FFA chapters across the United States encouraged their communities to take a new look at agriculture and agriculture education during National FFA Week, Feb. 19-25. This year, the Cortez FFA Chapter held events at the high school and set up window displays along Main Street in order to publicize National FFA Week, promote the agricultural industry and celebrate the opportunities that the youth organization provides. To the members, National FFA Week is an important time to educate the community about FFA and how important agriculture is to the world. This year the theme for the week-long celebration was I Believe. This theme encouraged members to believe not only in themselves, but in the future of the agricultural industry.
The Cortez FFA Chapter held events at the high school to promote FFA as well as to get non-ag students involved. Each day at lunch there were different agriculturally-related competitions to promote some of the skills agriculturalists use: on Tuesday, Feb. 21 there was a grain bag stacking contest, on Wednesday, Feb. 22 there was a stick horse barrel race, and on Thursday, Feb. 23 there was a roping contest. There were no winners for the grain bag stacking contest, however the winners of the stick horse barrel race were Tallen Ralstin, Jonathan Walck, and Joseph White. The winners of the roping contest were Lacey McDonald, Eddie Martinez, and Kevin Morales. Each member of the winning team received a ten dollar iTunes gift card. These events allowed non-FFA members to experience a few of the skills agriculturists use often. The members of the Cortez FFA Chapter also promoted FFA throughout the week by wearing chapter T-shirts, FFA jackets and complete official dress, and by driving tractors to school.
To reach out to the community, each agricultural education class designed, built and set up a window display; this years theme for the displays was agricultural careers. The winner of the display contest was a class of sophomores that built a display board showing examples of nine different agriculture careers. Their handcrafted display was awarded first place by Mr. Gordon Shepherd (M-CHS principal), Mrs. Elsie Walck (M-CHS guidance office secretary), and Mrs. Tonya Yates (Montezuma County Extension office), who served as judges for the window display contest. The chapter hopes that people walking down Main Street could see that there are many different agricultural careers that affect everyone in the community. Not many people in the community realize that there are at least 300 different agriculture careers, which add up to 23 million jobs. This amount of agriculturally employed people makes up 17 percent of the U.S. work force.
The Cortez FFA Chapter would like to thank Slavens True Value, Brus House of Color, Susies Hallmark, Kokopellis Bike and Board, Office Outpost, and High Mesa Designs for the use of their storefront window space for the FFA Week displays.
Keeping with the agricultural careers theme, the Cortez FFA officer team, along with several underclassmen, met with the 8th grade classes at Cortez Middle School to talk to them about what opportunities are out there for people interested in working in the agricultural industry. The officers shared the highlights of the agricultural education program at the high school, discussed the wide variety of careers that are available in the agricultural industry, and presented a slide show of the skills they have developed and are developing by being involved in agriculture.
Lastly, the chapter officer team took Mrs. Mary Rubadeau, interim superintendent, out to lunch to welcome her to the Montezuma Cortez School District, share with her what the agricultural education program at the high school is all about and to learn more about her agricultural background. She shared her experiences growing up on a dairy in upstate New York and encouraged the students to continue their hard work at M-CHS.