Leaders Party Game

Prize in the Christmas challenge game

In order to get the conversation going over the Xmas meal and a look back on a year's worth of guiding in the District I set everyone the Girlguiding Essex North East Growing Guiding challenge 2016. I checked first that there was still a stock of the badges available to buy! Leaders had to have done 6 clauses from the 6 modules - Access, Excellence, Capacity, Voice, Voyager & Dark Horse.

When the sign off had been completed they could choose a magnet. There were some really good ideas included in the challenge and this suggested new ideas for 2017. Go check it out for yourself:

http://www.girlguidingessexne.org.uk/Challenges+%26+Badges/

 

 

Delivery makes all the difference!

I recently had a conversation with a fellow trainer about the ethics involved with having an observation on a training delivered using one of the Region produced training plans. I believe the Region training plans are an attempt to ensure consistency & quality in trainings delivered by different trainers. Personally I can't see a problem in using one of these trainings, after all it is the delivery which is relevant for the observation. For example the observer is looking at:

• room layout
• interaction with the leaders
• quality of the learning outcomes
• knowledge and portrayal of GG policy
• suitability of the resources provided to support the learning
• relevance & methodology of any group work
• inclusivity of the learners
• treatment of challenging behaviours

this was illustrated for me this week at work when a colleague attended a course I had attended 18 months ago. It was obviously the same content that had been delivered - we compared the workbooks which were identical, however I had experienced a very different delivery and came away feeling positive. My colleague had not had quite such a positive experience which started before the course even commenced, and this was reflected in her feedback! Delivery is everything.

Printers an essential trainers tool

After choosing a better quality printer only 21 months ago in the hope that it would be robust and repairable this time - I have had to dump it for a model costing a third of the dumped one! I've accepted a repair is just not feasible and I've gone for a £40 one that feels very delicate and I will be impressed if it lasts a year. Husband is all for charging the cost of the new printer back to GG, after all its only very occasionally that the boys print homework at home, the biggest usage by far is for training. I was surprised to see the below table printed on the box of my new delicate printer, makes it so much easier to cost back the actual cost of the printing to a training. I seem to do a huge amount of copying especially for Safe Space but I do hope this new copier is going to be up to the requirements of the job!

 

1st time I have seen it made so obvious how many pages you can get from a cartridge