Bountiful Harvest

One of the best parts of my job is getting to know the families of my students.

When I visit student's show project their families are always taking care of me. If it's hot they offer me drinks, when it's pouring down rain they offer me jackets and when it's garden picking time they offer me veggies.

Today I visited two FFA members' homes. At both places the FFA Dad's shared their fresh garden veggies with me. This is extra special to me because I love garden veggies, but I was too busy to put in a garden this spring.

Thank you FFA parents! I appreciate you supporting your kiddos and me!

Goat and Lamb Jackpot

Saturday, July 10 Kingston FFA held a jackpot lamb and goat show at the Madison County Fair Grounds.

This was the first time since I have been teaching at SWJH that students have competed in livestock showing.

Before students show, they shear (or shave off) the lambs wool. A kind friend was able to show our new livestock shower how to shear her lamb. It was raining cats and dogs on Thursday, so both girls got soaked!

Market lambs are placed in classes with lambs of similar weights. All market animals are placed based on their predicted performance as a meat animal. They are judged based on their conformation, muscle tone, amount of finish (fat).

Congratulations to our first time shower who received 3rd and 4th place with lambs!

Picking up Chicks...Ag style

Today FFA students received their broilers for the Washington County Fair.

Each student received 10 banded day old chicks. The bands have assigned numbers to ensure the students return to the fair with the same chicks they were given.

The goal of this project is to see which student is able to grow the best chicken. All of the chicks are the same age and have the same background. The main idea is to have a good environment and keep them eating high quality show feed.

The Washington County Fair is August 31- September 4 this year. (check out their new website)

FFA meets DC

Last week Clint and I had the privilege of chaperoning 33 Arkansas FFA members to our nation's capitol.

We were responsible for getting the students from Little Rock to DC and back home safely. (In case you were wondering it's about a 17 hour drive.) The students were attending Washington Leadership Conference.

WLC is an AMAZING experience for these students. I attended WLC as an FFA member in 1998, and it was my first trip to DC.

WLC has four main focus areas:

-knowing your purpose

-valuing people

-taking action

-serving others

During the course of the summer, 2,300 FFA members from all over the country will give 11,000 hours of community service to those less fortunate. The WLC motto is:

We must because we can.

While we were in DC, the FFA staff organized everything for the students while we attended advisor workshops and did some site seeing on our own.

We traveled with a great group of students. It's encouraging to see such good kids get such great leadership training.

I encourage every FFA member to attend WLC during their high school career. It will put

your life into perspective. THe leadership skills you learn will take you far.

Let's get it started in here...

Even though I'm a lover of technology, I've felt overwhelmed lately. How can I effectively communicate with my students, their parents and our administration?

After much thought about a website, wiki, blog or electronic newsletters, I decided a blog would best serve our purpose. Agtivities at Southwest will be a communications effort between students, parents, other schools, and Mrs. Hale.

I hope to update this regularly to showcase students and their projects. Hopefully, when school gets back into session student volunteers will assist me in maintaing our blog.