Kenzie Bullins of Forsyth County has earned the Girl Scout Gold Award for a community leadership and service project that helps high school students who have testing anxiety.
Kenzie’s goal was to create educational resources to alleviate the anxieties many highschoolers experience with standardized testing. The Girl Scout Ambassador partnered with the student services department at West Forsyth High School for her project, “Mind Over Matter: Strategies for Conquering Test Anxiety,” to find creative ways to help students overcome the academic stress and anxiety they are facing daily.
“I have seen classmates state they are anxious before and after a test. I have felt test anxiety since starting high school,” said Bullins, a Girl Scout of 10 years. “I created a set of tools to help students recognize and identify test anxiety when it occurred.”
She created a list of online resources for regional and national websites that address the issue, handouts, a blog and YouTube channel. Her creation is memorialized online to continue to benefit students once she has gone on to college. The resources focus on the recognition and identification of test anxiety, proactive approaches to navigating this anxiety for those who already have a known issue and tips and tricks to strategize and overcome so that students can be successful and confident.
Girls in high school can earn the Girl Scout Gold Award by creating sustainable change on a community or world issue. They address the root cause of a problem, plan and implement innovative solutions to drive change and lead a team of people to success. Each Girl Scout must dedicate a minimum of 80 hours to planning and carrying out their project that benefits the community and has a long-lasting impact.
Gold Award Girl Scouts gain tangible skills and prove they are the leaders our community and world need, and those from the Girl Scouts Carolinas Peaks to Piedmont (GSCP2P) council have created community gardens, addressed issues in foster care, combated bullying in schools and so much more.
“I knew that this topic was important from the research I had done and my own personal experience with test anxiety,” said the Gold Award Girl Scout, “I learned that allowing others to know more about my personal experience was a way to really connect with the team.”
Thousands of Girl Scouts across the country earn the Girl Scout Gold Award each year, which first began in 1916 as the Golden Eaglet. Earning the Gold Award opens doors to scholarships, preferred admission tracks for college and amazing career opportunities. In 2024-2025, 40 GSCP2P Girl Scouts earned their Gold Award.
For more information about local Girl Scouting and leadership
projects like earning a Girl Scout Gold Award, visit www.girlscoutsp2p.org.
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