Publications
The 4-H Project Home Helper
4-H Volunteer Leaders' Series
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Who Is a 4-H Project Home Helper?
• What Will the
4-H Project Member Do?
• What Will
the 4-H Project Home Helper Do?
• The Art of Helping
• About Support
• About Guidance
• The Pay-Off
• Do You Sit on Your
Hands Enough?
• You
Can Help By:
Who Is a 4-H
Project Home Helper?
Congratulations! You have just become a 4-H project home
helper. You may be a father or mother, an older brother or sister, a
relative, a friend, a neighbor or a teen leader. You have been invited
because:
• It is more fun to do things together than
alone.
• The 4-H member would like to spend time
with you.
• You have skills and understanding to
share.
Saying "yes" to being a project home helper will give you
opportunities to:
• Spend time with the 4-H member. Planning
to spend time together in a one-to-one learning relationship guarantees that
you will get to know each other better.
• Use day-to-day activities as occasions
for learning. A 4-H member who wants a home helper is asking for a friendly
apprenticeship. Things you do each day can become natural learning
experiences. You will spend time together learning, doing and sharing around
common interests. Using these natural learning experiences can enrich your
relationship, enhance the member's skills and contribute to the member's
career awareness.
• Enjoy learning together in your own
space. Your home can become a center for learning or your yard or barn, a
laboratory for discovery. 4-H encourages doing things with the family; 4-H
parents and others as home helpers are partners in the business of youth
development.
The idea of getting kids and parents involved together is one
of the earliest roots of 4-H. The earliest boys and girls clubs developed
around:
• The home as a natural setting for
learning,
• Naturally occurring daily activities and
work, and
• The family and neighborhood as the
natural human groupings.
What Will
the 4-H Project Member Do?
The 4-H member who invited you to be a helper wants to learn
and to have fun. The member will:
• Ask questions, read the member's manual,
search for information which is needed,
• Explore the project area to discover and
learn,
• Try out some of the suggested activities,
• Practice new skills,
• Do the work on any item which is to be
exhibited in competition,
• Keep a record of project activities and
learning,
• Enjoy the activities and products of the
project work, and
• Enjoy the relationship with the project
home helper.
What
Will the 4-H Project Home Helper Do?
When you say "yes" to being a 4-H project home helper, you
will do so because you want the 4-H member to learn and to have fun. In
order to help, you will:
• Talk with the member, share ideas and
become better friends.
• Help the member to identify
project-related interests.
• Help the member plan for project-related
activities.
• Help the member choose learning
experiences appropriate to abilities.
• Work together, side by side, at project
activities.
• Encourage the member to do it. Step back.
Watch! Provide support! Let the member do it alone if possible! Refrain from
working on any article which is for competition.
• Be present; provide abundant
encouragement.
• Help with problem solving. Why is the
plan not working? Are there other ways to do it?
• Recognize all accomplishments. Let the
member know when it is a good job!
• Encourage the member to broaden interests
in the project area.
The home helper seeks to maintain a good relationship, to
provide an environment of support and to encourage responsibility
appropriate to the age of the member.
The Art of Helping
To help is to provide support and guidance which enables
another person to develop skills and achieve self-reliance. Helpership is a
blend of human caring and shared experience. Caring is expressed through
support. Shared experience provides the content for guidance.
About Support
A helper supports by being a good listener. To be understood
is one of the most encouraging experiences a person can have. Careful
listening reflects that the helper is taking the member seriously. When the
helper listens well and shares with the member what has been heard, the
member gains confidence and courage. A helper listens by:
• Paying attention to the member,
• Hearing each idea,
• Hearing the feelings which accompany the
idea, and
• Hearing the full meaning - checking with
the member to be sure that what was heard was what the member intended to
say.
A helper supports by providing encouragement. The helper
believes in the member and helps the member to believe in himself or
herself. This deep trust in the other person lays a foundation for mutual
respect.
A helper supports by keeping decisions about the project in
the hands of the member. The member is in charge of the learning. The member
is responsible for the project. The member lives with the results of the
decisions and the effort put into the project. The member learns by making
the project decisions.
About Guidance
A helper guides by sharing skills, experiences and attitudes
in a way that the member can make use of them. The helper does this by:
• Being the kind of person he or she hopes
the member will become.
• Doing project-related activities so that
the member can watch and learn new skills - one step at a time - with
simple, short explanations- with many opportunities for questions to be
asked.
• Sharing bits of information related to
project skills.
• Providing opportunities for the learner
to try skills, to rehearse possible actions, to remember and think about new
information - in a safe setting.
• Helping the learner understand and accept
the results of the project efforts - including the satisfactions of success
and the natural consequences of errors.
• Working with the learner to solve
problems which develop:
- Clearly stating the problem and its causes
- Fixing the item (not the person!)
- Thinking together of "other ways" to do it
- Considering results expected of each "other way"
- Choosing a course of action
- Carrying out the action
- Evaluating the action
• Helping the learner think about and say
out loud (or write down) what has been learned.
