It’s CDE Season and we are Packed with Motivated students
As soon as we get back to school on January 9th our FFA members will hit the ground running with their courses, conferences, award applications, and CDE teams. CDE stands for Career Development Event and the National FFA Association has 24 different skills based teams to compete on. “Twenty-four CDEs and one activity cover job skills in everything from communications to mechanics. Some events allow students to compete as individuals, while others allow them to compete in teams (ffa.org).” These teams allow our students to directly learn skills through experiential learning opportunities and direct relationships with industry experts. This allows them to graduate from our FFA Leadership program with the ability to communicate with others, work on a team, and to perform Career Technical Education work based skills.
These teams travel across the state of California from the months of January to May competing at field day competitions at various college campuses and invitationals hosted by high school sites. We practice weekly and several of the students put in numerous hours on their own researching, memorizing, and applying their newly learned skills. Often times we have local community business partnerships that open their doors to our students to give speaking demonstrations and / or to work directly with them to gain access to tools, materials, and first hand experience. Most of our teams will go to the State Finals in either Fresno April 20th – 22nd and also on Saturday May 6th at Cal Poly State University. We have been fortunate to have several of our teams become state champions and compete at Nationals in both Louisville, Kentucky and Indianapolis, Indiana.
This year we have a record number of talented students wanting to participate on CDE teams or in an individual speaking contest. We have a lot of new freshmen that are just starting out and wanting to build strong teams for their future in FFA. There are only two of us Agriculture Teachers and we simply cannot coach all these teams alone and do it well. We are busier than ever with new curriculum, increasing livestock projects, and our own children’s schedules. If you are interested in possibly joining our team by committing to coaching or helping in any way, we would really appreciate it. Practice schedules completely depend upon the student and coaches schedules, however many of these kids have time in Agriculture classes to be working in addition to focused team time. We will gladly work directly with the additional coaches to sign up teams for contests, arrange travel plans, book hotels, provide classrooms for practice etc… We have had wonderful people help coach teams in the past. SLO FFA is hoping to establish some new coaching relationships so that our students can gain the skills and time needed to be successful. There are a lot of recent alumni in our community that once participated on these teams and we are reaching out to you for your help! You can serve as great role models to these students.
Below is a list of the teams we are currently offering and that we have student interest in. Many of these teams have a full list of students ready to get going. If you have any interest in coaching a team please let us know. You can email Anna Bates abates@slcusd.org or Jodi Evans jevans@slcusd.org. We can work out the logistics from there. Thank you so much for continued support and passion towards our students!
Sincerely,
Anna Bates & Jodi Evans
For a complete list of CDE teams please go to this link at the National FFA site.
San Luis Obispo FFA CDE Teams
*Below is a list of the teams and / or speakers for the 2017 competition season. We have made comments by the ones that we need coaches for our extra help in specific ways. If you have additional things you think you can offer, please let us know! Thank you so much.
Agriculture Issues Team: Researches and presents an issue facing agriculture. Must do 5 presentations in the community, prepare a portfolio, and do a 15 minute presentation. We need to set up at least 5 presentation times so that the students can present their material and get constructive feedback.
Agriculture Marketing Team: Coach / help needed
Agriculture Sales Team: Coach needed
Floral Design Team: Coach needed
Job Interview Team: Could use people to conduct practice interviews and to proof read
Extemporaneous Speaking:
Impromptu Speaking:
Creed Speaking: We have 8 students that have qualified for the South Coast Regional Finals in March. These students could benefit by working one on one with individuals regarding answering questions and researching information that can be used to establish a deep knowledge of the history of agriculture.
Prepared Public Speaking: We could use people to help proof read manuscripts and opportunities for speaking practice.
Poultry Judging: Coach needed
Livestock Judging Team: Coach needed
Novice Parliamentary Procedure Debate Team
Advanced Parliamentary Procedure Debate Team
Veterinary Science Team
Agriculture Welding Team: Coach Needed
Farm Power Tractor Team: Coach Needed
Meats Judging Team: Coach needed if there’s interest
Comments