The community of 4-H

I recently attended a 4-H meeting and was surprised to hear the variety of topics being discussed. There was discussion on everything from planning a club activity to donating money to a local organization. The members of the club were all enthusiastic about the topics and were most sincere when it came to helping out the general public.
At the meeting there were kids from age 4 to 18. All children were accompanied by an adult (parent, grandparent or friend of the family...), and everyone was equally involved in the meeting. The kids are the deciding factors on issues and they vote for majority rules. It was such a neat experience seeing such a productive, structured meeting that was fun and personal and best of all- totally run by kids!
When deciding the winter activity they picked laser tag. Laser tag costs $12.95 per person to attend so they decided that families should pay for half of the costs due to the lack of club funds. Pretty smart! They also planned activities such as road side clean-up, a horse show and a fundraiser for the club.
After I attended the meeting, I couldn't help but feeling enlightened by the youth that ran the meeting. We have some really bright kids coming up into the world and it will be exciting to see them grow.

Hidden Resource

Just outside the town of Cambridge about 1/2 mile is a small building of pleasant appearance. Inside this building, many children gather monday thru friday to recieve an education. These children come from all around: Cambridge, Isanti, Princeton, Mora, Ogilvie, North Branch and Braham. The children range in age from kindergarden to age 21. The school they attend is called Rum River South (RRS).
The school is a behavorioal monitoring center. It serves students who have been dismissed from school or are returning from an outside institution (such as treatment), ready to begin school again. It also has an expanding autism wing. The school is operated by approximately 10 teachers, 1 principal, 2 behavioral manager specialists and about 8 academic behvioral managers (ABM). The goal for all students at RRS is to earn "mainstream" school back as they learn new ways to control and improve their behaviors. They start with one or two classes and gradually increase their mainstream load until they are full time students at mainstream school. RRS works one on one with each student to assure the student's success. If behaviors flare up during the process of earning mainstream classes- the classes are taken away until the behavior's improve.
This wonderful school is a much needed and much appreciated resource for students, teachers, schools, social workers and other professionals working with children in need of extra educational assistance.

What is a blog?

So, I signed up for an online journaling class not having any experience in that field at all. I knew that it would have allot to do with reading and writing and I felt OK with that. When I got an assignment that I was to create a blog... I panicked. I had no idea what a blog was let alone wanted to write one! After I calmed down and started to research what a blog actually was- I felt much better. A blog is just a simple term for having an online conversation on various topics in a news article format. Blogging is very different than having a web page because you can directly interact with the comments in the blog and it can constantly change; Your opinion matters. Which is probably my favorite thing about blogging (besides saying the word- blog!). I suppose it could be somewhat challenging as well for the fact that you could get carried away with how important you feel your opinion is. People all have different ideas and concerns and hopefully one doesn't get to carried away with theirs!