American Heritage Girls
Last year our church replaced the Pioneer Girl’s Club with a program called American Heritage Girls, under Tonya Davis’ inspiration and leadership.
This year I volunteered to be a leader of the little girls’ class. I first taught Pioneers in its first year at our church 7 years ago, teaching first grade girls with Barb then-Winckler now-Braendlein (is that not a great last name?!). “Miss Mystie” & “Mrs. Barb” (because, for some reason, the girls forgot to use “Miss” with Barb yet not with me) taught Bethany Davis, Corrin Evans, Olivia Cadwell, and Kayla MacFarlan. Incidentally, Bethany and Corrin are now 8th graders in my literature class — time flies! I taught for 2 years, left for college for 2 years, returned and taught again for 2 years, took a one-year sabbatical, and am now back to teaching. It turns out that I teach first & second grade in whichever years contain a Davis girl. First, Bethany, then a break, next Emily, then a break, and now Abby and her also-Davis cousin Megan. The last Davis girl is 3, so I might have to take another one-year break in two years, then come back to be her teacher to keep the pattern up…but what will I do when Natalie moves on to third grade??
Anyway, American Heritage Girls is an excellent program, and I have been highly impressed. It was formed 10 years ago by families who pulled their girls out of Girl Scouts but still desired a program of that caliber. Their diligent, hard work shows, because I think they are acheiving their goal. I had to watch two training videos, and I must say that I was simply impressed. It is an expressly Christian organization — I had to sign a solid statement of faith — yet so far seems completely devoid of the prevalent American evangelical complacency, mediocrity, and tripe. Bringing honor to God through all we do and say shapes the program, but they refrain from “Jesus is my best friend”-camp-firey-ness. For the most part, relation of the badge-work and service-work to the Bible and God is left out of the material and to the leaders of each class, except in the case of the Bible and religious awards. Thus, they leave out problems of denominational difference (they expressly allow for Catholic troops) and allow for different troop make-ups (primarily outreach or primarily church-oriented). There are both positive and negative sides of their infrequent expressions about God and the Bible, but my previous experiences with girl clubs makes me glad of it for our troop. After teaching with the Pioneer material for 3 years, in the 4th year I actually did my own thing, focusing primarily on straight-forward Scripture memorization, because I was tired of sifting through the fluff or error in the workbooks. With American Heritage Girls, the workbooks focus on relating the skills necessary for earning the badge, and I am free to make application as appropriate to our group and integrated into what we are doing; thus, they learn subtlely (unless I decide to point it out to them) that honoring God is a part of everything we do, and not one requirement to check off on a list in order to accomplish something.
So, I am excited for this year and those to follow with this program. I hope someday there will be a little Geneva to be in my first-grade class. :)
