Local 10 and 11 year old Girl Scouts recommend BrainWise to their School Board

Posted On: June 28, 2015

The bright spot at the last Board meeting of the Jefferson County School Board was the presentation by a local Girl Scout Troop that asked the Jeffco School Board to teach the BrainWise program in all of its schools.

Here is the background on this extraordinary request from the 10 and 11 year old girls. Scout leader Marnie McKissack had challenged the girls to choose a project as a requirement to earn the Girl Scout Bronze Award. The Bronze is the highest award given to Girl Scout Juniors who are in the 5th and 6th grades.

The girls picked bullying because they, and others they knew, were targets of bullying at their schools. The only troop member who hadn’t seen any bullying was a girl who attended a school that taught BrainWise.

This surprising discovery led the girls to research the issue of bullying and to share their findings with the School Board. In their presentation, they talked about the differences between the school where BrainWise was taught (no bullies) and the schools where it wasn’t (many bullying examples). In their effort to address a serious problem, they developed analytic and leadership skills that they demonstrated in their well received presentation. The girls are now proud holders of the Girl Scout Bronze Award given to young “leaders-in-training.”