State Legislative Leadership Conference

I have always been impressed with Pennsylvania FFA's State Legislative Leadership Conference. For those of you who are not aware SLLC is a conference for FFA members to investigate and amend pieces of real legislation while utilizing parliamentary procedure. In addition, students will gain leadership skills, participate in a community service activity, and meet with legislators. This conference is unique and truly gives students a glimpse into the legislative process.

Over the years I have experienced SLLC from many different views. Years ago as a student I learned so much about the legislative process, that extended far beyond what I had previously learned in a Civics and Government Course. I then helped facilitate SLLC as a State FFA Officer. Each experience offered me something more to learn, however this SLLC was truly one for the books. This was my first SLLC experience as an FFA adviser. I continued to learn right along side my students and also enjoyed my time interacting with other ag teachers from across the state.


Central Columbia FFA took 5 students and also had a member serve as a second year scholar for the conference. I loved watching students grow over the last 3 days as they become more aware of the legislative process. I'm sure they all truly enjoyed getting to put their parli pro skills to the test as well. Over the years one of my favorite parts of SLLC was the day of service. On Monday nearly 447 students headed out to 19 different community service sites located around Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Central Columbia spent some time at Project Share a local food bank for the immediate area. We helped with landscaping, to packing food, and overall helped tidy up for the next distribution day. I was pleased to see that each one of my students enjoyed there time at Project Share as much as I did.




Tuesday morning of the conference came early as we headed for the legislative breakfast in Camp Hill. Unfortunately, our local legislators were unable to make it to the breakfast, we did however get a chance for a private tour once reaching the capital. Senator John Gordner took some time out of his busy day to show Central Columbia and Benton FFA members around the capital, complete with  visit to the Senate and House floor.


This weekend was again a reminder of why I have chose to become an agriculture educator and furthermore an FFA adviser. I am continuously blown away by the work of the organization, as well as the passion that comes from each FFA member. I look forward to taking students to SLLC for years to come.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rising Stars At Central Columbia High School

Image
Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAE) are an important entity to agricultural education. As I mentioned in previous blogs a true agricultural education program is comprised of three very important components; Classroom/ laboratory instruction, FFA, and SAE. SAEs are programs created by students to explore their interests in a specific agricultural area. These programs allow for a hands, on real world experience, while developing life skills. Students can choose one of six different SAE areas to develop their program around. “An SAE is a catalyst for personal growth, career development, and responsible citizenship that leads to individual, group and societal benefits not possible through formal education alone” (“Jig Saw.”2005) SAE is truly a unique aspect of agricultural education, allowing students be creative and cultivate their own learning. Students at Central Columbia High School in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania are doing just that, developing programs that are pushing  them outs
Read more

Developing a Team

Image
Forming, Storming, Norming , and Performing , where are we at in the process of student teaching? I took some time this week to reflect on our studies this past fall. We learned about Bruce Tuckman's model and discussed how the model would look in our future classrooms. We discussed how these are the stages to making an effective team, my team may seem a little different than maybe a sports team, never the less my students, my cooperating teachers, university supervisors, and myself make a great team. As my time at Central Columbia is coming to a close here in a just a few short weeks I found it only fitting to take a look back at how far we have come over the last 13 weeks.  Forming: While we started forming long before the first day of student teaching, the majority of events took place during my first few weeks of student teaching. The first few weeks were pretty laid back, all of my students were polite and well behaved, still trying to figure out how to act arou
Read more

Bringing a New Approach to Chemistry

Image
Date: January 11, 2018 Class: Introduction to Chemistry Lesson Title: What are characteristics of light? Lesson Objectives: 1.        Define a quantum of energy, and explain how it is related to an energy change of matter. 2.        Using Planck's equation, calculate the energy of a quantum of light from the frequency or wavelength. 3.        Compare the wave and particle natures of light. Never being a huge fan of chemistry myself, I was skeptical as to how my visit to Kaitlyn Thursby’s chemistry class would go. I had already heard great things about her teaching style from various teachers and students in the building, which intrigued me to go observe her in the first place. Ms. Thursby was one of the first teachers in the building to utilize Google classroom and incorporate a some what of an inquiry based approach for her teaching method.  As the students came into class they were assigned a number, as well as a number range for what bellrin
Read more