Clarke Central High School junior and Future Farmers of America president Raymond Pan waters plants in the CCHS greenhouse on Sept. 4. Pan feels that with the new year, there are new ideas coming into the program. “Before school started, our (agriculture) teacher, (Jillian Bryant), she had an officer training to talk about what we’re going to do for this school year and online for our goals, set our goals and make our plans,” Pan said. “I feel like we’re about to do a lot of great things throughout the school year (in FFA).” Photo by Gretchen Hinger
For the 2019-20 school year, the Clarke Central High School Future Farmers of America chapter plans to put into place many new initiatives.
The Clarke Central High School Future Farmers of America chapter has many goals and plans for the 2019-20 school year, including improving upon certain aspects of the chapter.
“We’ve got quite a few community service things planned, which includes growing food in our garden that we’ll donate,” FFA adviser Jillian Bryant said. “We’re working on creating a T-shirt campaign about sustainable local agriculture that we hope to sell, and the profit will go towards creating community gardens in the Athens community.”
Bryant believes the program gives CCHS students a well-rounded agricultural experience.
“(FFA is) a really multifaceted organization that allows students to learn more about agriculture and participate in community gardening and learning more about that, and it develops their leadership skills. We do a lot of speaking events and competitions and things that really help cultivate the whole person,” Bryant said.
Clarke Central High School Future Farmers of America members Zalayah Grant, Ietta Veeder, Anastasia Mack and Raymond Pan (left to right) help put compost into the greenhouse on Sept. 12. This year as FFA president, Pan strives to plan more community service events to go with the core idea of the program. “FFA, the main overarching theme is agriculture, but some of the stuff we do includes community service,” Pan said. “Also, (one of our goals is) building community which is connecting our FFA chapter with Athens totally. We’ve been working with local schools and the farmers market.” Photo courtesy of CCHS FFA
On the second Wednesday of every month, FFA members gather at the program’s monthly meeting. According to CCHS junior and FFA president Raymond Pan, officers are implementing changes this year that help members build one of FFA’s core values.
“What’s new this year about our monthly meeting is that one very important component is learning leadership, so every month we have a new FFA member plan and lead a monthly meeting,” Pan said.
With the program in its third year, Pan feels the chapter has enhanced each year and has great hopes for the upcoming year.
“The (CCHS) FFA chapter is relatively new. It started 2016, and we’ve been improving every year,” Pan said. “One major difference I saw this year was that we’ve made our goals and our plans and how we’re going to achieve it. Last year, we made our goals and we had a lot of good ideas, but a lot of them weren’t enforced.”
