Baking Brownies

>>  Friday, October 04, 2013

One of my Guiding hats is mentoring.  Mentors are responsible for helping new leaders through their leadership qualification.  Last week I went out to a Brownie pack in a different area to watch my current mentee in action.  It's a meeting where I'm supposed to observe her ability to run a meeting night.

I guess the skills I'm looking for include planning, organisation, inclusion and calm control.

So she chose cooking as the activity for the night!

Well, 10/10 for bravery.

Cooking with Brownies is hard work.

You have to have eyes in the back of your head and the desire to take half your kitchen contents to a meeting (and half of your neighbours, after all who owns 4 rolling pins?!), spend a fair amount of time cleaning up and still be a happy owl during the course of the evening.


Of course it is possible and great fun.

But it's a night that requires a stoic leader and a strong gin afterwards.


The girls, of course, love it.

Some will never get to cook at home.

Even those that do it all the time will enjoy the feeling that they are able to help the others.

It's a glorious win:win.





The sixes and seconders took the prepared cheese straws to the oven, washed up and delivered cooked cheese straws back to the others.

This is a great way to give them additional responsibility, show it's a trusted position,  build their confidence ready for Guides and give the others something to look forward to later.



One of the great things about Guiding is there is too many other important skill learning, confidence boosting things going on in an activity to worry too much about what the final outcome looks like.




The cheese straws may have been more cheese than straw but crispy cheese is cool...

and we all know anything eaten on the way home from a night of baking will always taste great.

I left my mentor and the other leaders clearing up the last of the cheese confetti after the brownies had gone home, it was my 3rd Guiding 'event' of the week having already been to visit a Guide unit with some Rangers and a Division meeting.

Being as my night was spent having great fun baking with Brownies, I've had to arrange to go back again to actually spend some time going through the qualification paper work. I've asked her to make sure it's a significantly less exciting evening so I am not so easily distracted.

But I think this leader is not going to be one to do 'boring nights'!

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