Girl Scout Troop 21340

From Lori Montgomery and Fulshruti Patel, 2010-2011 Troop 21340 Cadette Leaders:

I hope everyone is enjoying their long holiday weekend. It is that time to start gathering everyone together and making sure you are registered for the new scout year, and to introduce or say a few words to you myself, as your NEW CADETTE LEADER for 2010 / 2011!

Along with the return of Fulshruti Patel to assist (yay!), and possibly a third leader from the North Georgia Girl Scout Council who is looking for an Atlanta-area troop to assist, we are tremendously excited and hopeful that as many of you or your daughters as possible are planning to continue with scouts because we have some great activity ideas for the Cadettes this year that we'd like to present, and a restyled overall program plan for the year that should prove to be enjoyable and fulfilling on a whole new level.

As this message is going out to all current cadettes, rising cadettes and the parents/guardians of, most of you know me as first an involved parent as my daughter Jenna made her way through Troop 21340's Daisies and Brownies, then as a co-leader along with Kathy Platt and Nancy Hasson for the last two Junior years. For those of you girls reading this, or for those of you who are the parents of current 7th or 8th graders, you'll recall my planned activities when you or your daughters were Juniors for the astrology badge that one Spring when we camped at Misty Mountain (all of us singing "The Age of Aquarius" to fulfill one of the badge requirements!), and then most recently the Scouts Aviation Day at PDK airport I spearheaded a couple of weeks ago, as just some examples to get a sense of my style as a troop leader. Not only helping girls experience and instill the wonderful life lessons in building courage, confidence and character that are gained by participating in Girl Scouts, but seeing all the smiles on faces, is my motivation and goal in serving as your new Cadette leader for the new year.

One of the focuses we want to make key this year is involving the Dads or male leaders/guardian in your lives a little more this year! (including several Dads/guardians on this email now). Judging by the amount of Dads/guardians who either participated or communicated to me their appreciation for the Aviation Day event, you can expect more of these kinds of events to be on the table for discussion in this new Cadette year. Regarding the Aviation event, I'd like to also take this time to express how proud I was to learn that one of our own Girl Scouts and her Dad, Ms. Sarah Smith and Rockwell Smith; attended a Civil Air Patrol meeting after learning more about the program at our Scouts Aviation Day event. Way to go, Sarah (and Rockwell)!

Some other focuses that several of us troop leaders got together and discussed for Cadettes this year is in planning event/activities that help bring about team building, and the important life skills in planning and organizing an event or a project. A little hint girls: if you learn this well, you can plan your OWN events and activities! :)

OLDIES BUT GOODIES

In talking with a couple of current cadettes and based on feedback in prior years, we plan to continue with some longtime activity favorites and troop standards such as the Juliette Gordon Lowe birthday celebration (around Halloween), trip to JGL's home city; Savannah for 6th graders (MLK weekend in January), and Thinking Day (late February ). We’d like to discuss having the Cadettes perhaps partner with the Juniors in leading a 2nd annual Veteran's Day package and letter collection (Veteran's Day in November) for either current soldiers or returning veterans. Not only was this a beloved event for ALL the scouts (Boys and Girls) who participated in the first one last year, but if you recall the letter we received from the chaplain stationed in Iraq describing how happy we made the soldiers to receive all of our care packages and letters right before Christmas, this was an example of some of the things you all have done and continue to do, to impact the world in a positive way.

Besides a Spring camping trip and a suggestion Fulshruti made that perhaps the Cadettes would like to plan a combo holiday party/bring gifts for the needy event in December, we will be open to discuss and help the girls plan whatever else they choose to do for all the rest of the time in this Cadette year.

BADGE AND AWARD EARNING

We will of course plan to work on badge/award earning activities throughout the year, but another effort I would consider undertaking with any girls interested in doing the work, would be in fulfilling whatever requirements we can this year toward eventually earning the prestigious Silver Leadership Award. Not only is this one of the high achievements in obtaining valuable life lessons, and as a Girl Scout, but earning this and/or the later Gold award (and the Bronze if anyone earned this as a Junior) is considered highly when being reviewed for college admissions.

MEETINGS

As I believe was also the outline last year, we’d like to again suggest only scheduling meetings at the church when either an ‘all Cadettes’ or ‘planning meeting’ is required, so it will not be a given that there is a meeting every other Sunday. We’ve learned the older girls prefer it this way, and it certainly makes sense not only since Cadette-age girls schedules are busier now, but also because our program year is going to be majority event or outside project based vs. processing consistently through the Cadette guidebook with regard to Journey’s and badges.
 
Our vision for communications and helping empower the girls to lead their own planning, is to divide all Cadettes into patrols (similar to the Boy Scouts model) that they will stay in throughout the year; older Cadettes leading the younger cadettes within each patrol and then in addition to emails from the troop leaders, girls will communicate amongst themselves via a small phone tree setup when planning events or activities that their particular group may be working on.

WHAT I NEED FROM YOU NOW AND WHEN I NEED IT

Sounds like a whole lot, I know! But for all of us invested in participating in Scouts, this is fun!, and is why we do it. We (the girls and scout leaders) also couldn’t do it without the dedication and help from all of you as parents and/or guardians, and we particularly appreciate those of you whom we can always count on to drive, purchase supplies, just show up, and many, many other efforts so we want to thank you in advance, and look forward to your continuing on with us just as much as the girls!
 
Our first official event to kick off the new year will be our annual Bridging Ceremony on Sunday, September 26th (most likely at John Howell Park again). I have a stack of the current Cadette registration forms for girls who have not yet re-registered (Kathy Platt is handling re-registration for rising Cadettes), but what I’d like to ask ALL of you to do some time this week is let me know if you (or your daughter) is planning to return this year as a Cadette. Starting Wednesday of this week I will place the registration forms I have in a water-tight container on my front porch (I live just a few houses down from the corner of Highland and East Rock Springs Rd., on East Rock Springs), so if you would be kind enough to stop by at your convenience and pick your daughter’s form up and then either bring it back to the container filled out and along with registration check, OR let me know that you plan to bring it to the Bridging Ceremony on the 26th, that would be wonderful. For rising Cadettes, you will need to purchase your new Cadette vest or sash, but I’m sure Kathy and Nancy will follow up with you on that.

Thanks All! Fulshruti and I look forward to enjoying a great Cadette Scout year with you!