FFA goes to annual yearly convention

Aloera Ostermann, Staff Writer

Every year there is a National FFA Convention held in Indianapolis and every year agriculture teacher Doug Muller takes a group of students. These students are chosen by how active they are in the club and who competed in the most competitions and events throughout the year. The students who got to attend this year were seniors Nate Beard, Neeley Bowden and Faith Bliss and junior Ayden Boyles. Some of these students have even been to the convention more than once.

“I’ve been there once before, in October last year,” Bowden said, “They were mostly the same but this year we got to volunteer at a food bank for a few house which was really fun and a great team building activity.”

While they did do a lot of the same general stuff as past years, most students learned many new things along the way.

During the convention itself, the team attended many different workshops. Some of those include leadership and career success workshops. During these workshops the students learned about different things like how to be leaders and what is required in different careers and a variety of other things. They also got the opportunity to speak with companies and colleges that attended the convention to help them get an inside peak at what some of those things might be like. There were some more general sessions that they were able to attend where different people spoke.

“Some speakers, somewhat famous speakers, that talked, national officers talked and gave speeches, each officer talked on a different nights,” Bliss said.  

The students even got a chance to volunteer at Gleaners Food Bank where they helped sort meals for around 11,000 people.  

“My favorite part was volunteering at the food bank,” Bowden said, “As a group we collected 13,000 lbs. of food for people in need in just a couple of hours,”

Aside from the learning they did, the students got to attend a Rascal Flatts and Runaway June concert on Wednesday night. With their extra free time they checked out the Indianapolis Zoo and the Indy 500, making new friends from all over along the way.

“There are people from Hawaii and Alaska so it’s fun meeting new people,” Bliss said.

The students were able to really help out people in need with all their work at the convention, as well as learn and grow in their own knowledge of agriculture and FFA related topics and make many new friends along the way.

“Make the most of the leadership workshops to really work on growing as a person and a leader in the club,” Bowden said.