Inset Week Trainings 2019

It's been a busy month for training, and I've just realised I haven't written my self evaluation of my 2 trainings for inset week at the very start of the month. I did the training plan this year, which was shared around the other trainers, and I planned the training along the lines of "open space." I was fairly sure most of the leaders attending would have experience of the programme already, rather than be attending from the starting point of having no experience at all. I was keen to make sure the trainings were planned so that everyone could get something from the training. I included the refresher quiz from last year but virtually everyone flew through that and we spent very little time reviewing the logistics of the programme itself.

I did a fair bit of research both on the internet and social media and also with the leaders that went on the trip to Switzerland - thank you to them for putting up with me. There were six common themes that kept recurring, they were:

1.  Recording Progress
2.  Group Work
3.  Girl missing an evening
4.  Programme Content
5.  Interest Badges
6.  Gold Award

I attempted to incorporate one of the activities from the Do Your Best trainers resource but on the first night that fell flat because it was obvious that the Checklists had passed a lot of leaders by, many didn't remember receiving the poster with their Guiding magazine. I actually felt like I was talking Greek, by the Tuesday I had modified the training and emailed the trainers delivering Tuesday's training. We acquired extra copies of the poster so that the training could provide an opportunity to look at the poster for the first time or at a bit more length.

Following the Open space principles, leaders had the opportunity to treat it as a café and get an extra drink if they wanted adding to the feeling of networking and we're all in this together feeling. Conversation was staying on track, leaders were able to share ideas and those that needed to vent got the opportunity to vent. Output has been recorded so that it can be feed into the forthcoming County Day and there was a request from a leader to have the feedback shared more widely. I managed to work in promoting the Region resource for UK Parliament Week, and two Glos badges- one on Growing Guiding and the Golden Years Challenge which have both been heavily promoted on FaceBook.

I think it worked well providing an opportunity for experienced and new leaders to come together. It illustrates how flexible we can be as a training team, that we were able to make modifications after the first night in order to accommodate a wide gap in knowledge that was echoed later in the week. It also showed the power of sharing experience around trainers when working on a shared goal.

The concept of Inset week does seem to be powerful, and is getting attendees but they are the same leaders year upon year. It also messes up my wedding anniversary which is also in the first week in September.