Fall Facilitation:Co-Facilitating at Fall Leadership Conference

It has been a few years since I took off my blue jacket (4 years to be exact) and I still love attending FFA events! Especially when I get the chance to facilitate with members of the Penn State Ag Ed 2020 and 2021 cohort!

All the material discussed in the workshop: Opening Ceremonies, Committees, Public Speaking and POAs.

Workshop overview

Mr.Witmer(PSU Ag Ed '20), Ms. Consylman(PSU AG ED '21) and myself facilitated the workshop for chapter vice presidents in Pennsylvania. Our workshop consisted of learning about our roll in committees, what a program of activities is and what the opening ceremonies are. 

Gems

Our objectives and
Officer-O-Meter

• We kept track of the objectives using an "Officer-O-Meter!" Each time we completed an objective we said bye to it by playing the song "Bye,Bye,Bye" by N'SYNC and had a member color in a tab on the meter. This made us focus on our objectives and have students remember them as well.
• Our questions were a great variety. We started broad and then narrowed it down to what we were trying to get the students to think. We started with questions like "how was this experience", "What did this remind you of when working with your teams?"and ended with "What communication skills did you use while doing this activity?" we started big and then once they brought up communication we started looking at that idea without spoon feeding them.

Opps

• One activity was creating a dance to represent the vice presidents job. We let them create the dance but, we should have also made one. This would have helped them feel less weird about doing this activity. This was also an activity we added in the bus instead of doing a buzzer quiz activity which was more appropriate after reading the energy in the room.
• I also saw the benefit of smaller groups in this workshop. We had split the class in half for a matching activity. It was a really basic knowledge FFA matching set but, not everyone can participate in a large group. Having a smaller group would have engaged more students and created more energy from the start since this was our first activity.

Every time I teach (even in my professional career) will be perfect but, it is important to reflect on it. This experience of co-facilitating was a new one for me and I learned a ton! I cannot wait till the spring to get into the classroom.