SLLC and Proficiency Applications

Last weekend (I know its late it has been a crazy week) I went to the State Legislative Leadership Conference with Mr. Hines and five of my students. This conference is meant to teach the students about the legislative process and introduce them to senators and representatives from the state.

The students were debating and editing several bills that are currently being pushed through congress right now. This conference also gives the students the opportunity to meet with the leadership and members from FFA chapters all across the state. This is also the time when proficiency applications are due.

While my students were busy doing this, I was in a room with several teachers judging and grading proficiency applications. This was a whole new experience to me. Up until this point, my only experience with proficiency applications was the three from West Perry which I had helped prepare for this day. The table I was sitting at ended up being the one selected to judge the horse entrepreneurship applications, and later the sheep production applications.

By getting these two groups, I had the opportunity to compare around 12 applications. (we were really busy). I got to see the difference between students projects and how much time they spent on the Agriculture Experience Tracker. After looking at these, I realized just how big of an impact keeping good records on your SAE project can really cause. I saw applications where there was minimal work, and applications where the students clearly put in hours of work (these were typically the winners).

At the end of the day this made me realize something. Student success depends on the effort they put into the work they have.

Most of these students did not HAVE to put in an application. They took time out of their own lives because they wanted to share their experiences and see just how well they were keeping records (the $250 prize helped too I am sure).

Some day I want to see my students putting applications in, and winning these proficiency awards, but I would never force this on them. It needs to be something that they can do on their own and take pride in.