From the Emblem of Washington

On Monday, October 5th, Mr. Matthew Holt (#psuaged16), Mr. Matthew Snyder (#psuaged17), and
myself took on a group of 19 new FFA Chapter Treasurers to show them the ropes on becoming successful during their role as officer.

We arrived early on the sunny Monday morning at the Blair County Convention Center to prepare ourselves for the arrival of the FFA members. Now, I have never attended Fall Leadership Conference (FLC) before, but I did know the basics as to what the students were to get out of the workshop.

Now, prior to FLC, we spent quite a bit of time in working on our lesson plan, gathering materials, and mentally preparing ourselves for the big day. There were some things that went well and some thing that, of course, could be improved on.

What Happened?

Sure enough, we could have thought of a more engaging first activity besides a Do Now 'Bellringer' type question, but it was early in the morning and we wanted to get these kids thinking. After greeting them at the door, we posed the question, "Who is one person you consider to be a good leader, and why?" We gave them close to two minutes to answer and share amongst the other officers in the room.

We had activities from drawing their own leader, to identifying receipts vs. disbursements through a kinesthetic ball activity, to even giving a mock Treasurer's Report and learning how to write a check. Soon enough, we realized that we were flying right through our lesson plan, and that we were going to run out of activities well before it was time to release the students.

How Did We Handle This?

As Mr. Holt was conducting one of this last activities, I did a little brainstorming. I ended up adding two more interactive activities. The students ended up creating an acronym for the word, "Treasurer". They had to come up with words that, obviously, related to their roles as the Treasurer and to keep it appropriate. The second filler activity I came up with was to build a roadmap. The roadmap had a 'Start' point, a long twisting and turning 'road', and a 'Finish' line. The 'Start' point was labelled 'Accepting the Role as Treasurer' and the students needed to identify the many different steps in order to get to the 'Finish' line (which was marked on our road as 'Success').

Also, we were talking about being the best officer during our Reflection Sandwich activity, and the kids were not excited about it at all. So We told them that the officer team themselves all create a sandwich. If they work hard enough, they will Be the Bacon on that sandwich. They absolutely loved that! Being that it was so close to lunch, the students reflected on how they can be better than the cheese and the tomato. Nothing is better than bacon!

How Can We Improve?

If I were given a re-do on this entire conference, there is quite a bit that I would change. I would definitely work more on communication with our shadow teacher; despite the fact that he did a great job throughout the workshop, I would have liked to get to know his teaching style and his comfort level in front of a 'class' prior to the day of FLC.

I would also re-write our entire lesson plan. It crossed my mind just a few days before FLC that we may have been cutting it close with lack of enough activities. I would have felt much more comfortable in creating a lesson plan with too many activities on it rather than not enough.

Well, I guess that we all live and learn. This leadership conference was definitely an experience to learn from. Let us hope that the next one is better.