Farm Field Days: A Lesson in Attitude

This week was Farm Field Days. It is a four-day event where second graders come to learn about the different aspects of farming, livestock production, and soil. By the last day almost 3,000 second graders had come through the rotations and learned a little more about where their food comes from. I was in charge of the livestock stations. We had chickens, sheep, goats, cows, a rabbit, and a horse.

Each day, different students would come from high schools around the area to volunteer at each station. At my station it was very important that the volunteers had previous knowledge about livestock in order to correctly present to the kids. Throughout the week as I monitored and gave feedback to their presentations I came to two very important conclusions:

     1. Simple is sometimes better.
     2. Attitude is everything.

I think it is crazy how we can get get so caught up in the details of something that we lose focus of what is really important. In this case, some of the volunteers had extensive knowledge of livestock so they gave too much detail in their presentations. Because it was hard for the second graders to understand, it did not make a lasting impact. The volunteers that gave the best presentations stuck to the simple information. It may have seemed extremely basic to them, but it was interesting to the second graders and was presented in a way that they could learn and understand. This taught me that simple really is sometimes better and helped me reevaluate a lot of situations in my life.

The other lesson I learned from this experience is that attitude is everything. Even though I gave the same information to each group of volunteers regarding the rotation, every day the presentations were different. Some days the volunteers were really involved with the students and made it fun an interesting without much encouragement from me. Other days however, it was a struggle to get the volunteers to have enough energy to interact with the students and I was constantly reminding them that this is a fun event where they need to be positive and energetic. In the end, it all came down to attitude. My attitude affected the volunteers and their attitude affected the students. The biggest thing I had to remind myself was that, no matter how hard you try, you cannot always change another persons attitude. I did my best to make it a fun event for the second graders and I hoped my attitude would rub off on some of the volunteers. Sometimes it did, and sometimes it didn't. Attitude really is everything in any situation. You also have to remember that the only attitude you really have control over is your own, so you better make it count.