Madeline Bode

AGED 403
Ag Tech Wrap Up
Section I
At the 56th annual Agricultural Technology Contest I worked as the assistant coordinator.
The Ag Tech contest is one of the WI FFA Career Development Event Contest help across the
state. Our contest hosts 18 contest with around 900 students that attend. My role for the day was
organizing volunteers to work at the contest. In the weeks leading up to Ag Tech, I found
volunteers and then assigned them to a location to work. When I gave them instructions on when
and where to work, I also described to them how they should dress for the day. Throughout the
week I handled many situations of volunteers not being able to work, not having a car to drive to
lab farm, or just having questions on what specific tasks they will be doing at their particular
contest. For most of the volunteers these tasks were simply supervision of students partaking in
the contest.
On the day of the contest I worked registration at the Horse Contest and then transferred
to Advisor Registration in the UC. After this I helped with scoring and made sure jobs were
delegated to workers and answered and asked many questions. While at scoring I also tried to
stay in contact with our shuttle buses. A critical incident that happened while I was trying to help
with buses was when my communication source at the Livestock Contest fell through. I was
unaware that my contacts would be working on course work before the contest was completely
over, so I was unable to find out if all students were done and loaded on a bus from that contest. I
improvised though and asked my dairy contact to check the livestock barns. Another problem
we had was students at the horse farm had wandered off into the colt barn, and no one checked to

see if that barn was clear before we called the buses off the horse contest, so we had to send a
bus back to pick them up. The other major incident that happened was the lack of written test at
the horse contest, and Im still unsure how exactly communication on that fell through.
From this event I learned a lot about the FFA CDE systematics. There are a lot of small
details to pay attention to when coordinating this contest, and if our school did not have faculty
and student chairs to make sure those details were there, this contest would be much harder to
conduct. Along with this I also learned how to make detailed, to the point, clear instruction for
volunteers and faculty chairs. There is a lot to be said for simple and precise instructions. While
sending many emails, I improved my skills with Microsoft mail merge and filters in excel.
Leaning these features this year will be very beneficial for me next year and in my teacher career.
The items learned by youth that competed in these events varied by the contest. From a
big picture view though, youth learned about skills and facts that pertain the careers within the
contests field. For high school students, this Ag Tech Contest helps narrow down topics they like
and dont like along with topics they are good at working with or struggle with. By learning this
about themselves, it helps him or her focus on a career choice that will best fit them.
By working this event I learned a lot about clear communication and how to make my
time for efficient through MS Word and Excell. This will help me a great deal next year as
Coordinator. This will also help me later on as a teacher in the sense that I will have better skills
in creating document of information that go home to students parents and also for coordinating
FFA activities within my district. I also learned a little bit about aspects of each contest, so as a
future teacher I will know where to look to look up contest rules and find resources to help
prepare my students.

Next year my goal is to figure out how to makes the volunteer thank you emails export
and send as pdfs from word or excel. Saving and sending them all individually was extremely
tedious and non-efficient. I am also looking forward to learning more about each individual
contest through my work with contest chairs.
Looking back, I think I should have started pushing for volunteers to sign up sooner, so
that way I could send the assignment emails out sooner. I think this because I had a lot of time
spent in responding to volunteer issues and it would have been nicer to focus on these problems a
little earlier before the contest. The days itself was kind of a blur, and I cant really think of what
in particular I would change. The only other thing that needs work is communication between
the farms and the bus system to give the busses the all clear.
Section II
Each contest has specific AFNR Content Standards that apply to it. As a teacher, you can
combine CDE practice with classroom instruction by including standards that apply to the
contest within your curriculum. For many contests there is a general knowledge exam, this
knowledge students can gain throughout the classroom experience. Hands on activities include
items like ID and judging. Taking students on field trips to practice judging or bringing in
samples are great ways to get students familiar with those topics.
As a whole the contest has a few standards that apply as well. Career Ready Content
Standards and Cluster Skills apply to the whole contest. One example is CRP.02 Apply
appropriate academic and technical skills; another is CRP.04 Communicate clearly, effectively
and with reason for any contest that has written portion or reasons class. National FFA Chapter
Standards include leadership, career success, scholarship, and personal growth within Student
Development.

Teachers can use lots of local resources for preparing for CDEs. For animal contests,
teachers can ask for help from local producers to have students judge live animals. For speaking
contests and Ag Communications, students can work with professionals in the community to
further their skills. Local florists and greenhouses would be great resources for students in the
nursery-landscape and floriculture contests. Teachers need to understand that many of these
business are quite willing to work with students because many hope that their efforts will help
draw students into their industry and work force.
I think CDEs are a great way for students to apply the knowledge they learn in class and
drive students to succeed due to the nature of competition. I feel that CDEs are something that
should be included into ones curriculum, but it should not be the primary focus of the classroom.
CDEs are one of many ways a student can help find the correct career choice, but they are
limited in amount of personal growth and problem solving skills a student can create. A teacher
can focus on standards that apply to the CDE in class, take time in class to make sure everyone
understands how the contest functions, but intense practice time for highly competitive students
should be outside of class so that a greater range of opportunity for the entire class can be met.

References:
2015 National FFA Organization. (2015). Official FFA Manual. Indianapolis, IN: National FFA
Organization.
Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Content Standards for Common Career
Technical Core Career Ready Practices Content Standards