ABSTRACT

After the last bell rings, a typical high school classroom is transformed into a meeting place as youth begin arriving. These members of the Clarkston High School FFA chapter seat themselves on top of desks and begin several excited conversations, generating ideas for planning a Day Camp for 4th graders in the middle of the summer.1 The youth’s goal for the camp is to interest children in agriculture, partly with the hope that they will want to become FFA members when they reach high school. As the cascade of conversations goes on, the adult advisor interrupts to ask who is leading the meeting, and the youth in unison point to Susan. In the minutes that follow, youth continue to throw out ideas in spontaneous and rapid succession. Many of these ideas are wildy unrealistic, which adds to the humor, and despite occasional entreaties from Susan and others to “focus,” their ideas flow for 45 minutes with little apparent or clear direction.