Meeting #3: Patrol Elections and Code of Conduct

You in Guiding: Understanding the Promise and Law (YiG1)
You in Guiding: Learn About Guiding (YiG2)

We're still working on the You in Guiding square!

10 min: We spent arrival time collecting dues, cookie money, health forms, and uniform orders. We're putting in a unit order for everyone, to help defray shipping costs.

15 min: Practice Horseshoe--It's always amazing how quickly they pick up the horseshoe. They love doing it (so far!) so we went through it twice.

15 min: Patrol Leader speeches and voting--This is the first year we've done Patrols like this. We used to assign the Patrols and Leaders and let the patrols vote on their Seconds. This year, we opened it up and let every girl have a chance to be Patrol Leader, if they gave a short speech on why they wanted to be a Patrol Leader. The Patrol Leader also got to pick the Patrol Emblem. After the speeches they voted for three patrol leaders on one ballot, and three seconds on a second ballot, and they had to have 6 different names in total. Two leaders counted up the names while we moved on to the next activity. (YiG1#2)

30 min: Code of Conduct activity (Member Zone Log in): We decided to do the Code of Conduct activity for Guides. Last year's group was a really chatty group, so I thought this, with the talk amongst yourselves, would go over well, except our dynamic is quite different this year. They seemed to enjoy reading everything out and answering some questions about what the scenarios meant, but they didn't have a lot to add to the conversation. It's not a super exciting or active activity for them, but I think it's important.

After the activity, we discussed a Code of Conduct for our meeting space, trying to find something for each of the five concepts we covered (Respect, Safe Space, Privacy, Set an Example, and Care). (YiG2#4)

10 min: Once we finished the Code of Conduct, we announced who got to be Patrol Leaders and Seconds. The Seconds got to pick which Patrol Leader they wanted to work with. Then the girls got to pick which Patrol they were in. We told them from the start that if there were too many girls in one patrol, we would ask some to move, and if that didn't settle it, we would have to draw names to see who would move patrols. We did end up with one patrol that had one extra girl it in. At first, I was worried that we'd have to draw names, but then one girl stepped up and switched to another patrol. Disaster averted!

We ended with a couple of songs. I chose On My Honour, as it seemed to tie in with the program work of the evening. Then we let the girls choose and they picked Alice the Camel (always a fun one, and we start at 10) and Baby Shark (this is the closest I could find to the version we do--it's the same up to Verse 11 and then we just say "I'm alive" and dance around, and there are actions that go along with it). Then we did the squeeze and slow taps.