NEWS A Texas Team Ag Ed Publication
March 2017
Spotlight on Agriculture Education Shane Crafton, Henrietta
Is anyone else having trouble believing March is already here? It seems like just last week I bought a barn full of show pigs, and now the only ones left are the ones headed to Houston later this month. We definitely work in a fast-paced occupation. We are heavy into stock show season, and if you are not training for career development events, then you are already behind. That is a familiar feeling for me; I have felt behind for twenty-seven years. I remember when I was a first or second year teacher thinking in a few years this job will be easy and everything will slow down. If anything it is busier now than it was then. This month I would like to focus on career development events and all the decisions we make selecting team members, traveling to and from contests, and the goals we have for these teams when we first start each year. What makes a successful year in a career development event? For some programs winning state and going to nationals is the only acceptable outcome, while other programs focus on simply allowing many students to participate at the highest level they can achieve. Which of these focuses or goals is the right one? For me that is a local decision that you, your teaching partners, advisory committee, and maybe even administration must make. In my many years of teaching I have learned many lessons on team participation. I was on a state winning livestock team myself in 1983, and I have coached state winning teams. Taking teams to nationals is one of the greatest feelings you can have as an agriculture teacher. I also know what it feels like to be second at the
state career development events, and that feeling is not so great. But I think the most valuable lesson I have learned has to do with team member selection. We all want to grab those kids who are at the top of the class that we know we can make successful on any team. However, as agriculture teachers, our job is to provide opportunities for all our students, is it not? Don’t make the mistake of letting a student slip through the cracks because you don’t think this student gives you the best chance to win. Let me give you an example of a mistake I almost made. I worked with a student on a team years ago that kept getting low scores at contests to the point that I almost gave up on him. No way was he ever going to be successful on any team. Then we discovered he was dyslexic and was placing the classes correctly but couldn’t mark his card correctly because of his disability. Thanks to Dr. Ford at Tarleton, we obtained permission for his group leader to help him mark his card. That team won state that spring, that young man was a top ten individual, and the team made the top ten at nationals in the fall. He is employed and wellrespected in that very industry today and does extremely well. Without that young man, that team would have never reached that level. We solved that student’s dilemma, but how many others have we missed? That student later told me thanks, not for the training he received, because honestly he could have just as easily trained me, but for taking a chance on him and showing that I believed in his abilities. He told me that other than his parents, no
one had ever stood behind him and said I know you can do it. Those students are out there. They may be in a little different package; you may have to push them a little bit, and you may have to get out of your comfort zone and put in a little more effort. I will promise you this; a thank you from one of those kids will recharge your battery and drive you to keep looking for them. Remember, don’t dismiss a student just because the young person has never been successful; this student may have never been given the right circumstances to succeed. I know I am forever grateful for Bo Allen, an agriculture teacher at May High School, who in 1983 took a chance and shined a little spotlight on me. Mr. Allen had to look hard and take a pretty good leap of faith to get me to a place where I would be in the spotlight, and it made a huge difference in my life.