By Taylor Costa, Vice President of the FFA
Photo Credit: Peggy Flynn
This year has come with many new experiences and the leaders of the FFA have worked diligently to be as interactive with their members as they can. On February 9th, the Morro Bay Agriculture Leadership class hosted their very first virtual Greenhand Conference. The Conference was held on zoom and was open to any Greenhands, aka first year agriculture students, in the Morro Bay chapter. Morro Bay High School Interim Principal Mr. Cadwallader and Assistant Principal Miss Hardgrave showed up to check out the event that lasted about an hour.
Usually, first year students would attend a conference with the other Greenhands in the section. There they would learn about the FFA and the opportunities that they have such as conferences they can attend, awards they can receive, and the people they can meet. It’s a fun and interactive conference that gets them excited about being in the FFA. Due to the pandemic this year, this conference did not happen.
This wasn’t a problem though because Morro Bay has a group of dedicated students that worked hard to make an activity based conference that gave Greenhands information about their new organization. Those who attended learned about what they can do in agriculture classes and the FFA, What the agriculture program will do for them, the misconceptions around taking an agriculture class, and lastly the family they will be a part of when they join the FFA. They played games such as Family Feud, Kahoot, and IceBreakers to get to know each other.
Garret Haub, a Greenhand that attended the conference, said, “Overall I had a great time at the conference and I felt like the presenters actually cared if we had questions, I also felt inspired to participate more in FFA activities.”
The success of this Conference will help with future activities that will take place like the Chapter/Greenhand Banquet, and FFA Week which will likely be online. The conference and feedback from the conference will help inspire ideas for events in the future. Overall, the first Greenhand conference went great.
