Manhattan High FFA officers, junior Tessarae Harris and seniors Chanae Parker and Lauren Walradt, met with guest speaker Logan Elliott, FFA state officer board president, to discuss ways to improve Manhattan High’s FFA chapter.

“I believe that we had some valuable takeaways that we can implement right away in our next chapter meeting,” club sponsor Elissa Mullinix said.

Early Saturday afternoon, the group bonded over similar FFA experiences whilst snacking on donuts and sipping hot chocolate, courtesy of  Mullinix, who just returned from maternity leave.

“It’s wonderful to be back,” Mullinix said. “I have enjoyed my time at home with my family, and with the new baby … It’s awesome to know that I have a family here to come back to … and it’s great to see students again and to work with them and to do this part of my life again.”

Going into the meeting, the FFA officers aimed to improve their knowledge of the structure of a formal meeting — following Robert’s Rules of Order — and of all the opportunities the chapter could coordinate to further involve members as well as increase membership.

“The goal of the event was to further associate our officer team with parliamentary procedure and see what the state officer team could help with, [such as] getting members to participate and join,” Walradt, chapter treasurer, said.

Through the meeting, the three officers were educated on various methods of which to grow club membership, make their chapter meetings more efficient and how to be more organized in their leadership roles.

“I think [this] was a great opportunity to work with someone who [i]s a little bit more experienced since he’s in college now [and] he’s had more years with FFA and more time to get to know the organization,” Parker, chapter president, said. “I think [it was] really beneficial for all of us to get to work together on this and I’m hoping that we can continue to do so in the future.”

In the weeks before winter break, FFA plans to continue their tradition of candy cane gram sales.

“We create bundles of … candy canes and … go around during advisory [to] hand [them] out,” Walradt said. “[You know the scene in] ‘Mean Girls’ [with] the candy canes … it’ll be like that.”