• Helping the learner to have other
opportunities for observation:
- Field trips or 4-H events
- Visits to the homes of other 4-H project members
- Observation of a business or professional in the field
• Recognizing the strengths and successes
of the member and acknowledging the qualities of excellence in the items
produced.
The Pay-Off
To be chosen as a helper is a privilege. Helpership provides
an opportunity to share learning and to grow together. Each person benefits
from a member-home helper approach to 4-H project learning.
The member:
• Develops project skills
• Develops life skills
• Gains confidence in self
• Has an older friend to become like
The helper:
• Has the satisfaction of helping
• Enjoys being wanted and needed
• Continues to develop and deepen personal
skills
Both:
• Get to know each other better
• Have fun together
• Learn new and interesting things
• Grow together
Do You Sit on
Your Hands Enough?
Some 4-H leaders I know sit on their hands. They are helpful,
capable, enthusiastic and love kids, but they sit on their hands. They tell
me it's a habit that works very well.
One of the most difficult things a 4-H leader must do is to
allow other people to use and develop their abilities. Whether it's a
nine-year-old, a first-year leader, the first meeting for the club president
or a "committee" planning the club booth, the 4-H leader is often tempted to
"help." Sometimes the leader should sit on his or her hands.
We all know it's simpler and faster for the person who already
knows how to do something to do it again. Sitting on your hands may cause
the muffins to be gently rounded instead of peaked, the meeting to be a
little unorganized and the booth to get a red ribbon instead of a blue
ribbon. But what happens to the people in the process? Johnny learns he must
stop stirring sooner. The club president begins to learn to conduct a
meeting. The members of the club booth committee have had the experience of
planning and carrying out an idea as a group.
It is not easy to decide when help is needed and when help
would stifle developing abilities in another person. Think about the last
time you worked with youth. Was there a time when you reached in to do
something yourself, when a few directions to a member would have been
enough? Did you hurry to clean up because the members take too long? Didn't
let Johnny try to do something he really wanted to do because you thought it
was too difficult? There are no "right" answers. But consider it. Do you sit
on your hands enough?
|
I hear - I forget
I see - I remember
I do - I understand
- Karen Stamm, Milwaukee County Youth Agent, Agricultural
Extension Service, University of Minnesota
|
You Can
Help By: (Guidelines for the 4-H Project Home Helper)
________ Saying "yes" when a 4-H member invites you to be a
project home helper, especially if the project area is of interest to you.
________ Talking with the member about the project book to be
sure the information has been understood.
________ Encouraging the selection of project activities which
are within the interest and abilities of the member to complete.
________ Encouraging the member to write goals for the
project.
________ Helping obtain materials and tools needed for project
work by conducting a home search or planning to shop together.
________ Demonstrating project activities so that the member
can learn skills.
________ Being available if needed while the 4-H member works
on the project item.
________ Giving bits of assistance if asked; DO NOT DO IT FOR
THE MEMBER.
________ Being a problem solver.
________ Being sure that any item for competition is the work
of the member.
________ Helping the member master the skills described in the
project book.
________ Helping the member consider the quality of the work.
________ Helping the member feel good about the work
accomplished.
________ Inviting the member to assist you in doing a similar
activity.
________ Helping the 4-H member contact the 4-H project leader
or other resource people for additional information or ideas.
The following resources were used in developing this fact
sheet:
Gleason, Bill, and State 4-H Staff, "The Family in 4-H" -
Slide Tape, Cooperative Extension Programs, University of Wisconsin,
Extension.
Barquest, Glenn, "Adventures in Woodworking" 4-H283,
Cooperative Extension Programs, University of Wisconsin, Extension.
Beckstrand, Gordon, "Shadow Helpership" - Slide Tape from
Designing 4-H with People, Extension Service, Colorado State University.
Van Horn, James E., and John M. Williams, "Helping- The 5th
H," Pennsylvania State University, Cooperative Extension Service, University
Park, Pa.
Lewis, Robert B., "You Two," Pennsylvania State University,
Cooperative Extension Service, University Park, Pa.
Carkhuff, Robert R., Richard Pierce and John Cameron, The Art
of Helping, 1977, Human Resource Development Press, Amherst, MA 01002.
Brammer, Lawrence M., The Helping Relationship, Process and
Skills, 1973, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Reprinted for use in Arkansas from materials developed by Faye
Caskey, Agricultural Extension Service, University of Minnesota.
Reprinted for use in Arkansas from materials developed by Faye
Caskey, Agricultural Extension Service, University of Minnesota. Updated by
Beverly Hines, former 4-H specialist, Cooperative Extension Service, University
of Arkansas.
| Author: |
Darlene Baker, Ph.D., State Leader - 4-H Youth
and Development |
DR. DARLENE Z. BAKER is state leader - 4-H youth
development, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Arkansas, Little Rock.
4HCG3-PD-10-02RV
|
