It’s gratifying to realize that your chosen profession is in fact a vocation—as the saying goes, if you do something you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life.
For inclusive childhood education first-year student Taylor Ratliff ’28, that moment came as she prepared materials for her Girl Scout Gold Award “Take Action” project, the Meaningful Mentors Club at Eagle Hill Middle School in the Fayetteville-Manlius (NY) Central School District. Ratliff and 24 fellow Girl Scout Ambassadors received their awards from the Girl Scouts of NYPENN Pathways Council in a November 2024 ceremony in Syracuse.
Taylor Ratliff ’28 (right) and fellow Girl Scout Ambassador Olivia Barnhart table during Parents Curriculum Night at Fayetteville-Manlius (NY) High School.
“I realized I had chosen the right major while I was doing the project,” says Ratliff. “Whenever I was working on my presentations or in front of the middle schoolers, I was in my happy place. It was cool to see my plans come to fruition.”
For those not familiar with scouting, the Gold Award is the Girl Scout’s highest award. It is equivalent to the Eagle Scout Award for boys, although arguably more difficult to achieve. A Girl Scout must set up and deliver an 80-hour, sustainable community service project. Ratliff was one of two Ambassadors—the girls’ highest rank—in Troop 10494 to earn the award.
“I wanted to prove to myself that I could finish Girl Scouts,” says Ratliff, who joined her troop in kindergarten as a Daisy, those adorable cookie entrepreneurs in the blue vests. “I had an idea from the beginning of my project that I wanted to give back to my school and show that I have learned something from being a Girl Scout.”
For her project, Ratliff chose to focus on “Mental Health and Wellbeing in Schools.” “The idea to focus on mental health came from my experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic,” she explains. “I knew I was not alone in experiencing hard times mentally. I wanted to do something with what I was feeling and share that with others.”
Meaningful Mentors Club participants work on their “What’s on Your Plate?” exercise, writing down everything they feel adds to their “full plate” in life.
Ratliff was in 8th grade during the nationwide shutdown of schools in March 2020 and experienced both the isolation of enforced home and online schooling and, when schools tentatively re-opened, the effects of long-term masking to prevent the spread of the virus. “The physical barrier of a mask became like a mental barrier, as if people weren’t seeing the full you and the mask was a way to hide your feelings,” she says.
The Take Action project began as an after-school yoga club for boys and girls, as a way to address mental health through physical activity. Ratliff then evolved the idea after she sought the advice of her high school mental health educator William DeSantis and Eagle Hill math teacher Meghan Pomeroy ’15.
The result was the Meaningful Mentors Club, a once-a-month, school-year-long meetup through which Fayetteville-Manlius high schoolers interacted with Eagle Hill middle schoolers and provided advice and camaraderie as they begin their transition to high school.
Planning the monthly events kicked Ratliff’s teacherly instincts into overdrive. Starting in September with the new school year, each meeting was focused around a mental health topic (such as anxiety and stress, mindfulness or healthy relationships).
After learning some facts about the topic, participants then did an activity to reinforce the lesson—such as the “What’s on Your Plate?” activity to identify and recognize stressors—followed by a group team-building activity, such as crafts and games. Along the way, the middle schoolers also received advice on how to prepare for high school.
How popular was the club at Eagle Hill? “Twenty to 30 showed up at the first meeting,” says Ratliff, and a high level of participation continued through the school year. Plus, she could rely on about a dozen high school friends to help out as mentors: “My friends said it was good to return to middle school after the disruptions of COVID-19 and find commonalities with current middle-schoolers.”
Gold Award rules explain that the Take Action project must be sustainable, and Ratliff is happy to report that the club continues, now under the leadership of a current Fayetteville-Manlius senior. “I hope this pattern continues,” Ratliff adds.
As for her future goals, Ratliff says she would love to return to her school district as a teacher. “My goal is to teach kindergarten, but wherever they put me in elementary school would be a blast,” she says. And as for the Girl Scouts, if she one day has a daughter, Ratliff says she would consider being a Girl Scout leader—or perhaps help out the Boy Scouts if she has a son.
