Self Evaluation - Supporting the Revised Promise

The Promise Washing Line ice breaker

Gloucestershire County Day 2014 and I am a last minute fill in to cover the morning Guide Leader training on supporting the Revised Promise. Its a lower than usual turn out (it's the furthest division to get to in the County) and the opening speeches & awards over run. So we are 25 minutes late starting - I've never been so late starting so have to take some on the spot decisions about what to cut. I keep in the ice breaker though as everyone has been sat down quietly listening so need to be energised! The Promise washing line goes down really well and with the class room window open it looks lovely gently blowing in the breeze. It's a lovely activity to demonstrate adaptability - you can make it easier for Rainbows by having pre-cut uniform they just hang up, Brownies have pre-drawn shapes they cut out and Guides do the drawing & cutting. In this example the innovative Guide Leaders just cut out neckers! It was lovely to see the 2 teams exhibiting such differing learning styles - one just got on and did it the other planned to the nth degree.

In order to make up the lost time I cut the doing of the activities down to the bear minimum which was the key thing on the evaluation forms that Leaders missed! I had 3 bases focussing on the 3 key aspects of the Promise with activities on each. On this base Leaders are asked to complete a Glos notelet with a self addressed envelop talking about how they will keep their Promise. I will post the letters back to them in a few weeks. Other bases asked for leaves to be added to a Promise Tree &  

One of the 3 Promise Activity bases

contributing to Promise bunting I'm planning to use in a cake sale at work. The small group were all experience Leaders so had a great deal of experience to share - one of the Leaders was the County BP co-ordinator and conversation flowed beautifully to allow her to promote her role. I was ok with this as the Leaders were genuinely interested and it was a lovely environment to cascade that sort of information.



I wasn't able to input to the title of the training in advance due to the last minuteness  and in addition the Leaders were the ones that didn't need the training and in fact had a lot to offer on


The Promise Tree

the topic. Next time I won't cut the hands on
tasks. There was a lot of interest in some of the region based resources and the conversation flowed really well. I finished by handing out the 5 Essential flowers.

5 Essential flowers & scary guide!