NEWS A Texas Team Ag Ed Publication
From
the
December 2019
Range
Terry Baize, Hamilton
At the time this article will be published, District and Area LDE contests will be over. My congratulations to each of you who had teams advance to area and state competition. It takes a lot of hard work from you and your students to compete. I also want to applaud everyone who competed at your district but didn’t advance. Whether your teams advanced or not, LDEs teach valuable skills every participant can use to be successful in any career they enter. As I have done in my previous articles, I’m going to call attention to another mentor who had a great deal of influence on me as I learned how to be an agricultural science teacher. James Bevel taught me the importance of being an advocate for our profession and I had the utmost respect for him. He was constantly promoting our profession and was greatly respected. Mr. Bevel counseled many young ag teachers and was instrumental in their success. He was respected not only by his peers, but also school administrators and I know many of them asked his advice regarding what an outstanding agricultural science and FFA chapter should look like. In a way, James Bevel was a pioneer of our current VATAT mentor program to assist beginning agricultural science teachers. In keeping with Mr. Bevel’s model, I want to encourage each
of you to personally advocate for your program - if you are not promoting your local program, who will? I firmly believe agricultural science programs, along with the FFA, are the most outstanding and beneficial programs any student can participate in. Maybe I am biased, but no other program has what we have to offer to students. Sadly, many students, parents, counselors, and administrators do not know this. Hamilton is a small, rural school located in the heart of a county that relies on agriculture. Agriculture is the largest industry in our county, so it stands to reason everyone knows and understands its importance, right? If you said yes, then you are dead wrong. Even in a rural town like Hamilton, few people understand where food, clothing, and other agricultural products are made. Who is going to promote your program? You. As much as we would like to think everyone knows how good your program is and all of the good things you are doing, the truth is they probably don’t. You must be an advocate and promoter of your program, and that is not a difficult thing to do. One of the best things that we did a few years ago was to start a Hamilton FFA Facebook page. When our students do good things, we post them on the Facebook page. Over the years it has grown to have many followers
and when something is posted, many of them share the post which then reaches even more people. This has been an outstanding way to promote our program with minimal effort. I know many of you already have Facebook pages. If your chapter does not have a Facebook page and you would like to start one, check with your school administrators and find out if there is a policy in your local district regarding social media for school sponsored programs and organizations. Follow school policy and do all you can to publicize your program. Hamilton also has a local newspaper who is very good at publicizing our program. Small Continue on page 2