Countdown to the Conference #1 from R2 YAC

Cole Harper is in the 12^th grade at Richland School District Two in Columbia, SC, and co-chair of the Richland School District Two Youth Action Council. With this Countdown to the Conference series, they share their process of preparing workshop sessions for the National Service-Learning Conference® and youthrive PeaceJam Leadership Conference on April 11-14, 2012 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The National Service-Learning Conference has been a tradition for Richland School District Two Youth Action Council (R2 YAC) for over 15 years now. We've had some big shoes to fill, spending long hours and lots of effort learning the facilitation and training ropes from the YAC leaders who came before us. Year after year, another amazing student training team steps up to the plate. Working with our NYLC partners, our fearless leader Joan Liptrot from the Institute for Global Education & Service Learning (IGESL) and our advisor Beverly Hiott, as well as other student teams (from Philly “yo”), we take charge of planning the Rookie Series sessions. The Rookie Series is for those new to service learning and those who want to brush up on and get some good ideas about certain topics such as learning connections, reflection, youth voice, partnerships and other standards of quality service-learning practice.

We get to negotiate (ok, fight over) which sessions which students want to take on. Each session the R2 YAC facilitates is… well, let’s just say that our workshops leave people speechless. Besides leaving with some good “stuff,” our participants walk away wondering how we shared so much applicable information and experience in such a short amount of time, how mind-blowingly awesome our activities and games were, how easily and effectively we engaged them, and lastly, how long they will have to wait to join us again for another session.

Me (Cole Harper) asleep in the car on the way back from a past conference.

Our council has many sayings about how we operate together. One is, “Work hard, party hard, and sleep harder.” We’ve already begun getting agendas, materials, and student facilitators prepared for our sessions at the 2012 conference in Minnesota. As a nationally recognized council, others repeatedly see how well we work, but few get to see what it takes to get it all together or how spontaneously “work” can turn into “play.” We do what we love because we love to do it, and if loving to do it means it’s not work but play, then we’ll keep playing hard. It’s incredible how often our prep meetings turn into super brief dance parties (because dancing is another thing our council loves to do). The Cupid Shuffle has erupted on countless occasions when we get together (even our adult liaisons hop in on the fun). Dancing is also our way of “chillaxing” after our training sessions. As for the “sleep harder” part of our saying, many pictures, which are fortunately hidden away on phones and on facebook, reveal how deep sleep is always the end result after our sessions. I have found myself at the mercy of others’ pranks and pictures a couple times, having fallen asleep in awkward positions in the car and even (don’t laugh…. okay, go ahead) on the floor!

Check back for my next Countdown to Conference time coming soon!