Phew! It has been quite the week. I'm glad its just about over. This post is one day late, but I assure you, I have good reason!
This week I was at the State 4-H Youth Development Conference at the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells. It was amazing! I had so many great opportunities to meet people and network, as well as learn about a variety of new things and strategies that I hope to put into action as soon as possible!
It started out with a pep talk from Jeb Enck who had alot of good things to say about the power of positivity. I think I might even try one of his strategies.
The conference was broken up into group sessions and breakout sessions. My first break out session was called "4-H Club Presentations that Pop!" This was all about different things we could do for making presentations to clubs about specific subjects, whether its community service, parliamentary procedure, working together, or just a general overview of 4-H. There was alot of good information in this session. Many helpful tips and guidelines that could easily be altered to fit the needs of the specific group. One part of this session was a hands on planning part of our own. I worked together with my group to make a presentation about 4-H being like a puzzle, all the different teams and projects have to work together to complete the puzzle and that without each piece, 4-H wouldn't be a whole picture. This idea came out of a bigger picture idea that I had about 4-H being just one piece of the puzzle of the community and that it needs to partner with other members of the community to make a functioning community. I hope to be able to use this sometime in the future!
The second breakout session I went to was about a program being held in Green County called Passport to Reality. This is an activity for schools to participate it. Community partners get together and set up stations. The students would each follow their own path through the stations, following a scenario that was given to them. So one student might start out at a friends house, then move to the party room, then move to the police station, then court, then a counselor and so on. I think this would be really good for Marathon County Schools to have. I talked to the family living agent, and she said there was a grant being written to do something similar, except it would be financial based. Hopefully we can merge the two, or something!
The next day started out with group sessions. These consisted of small focus groups about the foundational topics that the State 4-H office is putting together and would eventually like all 4-H curriculum to meet the standards of these parameters. Although I didn't understand most of what was going on, I still got some interesting insights into how the mind of Extension works. It was good!
My third breakout session was on Strengthening Youth Adult Partnerships in organizing, planning, participation, and evaluation. This was good because they gave us quite a few good and free resources on how to encourage youth-adult resources. I also had a discussion with the new 4-H agent in Iron county and he gave me some ideas for what to do for this coming summer for camp! Its quite exciting!
For dinner afterward it was regions night out. So all the VISTAs got together for cheese and wine, then went out to dinner. It was quite a bit of fun, I really enjoyed it.
The next morning we had Table Talks (slightly different from Martin Luther's Table Talks) about different topics. The two rotations I went to were Engaging with the Latino Community and National 4-H Resources and Webinars. Both were very helpful. These were probably the most helpful of all the things I went to this past week. I now have some ideas to help me get programming into the Latino community, and have some people I can contact if I need help with something. As well as having a great resource database in case I need some 4-H project lessons!
My final breakout session was about Native American tribes in Wisconsin. This was alot of fun because we even learned a very basic powwow dance. My calves hurt quite a bit afterward, but it was well worth it!
One of the best things about this week was making a connection with the VISTA from Portage county. She and I (along with out agents) shared a room and had the opportunity to get to know each other pretty well. I hope to work together with her on projects in the future.
All in all, this was a wonderful, educational, and exhausting week. I'm so glad I had the opportunity to go. Now I have to write down all my ideas for things I want to work on in the future.
Then its back to work!
Until then!
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