NEWS A Texas Team Ag Ed Publication
From
the
November 2019
Range
Terry Baize, Hamilton
Just when you think you cannot possibly get any busier, it happens. I am sure you are as busy as I am training LDE teams, supervising SAEs, and getting your sheep and goats validated. Add the new responsibilities of getting gilts registered by December 1 and uploading registration papers, and it has made for a very busy month of October! Oh, and don’t forget the responsibility of teaching class. The life of an ag teacher is a demanding one. This month's mentor I am going to write about is Ronnie Partain. Ronnie was a long-time teacher in Hico and finished his career working with aspiring agricultural science teachers at Tarleton State University. Ronnie was the mentor who taught me ALL students matter. He was so good at working with the kids no one else really wanted to bother with. Ronnie taught to me purposely include them. Ronnie passed away in 2007, but I will forever be grateful for what he taught me. It is so easy to put all of our efforts into the top group of kids; the ones who are our top judging or leadership team members; the ones who want to go to all of the conventions and meetings; the
kinds of students who are going to be our scholarship applicants at the conclusion of their high school tenure. It is natural to want to spend all our efforts with this group. There is another group of students who desperately need, and quite honestly deserve, our attention as well. This is the group of students Ronnie taught me to appreciate and to value. They are not our top students. They are never going to be scholarship applicants, but they make up the majority of the students in your classes. I remember talking to Ronnie on several occasions and he would be telling me about all the things he was doing with these students. He always had the best ideas of how to involve these students, and most importantly, how to make them feel valued. I resolved to be like him. One of the ways I have tried to do this is to have a wellrounded program that does not specialize in any one event. Our program, in Hamilton, has always strived to provide a wide variety of activities in which our students can participate in. Not every student is going to exhibit an animal, be on an LDE or CDE team, or attend the
meetings and conventions the FFA has to offer, but many will find something they like to do, if we only invite them. One of my greatest pleasures as an ag teacher is to watch the results as these students start to find their niche and thus their success. Success is a great motivator and once a student gets a taste of it, they want more. Some of the most successful students we have had in Hamilton were from this group. I often have other Hamilton teachers ask me how I was able to get a student to be so successful when they could never get anything out Continue on page 2