Running a Girl Scout Troop during a Period of Social Distancing

There are so many ways to run a Girl Scout Troop during a period of social isolation. I know a suburban Troop Leader who arranged for her girls to do a craft together using a local company that makes individual packs of supplies (with parents picking the supplies up from her front porch). Others are emailing suggestions for girls to do at home, or making phone calls.

My solution was going to naturally be high-tech. I live in a middle to upper-middle class community in NYC (so my girls had the tech required), I have been online since I was 13 (before there was anything called being online – anyone remember BBSs?), and have been delivering youth development programming in online third-spaces since 2005 (did someone just say Teen Second Life?).

Yesterday my fellow Troop Leaders and I delivered our first Remote Troop Session. Below I want to share what we learned along the way – not to suggest our solutions are right for anyone else but to offer seeds of inspiration to help other Troops find their own ways to stay connected in our current age of social isolation.

Takeaway (if you read no further): It can work! The girls loved it. They could play a key role in co-designing the experience with the Troop Leaders. And they asked to increase their monthly time – from 5 hours a month (over 4 sessions) to 12 hours a month (over 8 sessions). The solution was customized for our needs, and you get to find your own solution, together with your girls.

BACKGROUND

I live in Forest Hills, NY, which is in the borough of Queens in New York City. We meet every other Monday, after school, for 2.5 hours (twice a month). Two weeks ago (below) we were out selling Girl Scout Cookies. We have 15 girls – Juniors – all in 5th grade, and this is the second year of our Troop.

Two weeks later schools across the state were closed, the entire state is on “pause”, non-essential businesses are closed, and everyone has been ordered to observe the rules of social isolation. All in-person Girl Scout Troops were suspended and it was time for our next meeting.

PLANNING

The first thing I wanted to do was do a Tech audit. We couldn’t plan for the girls unless we know if they could use whatever we delivered – or if they would even wanted us to. So we created a survey on Google Drive to assess 1. their tech capacity (computer, wifi, headsets, etc.), their tech literacy (can learn new tools on their own, etc.), and 3. interest in connecting virtually. You can view a copy of the survey questions here.

Thinking through the survey design made us realize that there was so much new to consider – with siblings home, and caregivers working, how would audio work, could wifi bandwidth hold up, etc. The result of the survey was that most all wanted to connect with their Troop sisters, and a smaller number, but still a majority, wanted materials from us that girls could do with them or on their own at home.

As we learned the girl’s interests and capacity, we had to do the same among our leadership. We ranged from “Let’s move online!” to other’s “I can’t see how this can work. Let’s reconnect after the pandemic…” Eventually, the group decided to use a Zoom Pro account one of us has from work (which has no time limit) and meet for one hour during our regular meeting time. In addition, we decided to do an open house with parents the night before – to ensure the tech worked and to answer their questions – and then ended up ad-hoc opening it for an hour to the girls the day before as well, to explore some ideas we had and get their feedback before we formally met.

THE CURRICULUM

We write a curriculum for each session, detailing resources, step-by-step plans, and such. We needed the same for a remote troop, but now with links embedded, web sites that needed to be prepared in advance and more. And we also knew we had NO IDEA what it was actually going to be like. So first, we cut the plans in half. Then we decided we only had one goal – give the girls a chance to connect with us and each other. Everything else could wait, once we had them committed to the new format.

I will walk through how the session went, sharing first the plans for each segment, the resources required, and what actually occurred.

THE SESSION BEGINS: Opening/Zoom 101

Some girls arrived early, and I was sure to be in the room to welcome them. We hung out, played with the onscreen names and green-screened backgrounds, and made sure all the tech was working.

We welcomed everyone, and made sure everyone could see and be seen, hear and be heard. It worked for most, but support from parents were required to get an emergency phone for audio in place.

We did not want caregivers joining the audio stream – as that would be counter to our troop norms (they only come for pick up or special events) but we needed an open channel because they’d be watching, and might have concerns, ideas or need help, and we needed a way to respond immediately. It something is not working for your daughter you need help. Right. Now. So one of the co-troop leaders was assigned to be in our Slack Channel, and she fielded and responded to their questions throughout. That seemed to work smoothly.

