Unpacking the Fall Leadership Conference Workshop

I had the immense pleasure of presenting a 2 1/2 hour workshop to 23 students holding the Reporter office in their FFA Chapters. I also had a great team (since I didn't facilitate alone) that included Sarabeth Royer, Miranda Kane, and myself. I would say that for a group of "rookies" we didn't do too bad presenting this workshop!

Miranda rockin' it out with media skills

Fall Leadership Conference is attended by many chapters across PA and the workshops were designed to teach the officers about their duties. This experience is great for students because even if they already are aware of their duties, they get ample time to network with other chapter officers. Our varied group of Reporters were given blank contact sheets to take advantage of this network opportunity and students were even late to lunch trying to trade contact information!

Our workshop seemed to grab and maintain the attention of this group of students. When they first entered the room they seemed tired (many drove quite a distance) and disengaged from any activities they were about to participate in. With an explosive surprise skit, students became interested (or maybe confused) as to what was going on. I give the credit of student engagement for the lesson to this interest approach we implemented. I fully believe that the explosive interest approach hooked them into what we were about to share. If you don't believe that our interest approach was explosive: ask some PA Ag Teachers. We were so loud and excitable about the start of our workshop that we unknowingly distracted the teacher workshop next door!

Sarabeth facilitating a discussion on Reporter responsibilities

I give credit to our interest approach to grabbing student's attention, but without a stellar lesson packed with activities their engagement would have surely dwindled in the nearly 3 hours they were with us. Extensive planning for a few weeks prior yielded a lesson that included activities like interviewing each other, identifying their duties (easter egg hunt style!), and reciting their opening ceremonies along with developed hand signals to assist in remembering. There truly wasn't a dull moment in our workshop and even while students were working we played music, danced around, turned off the lights at some points, and waved a flag throughout the workshop. I really felt that my team worked well and we fed off each other's energy. I believe that this resulted in students feeding off our energy!

Although I feel extremely proud of how this workshop went, there is always room for improvement and to improve we must recognize our weak points. I did feel that, at times, students got too excited and started side conversations. This seemed to only be prevalent nearing the end of the session when students started feeling comfortable with their classmates and us as facilitators. I believe we did a great job at managing the little side conversations and maintained our "organized chaos" of a workshop. Specifically, when a student seemed to be talking I would call on them to share about the activity or an idea. I would also playfully say to a student, "Oh, you're a troublemaker aren't you?!" or make eye contact with them while presenting so they knew when I noticed their conversations. I do believe that the conversations were due to hype in the workshop and constant switching around and not due to low engagement in the lessons.

Although it is still early in my journey, I felt like this was the first time that I was enthusiastic enough in my presentation. There is something about presenting to students that made me more enthusiastic than the lessons I have given to peers. It is also a possibility that presenting a workshop rather than a lesson became more fun to me. I will have to figure out how to harness my FLC workshop energy and bring that beautiful monster to every lesson I present!