next year I’ll have Brownies and Juniors. We’ll continue to meet at the same time. I like that the older girls get an opportunity to lead. So far, it’s worked well. If I split the girls out, it would be really hard on one of my parents who has 4 kids. Being able to take both of her girls to the same meeting helps keep her sane and keeps her girls in scouting.
We have 5 families that have 2 or more girls in our troop. We arranged our meeting schedule to have the sisters meeting at the same time. We meet twice a month and we have meetings back to back. Our Cadettes and Brownies meet first then our Daisies and Juniors meet second. Our seniors meet on the opposite weeks so they are away from the “little kids”. I used to be a service unit manager and when I resigned because my troop grew to over 40 girls, my council representative said I really had my own service unit with the girls, 6 leaders and every family has an adult volunteer. It’s one of our request that every family have a volunteer to help at one meeting and chaperone one activity during the year. Our troop is a “family troop”, we aren’t successful if we all don’t pitch in. After 6 years, we still get volunteers from each family and usually have to tell people they can’t chaperone because we filled the spots already.
Kudos to you and your girls! Our troop family started as Daisies and Juniors to become Daisies-Brownies-Juniors in year 2. We have all troop meetings when we had an extra week in a month. As the girls have gotten older and our troop grew to over 40 girls with 6 leaders and weekly parent volunteers, we had to rethink our plan for next year as we will stretch from 1st year Brownies to 2nd year Seniors to better fit the needs and wants of our girls. We will still do our 3 ceremonies, celebrate holidays and work cookie season together.
Our Brownie troop also morphed into a Daisy-Brownie-Junior troop when the Daisy troop was struggling to get started and there were no volunteers for the Juniors. We meet together and split into different rooms as needed. We have 5 groups of sisters across grade levels, so this is better for the families of those girls. It’s more initial program planning to run different tracks, but once you get started, it’s a new normal.
So glad I found this! I am a troop leader of Daisies, Brownies, & Juniors and I honestly am learning how to be a troop leader with trial and error. This is a great idea.
I also have a multi-level troop from Daisies to Cadets, with 17 girls and so many more wanting to join. We meet every Friday after school together as a troop. We do a lot of activities that all can attend (pottery class, music and Zumba class, baking together, trash pick up, teaching girl scout songs to the pre-school, singing for seniors, hiking, visit to animal shelter, ice skating, escape rooms, etc.). Other times, we start and end together but break out into levels for badge work. My Cadetts help guide the daisies and earn badges that way as well.