We heard their voices and we got started!

Present Poll

I wanted the girls to get interactive right away, so I used a simple poll. I also wanted to check in with how they are feeling. I went to PollEverywhere before the session and with my free account made my polls. The first question took inspiration from this great webinar, to help the girl transition from an in-person to an online environment. I posted the links in the chat and asked them to click on it.

This was their response (which you can compare with a post-survey at the end):

We reviewed the above, me noting someone felt very distracted and the rest were somewhat present slopping to very very present. I had anticipated something worse, so then we went to:

This was more useful. I could put words to their feelings. “Some of you are feeling awesome, calm, good… others are feeling bored, meppy (grumpy), and sick.” I gave them space to elaborate. No one did. I followed their lead so didn’t push and moved on.

The tool worked very smoothly, and having the girls use an online tool to share their thoughts & feelings at the same time was effective. The girls had to learn how to switch between Zoom and their web browser- easy for most but challenging for others, and the girls often leaned in to give each other advice or speak up when someone needed help from us.

Kaper Chart

We knew one of the challenges was going to be helping the girls learn to take leadership in a new environment, adapting what they knew from in-person but also exploring the unique affordances of a cyberspace.

We created a Google Doc spreadsheet then shared the link in the chat. I pulled it up through a shared screen and we developed it together.

Some were easy, like Promise & Law and Friendship Circle. They didn’t know how they’d do it, but they put it down and signed-up. Snack? Still not sure how that will work. I said I needed help when things didn’t go as I expected – I chatted with one person when I meant to share with all; I thought I was sharing my screen but wasn’t; someone needed to be un-muted – this became the Screen Monitor. They said someone needed to be the person to tell everyone to chill out if they were getting cray. When I asked who did that in their lives they told me, and this became the new role: Yelling Teacher.

It was great working with them as collaborators to figure out how to make this new space work for us all. They were enthusiastic to contribute and were undaunted by the still unknown answers to questions like “How can we do snacks when we’re not together?”

Promise and Law

And that’s what happened. But… everyone singing at once on Zoom is reAllLLyY weird. Time slows down. Some kind of weird lag. It worked, I felt connected with them, but it was hard to stay in synch and felt awkward. I might recommend next time I give Admin control to the Promise and Law Girl (ooh!), have them mute us all, we follow along with her from home but no one can hear our voices, then they unmute everyone after and return the Admin controls to me (I am still the host, so I can take it back anytime I like).

Thin Mint Bear Report / Birthday check-in / Kahoot Ice-breaker

Thin Mint is the name of the Build-A-Bear we have as a Troop mascot.

One girl takes Thin Mint home each week, with a bag and a notebook. They have to do something, anything, Girl Scout-y with Thin Mint, and record it in her journal. Millie got out Thin Mint, showed her on the camera, and read from the diary (below).

Now what? The last page of the diary lists all the girls, in their order of taking Thin Mint. So I asked Millie to hold out her hands to pretend to pass Thin Mint, and Jordan, whose turn was next, pretend to take her. We asked Jordan to draw a picture of Thin Mint and write down what they do together before we next meet. One of the Troop Leaders, whose daughter is one who will now have both the mascot and the diary for months now, also created a channel in Slack, posting scans of every page in the diary.

We’re still figuring this one out.

Just me. Today, actually (and thank you very much).

In all seriousness, super important to capture this major life events, and the disappointment that will come from not being able to celebrate with both family and friends in person. The next girl’s bday is in April, so we can prepare now to deal with it, and figure out how the troop can step up for her.

So… Kahoot is one of my favorite digital educational tools – loved equally by both educators AND students. Everyone says that about their product, but it’s usually just marketing copy. With Kahoot, it is true. My kids use it in school and in after school programs. I designed one for my son’s Bar Mitzvah.

The host creates the trivia game or finds one they like, and projects it on a screen; players then use the mobile device, laptop or tablet to answer the questions as fast as they can. The faster you answer the more points you get. After each question you get to see a leader board and the host decides when to ask the next question, controlling the pace and including as much discussion as they like in-between.

