Collected Item: “Almost a Year of Virtual Girl Scout Meetings”
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Almost of Year of Virtual Girl Scout Meetings
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
Photographs, video
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
When our Girl Scout troop transitioned online in the spring, we never foresaw the entire year being online. When my best friend/co-leader and I made the calendar in the summer, we originally made it through the end of 2020, thinking that by January we’d be back in person. I guess that shows how short sighted humans can be, a virus doesn’t run on a calendar, so it was silly to think things would be dramatically different without widespread access to a vaccine. So here we are in 2021, pushing through every other week. It has been really great to maintain the normalcy of meeting together, though. All the girls are either going to school on a hybrid (half the week in person, half at home) schedule or a full distance learning schedule, so it’s just nice to have the regular interaction with each other just like they did before quarantine. This also was a perfect opportunity to give the girls increased ownership of the troop. Now that they’re in fourth grade, we have made leadership roles, so the girls are responsible for different parts of the meeting. This takes the pressure off me for having to fill two hours on Zoom in a way that is fun and meaningful and doesn’t feel like school! I absolutely love seeing their creativity in making up games, activities, snacks, and issues/problems in our community they want to help fix. There also are some girls who used to be passive who have really loved this platform and have really stepped into being leaders. I am, however, running low on badges they want to earn that are easy to do over Zoom. The one shared here ended up pretty fun. To earn the “Simple Meals” badge, the girls worked in virtual groups to make different breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals. Then they basically did their own cooking show by walking the other girls through making whatever the dish was. Bonus - everyone was nice and full by the end! I miss my girls terribly, but we are so fortunate to be able to have the girls continue to meet, share, and support each other while we patiently wait for the cases to decrease.
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
Girl Scouts, leader, virtual meeting, cooking, childhood, girl
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Kathryn Jue
Give this story a date.
2021-01-24