In pursuit of a Gold Award

In pursuit of a Gold Award

Rachel Germain, EMC Staff Writer

I am a junior and am currently trying to achieve my Gold Award in Girl Scouts. This is the highest award that a Girl Scout can earn (similar to how the Boy Scouts earn the Eagle Award). Girls come up with their own original idea to make a change in their community. They need to have a plan that is measurable and sustainable. Only 5.4% of Girl Scouts that are eligible successfully earn the Gold Award.

I have already earned the two awards that come before the Gold Award, which are the Bronze and Silver Awards. For the Bronze Award, my troop cleaned up Helping Paws. The Bronze Award is an award that the whole troop does together. For the Silver Award, I worked with two other girl scouts in my troop, one being Madison DesPres, on the project. Our project was called Breathe and Beautify. We cleaned up the school along with Donnan Road. We also cleaned up the Rec Soccer Fields and left a garbage can there for people to put their trash into so that it doesn’t end up on the ground.  

My Gold Award is going to be an after-school program called Extending Kids’ Minds in the Classroom. The program will run for two, 6-week sessions, the first session will begin January 3rd and the second session will begin after February break. Six students from Mrs. Hutchinson’s second grade class will stay after school with me from 2:30 to 3:30 every Thursday for the enrichment program.

The students will be engaged in many different activities that align with their school curriculum. Some of the activities include reading circles, projects, presentations, break out boxes, math games, writing, and comprehension games. For those of you are unfamiliar with break out boxes, they are a learning game platform that requires critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and communication.  After completing the 2 sessions, I will be filling out my final report to submit to the Girl Scout Council for my Gold Award. Next year, Mrs. Hutchinson will take over my program, but I will still continue to help in my senior year.

This enrichment program will not only benefit our community, especially the second graders at our school, but also the surrounding communities and the second graders at the schools near us. I will be taking binders and filling them with the activities that I did and used for each session along with tips on how to start a program like mine. The binders will be delivered to Amsterdam, Broadalbin-Perth, Ballston Spa and Scotia-Glenville. The program will offer enrichment to students and help them extend their learning. Students don’t have extra time in the classroom during the school day and so this program will take what they learned and allow them to do activities to challenge them. One big project they will be doing is researching a topic and presenting it. This is supposed to get them used to using technology and getting them prepared for public speaking which you do a lot as they grow up.