Sheldon, Iowa — This is National FFA Week, so get ready to see all those tractors and trucks at the area high schools.
We talked to Sheldon High School agriculture teacher and FFA advisor Jacob Fox. He gives us an idea of what activities are happening this week to celebrate the FFA and educate students on what FFA is all about.
(as said) “So this week the kids have a bunch of different activities planned. First thing that they’ve kind of come up with her dress-up days for each day. They’ve got days like FFA color day, camo day, USA day, those kind of things. Monday morning we had our teacher appreciation breakfast. The FFA sponsored a breakfast for the teachers to thank them for all that they do, On Friday is going to be drive your tractor or truck to school day. So that’ll be kind of interesting to see you know, what comes and I think there’s some prizes there and we also have a few little activities throughout the week like quizzes and fun facts and things like that with the FAA. The big event for us this week is going to be on Thursday. We have our sub-district contests. So I’ve got kids who’ve been prepping since Christmas break and before on different contests that they’re going to compete in and hopefully move on to districts and try to get to that next level.”
He tells us about the competitive events.
(as said) “We call them CDEs which are Career Development Events and LDEs which our Leadership Development Events and these range from you know, field competitions. I’ve had kids who judge poultry, judge meat, judge livestock… Those are more skill-based and then we have our leadership-more-based ones, which are your speaking ones. So this week Thursday, we’re going to be competing in conducting meetings, which is a group of freshmen who will basically run a meeting for judges. There’ll be opening ceremonies, we’ll do a couple abilities and items of business and the closing ceremonies. We’re doing parliamentary procedure so kids are running parliamentary procedure and showing how much they know on that. We have a radio broadcaster who’s going to be doing radio broadcasting. That’s kind of a cool one. They get half an hour to do cut/copy of a radio script. They read the markets. They read the weather, they actually sit in a different room from the judges and then they do it over a speaker system. We have our Creed Speaker who is a freshman. She can be reciting the FFA Creed… kind of an interpretive reading. We have a student competing in job interview, which is exactly like it sounds… he’s doing a resumé, cover letter, job description, and then he’s sitting down across from a judge and doing a job interview with him to kind of show those skills.”
Mr. Fox says they’re stretching FFA week into two weeks, and next week will have an emphasis on teaching a group of elementary students.