Kahoot has LOTS of Girl Scout related content. But the girl in the Game role on the Kaper Chart got to choose whatever she liked. She choose dogs and I asked her to pick one with only 10 questions. The girls have to first type in a unique game code – which I shared in the chat and other girls shared verbally – then enter a nickname. On my shared host screen I could see their names as they appeared, waiting for the right number before I hit start.

Kahoot often drops players for some reason, which can be a real pain, but once they were all visible I hit start. That took MUCH longer than I would have preferred. The girls had to rapidly switch from the Zoom shared screen with their private web browser screen to enter their responses, which tripped some girls up, but they seemed to get it over time.

They loved seeing the leader board but accepted when I stopped after only two questions so we could move on. I reminded them that the girl who signed up for game next session could pick her Kahoot for all to play in advance OR make her own. (After the session, my daughter got online with others to play more Kahoots. They can play it all day).

Our goal today was for the girls to have fun together, and this fit the bill.

WHAT NEXT?

At this point we were an hour in. We were suppose to stop! I’d felt like we had just begun. We skipped asking them how it went going to their first day of virtual school (in NYC), and moved to future sessions the topics of: Dealing with Disappointments, Staying Connected, a “What? So What? Now What?”, & the Importance of GS Law and Promise. That can all wait.

Present Poll

We ended where we had began.

These were essentially pre- and post-surveys to informally assess their state of mind over the course of the session. Their responses are below:

We had more girls at the end then we had at the beginning, so you’ll have to interpret this on your own. For me, I’m just happy to see that #1 became at worst a #6.

My callouts from the above were “I feel cool like a pool in the summer” and “LESS MEPPI” (which means less grumpy).

But then we continued, with two prepared questions, so we could get their feedback and design the sessions moving forward.

If you would have asked me, I would have thought they’d want to meet a bit longer, but I honestly couldn’t tell. Was an hour too long to be expected to sit engaged like this?

Wow – the majority wanted to meet longer! I was tempted to recommend 2 hours, instead of one, but with 5 not agreeing to lengthen it, and it being an experiment, I suggest 90 minutes. They all agreed (I asked them to raise their hands so I could see them).

Then for the last and final prepared question of the session, the game changer:

Woah! I never saw that coming. We’ve been meeting every other Monday for two years, and suddenly they want to meet every week. And of course makes sense. Whatever else they were doing in-between – improv class, homework, hanging at the library – all cancelled.

Then one of the girls asked if we could make a new poll. Did I So I did. And this was the results.

Yup. Meeting once a week was actually not often enough. The majority wanted to meet TWICE A WEEK. No way we adults can support 3 hours of remote programming a week, 12 hours of programming a month. Not as volunteers. Not during the stress and terror of a pandemic. But we are going to try all we can to figure out how to meet their needs.

I suggested (or was it a girl?) that maybe we continue to meet Monday, now every Monday, for 90 minutes. Then we find a second time during the week to provide them with a supervised but free place to gather – they can play Kahoots, pursue badges – they will be fully in charge (did someone say Teen Second Life again?). They like that idea and we agreed to take it back among the Troop Leadership and decide if we had the resources to support it. (Another Troop Leader suggested letting girls bring one friend to the free play session – recruitment time!)

Clean-up/ Closing

We forgot to clean-up – whatever that might have looked like – but the Kaper chart girl with the Friendship song led us. Same awkward lLaaAag thing. But the fun part was holding our hands out to the camera, crossing them (right over left) and getting close enough so our hands passed out of view, as if we were actually holding each others hands.

And in a way, the way that really matters, we were.

I thanked them for coming today, experimentgin with us to make this work, and told them how important they are to us. We shared how much being part of the Girl Scouts will help them draw from a rich tradition that will build their resiliency and give them opportunities as a group to make a difference in the world, especially during a time like this.

Thank you, and good night

And with that, I’m off to get a tissue, a piece of birthday cake, and explain what this is doing on a web site called Mooshme! I’d love to hear below what innovations you’re coming up with keeping your own Troop engaged.

8 years ago I went to work at the American Museum of Natural History. I created this blog to document the remarkable innovations there, exploring issues related to digital media and museum-based learning. I left there two years ago. I also run a blog about my seltzer book – and between the two this one just made the most sense!