8: "Next Generation Day"

Our schedule for the day!

The Manheim FFA Chapter had the amazing opportunity this Friday (3/2) to take a great group of students to the Farm and Home Center for the county speaking contests and a few workshops and some speakers. This was awesome! 

I was a judge and interviewer for Red Rose "Star Awards" which was a great learning opportunity. I listened to five students share their hard work and growth over three years of a production SAE. My fellow judges were Deb Seibert and Stephen Geib who made the judging experience quite fun to say the least. I gained a sense of what interviewing looks like from the other side of the interview table which may be helpful to me in the upcoming weeks! After analyzing our scores we called the five competitors back in to give them our remarks and tell them who the winner and runner up were. We had all good things to say as these FFA members have clearly worked hard on their projects and are going to continue to do great things.

Manheim FFA Members "try" to take a non-serious photo

While we were judging Star Awards, the other students were listening to a great motivational speaker and heading in and out of rooms to compete in creed, senior prepared, junior prepared, and extemporaneous speeches. 

After lunch students had the option to pick one out of three workshops: Precision Ag, Plant Science, or Animal Science. I participated in the Precision Ag workshop where new ways of using technology to advance crop production were shared with the audience. 

Following our workshops, everyone was gathered back together so that we could hear the results of today's contests. I am proud to say that Miss Reilly, one of my students, won first place in the creed speaking contest and will be heading to regionals! It was a wonderful way to spend a Friday. 

Professional Gardening as Professional Development

Mrs. Seibert, Megan, and myself in the conservatory.

Today's Horticulture Symposium at Longwood Gardens

Many people know that I pride myself in being a lifelong learner. Others also know that I enjoy gardening throughout the spring and the summer. Although I consider myself well versed in the area of animal science, I find that I love plant science as well and want to know more about it.

I was lucky enough to have a student who received a scholarship to attend this symposium at Longwood Gardens which meant that I got to go! It was a lovely day filled with plants and flowers and insects. We heard from international gardeners, collegiate professors, and graduates of the Longwood Professional Gardener Program. I must say that I learned many things about finding insects in your garden and around you and I also also learned that wild flowers have a seed bank to make sure that they do not go extinct. I was also amazed to find that vanilla beans come from the vanilla orchid!

As I follow the path along my TeachAg journey, I plan to continue with my professional development. I fully believe that never passing up the opportunity to learn will allow me to better myself and therefore better the classes that I teach my students.

Never stop growing!

We had fun finding plants with fun textures.