Well, this has been a while in the making. Yeah, I’m not going to be Brown Owl anymore and I’m leaving my Rangers too. This blog will remain, and hopefully I’ll have more energy for it because I won’t have the brain-sap from actually running Brownies alongside it.
The short version: I’m handing my Rangers to another leader in the district. The Brownie pack will probably close. I will then look for a new Ranger unit closer to home where I’ll be a second or even third leader.
The long version:
Look, I’ve been a single Ranger leader since 2007. I like the day-to-day of it. I think that age group is great. They’re there because they want to be and they’ve matured into real human beings with weird and wonderful opinions and interests and I just think they’re great.
But the weight of the admin has just crushed me, and in particular the accounts. Quite honestly, the accounts are the single reason for wanting to quit all this. That’s why I’m going to a new unit. I don’t even mind if I end up as main leader again as long as I never have to touch the money.
And then there’s Brownies. I was a second leader for a couple of years but as the main leader’s daughter’s eleventh birthday loomed, her enthusiasm for the job just plummeted. It never been huge in the first place and the way county and district handled her leadership qualification had been really offputting, which is part of the reason I decided to become a mentor, to help and encourage new leaders like her.
At Christmas 2019, she decided to step back – right back. She became a unit helper, catapulting me into the position of main leader, just in time for lockdown to decimate our unit. She’s a great unit helper, I love her and I will sing her praises – but she was only a unit helper. Effectively, I’ve been running Brownies single-handed for two and a half years through a plague. We lost all but one of our girls and although we’ve gained a few, we’re still only up to six now we’re back in the hall. Admin, paperwork and stress has quadrupled since all this began and I’m the one fielding emails from parents demanding “but who is this person who needs to sign this risk assessment and why does she need to sign it?” and “Why aren’t we back in the hall when school has gone back to normal?” and “my precious can’t go outside after 4pm even in summer”.
I hate it.
I should have got my Rangers back together long ago but what with dealing with the Brownies single-handed, I just didn’t have the spoons to do that all over again with Rangers, especially as it would be that much work, stress and admin for two girls. Now we’re back in the hall and that’s all signed off, I’m ready to have them back but they’ll be in the thick of their A Levels, if they even want to come back after missing it for more than two years.
So I’ve been feeling very isolated and very stressed particularly in the last year and a half, because we never quite got the Brownies back together in 2020 – I didn’t like the idea of Zoom and so we didn’t start meeting online until January 2021. We’ve had one district meeting in all this time, held in the pub last December which I declined to attend. Don’t know if you remember our old mate Omicron, besides the fact that the DC knew I was tying myself in knots to not go back to face-to-face by then. Two and a half years of doing Brownies entirely by myself (with a lovely unit helper of the variety who turns up most weeks and is lovely but is leaving all the admin, stress and accounts to me).
I’ve been thinking of quitting for a while. Of my six girls, two have only been around for the last three weeks, one refused to do Zoom and failed to turn up to any of the in-person weekend meetings and has missed the last three Brownies meetings in the hall. That leaves the three who were with me throughout 2021. Now, two of them don’t really care about Brownies. They don’t listen, they don’t join in, they’d be happy to just be left in the garden to their own devices. The last one is an absolute nightmare when she wants to be but she’s also one of those girls who reminds you why you do this. She enjoys it. She’s getting something out of it. I’ve watched her grow and develop as a person. But she’s also eleven in July and lined up for the local Guides. If I quit, she’ll be fine. If she was a little younger, I’d hang on a little longer for her but I don’t need to. She’s ready to go up.
But my decision was kind of taken out of my hands. I currently have a young lady who I’ll call Pixie helping out as my second leader. She’s only helping out, she has no real interest in doing Brownies long-term. I’m grateful for her help. But she’s also a Guide leader and she’s the one taking over my Rangers. When she does that, she’ll be leaving Brownies. No one can handle three sections at once – I know, I did it myself briefly once.
So back to me and my UH. Last night, my unit helper told me she was leaving at the end of term. I’m amazed she’s hung on as long as she has – she joined originally to save the unit for her daughter, who moved to Guides in the winter term of 2019 and has now quit altogether. But I mentioned that she’s had issues with her leadership qualification. She doesn’t like the girls’ attitudes and she doesn’t particularly like the district.
So back down to just me. Me, who was already thinking of leaving. I can’t and won’t do it on my own and I’m not enthusiastic enough about my group to start a campaign for replacement leaders. I’m going to lay it before my district at our meeting tomorrow and they’re welcome to try to rescue it – but I’m out.
I always thought I’d be one of those people who’d be leading a unit until I had to retire. We have one of those in our district – she was my Guide leader and she got her 30 year award quite some time ago and yet she looks and acts no older than me. Maybe even not as old as me. She’s the only person in the district who’s been there longer than me. Ok, I’m talking about having been a member since I was a five-year-old Rainbow. I’m not the longest-serving leader in the district by a long way. I kind of wonder if they’ll think I’m just giving up after all these years. But there’s a fundamental difference in what we do.
Everyone else has a settled happy unit with a settled happy unit leadership team. My only settled unit is my Rangers, where I’ve been a single leader since 2007. All my other units, I crash from one unit in crisis to another. “This one’s about to close, I will step in and rescue it!” Frankly, it’s never worked. We bumble along with a small number of girls, scooping up new leaders with lukewarm experience and eventually the unit goes the way this one is. I’ve kept two Brownie packs and one Guide unit open for a few lingering years. The only reason the Rangers survived this long – for they were also a leader-less crisis unit – is that I’m happy and able to do it by myself and don’t expect the group to ever really get beyond six girls. Low expectations keep units running!
But you see why it’s not fun? Everyone else is settled with lots of help. I’m a rescuer who’s never managed to turn a unit’s fortunes around and so I stumble from stress to stress. So in my new Ranger unit, I want it to be happy, settled and thriving. I will not rescue another. I don’t want to touch the money and the admin. I want this to be a source of joy.
But having been with this district for thirty-two, thirty-three years, I can’t quite let go. I’m going to request to be an occasional helper for the Guides, so I’ll still join their camps most years, I’ll still come and run fencing and archery sessions for them and depending on when my new unit is, I’ll come down as an extra pair of hands when they need a leader because someone’s sick or on holiday. But I won’t lead in that district anymore.
And so without the stress and the guilt, I’ll enjoy creating content here for leaders!
The Internet's Brown Owl 
Leave a comment