The Manhattan High FFA chapter has reached their busiest time, despite the approaching end of the school year. They have tours, competitions and State Convention on the calendar before they wrap up the year.
“The activities that we choose to do, the fun pieces, are very student-centered,” sponsor Elissa Mullinex said. “We learn leadership to self govern and to plan around our activities.”
Mullinix said nationally FFA teaches agriculture and leadership using a three-circle model to help students learn about careers, have fun and do community service. It begins with the classroom material, then competitions through the FFA club adds another circle.
“We take that further with the circle of FFA, where you have an opportunity to explore ag, but more to develop our leadership,” Mullinix said.
The third circle is the Supervised Agriculture Experience that students do on their own to apply what they learn.
“The competition I did in September was Ag Communications where I designed a web page for the Kansas Department of Water,” sophomore Reagan Stous said. “Then [on April 15] I have a floriculture and horticulture competition where I get to design a bouquet and judge plants.”
The mission of the Manhattan High FFA chapter is to live to serve but to be perfectly honest. To fulfill that mission so far this year FFA members have gone ice skating, visited a pumpkin patch, toured the bakery science club at Kansas State University and got to bake with them, hosted game nights and done cookouts. “Last year we did a kayak cleanup,” sophomore Jibran Khmous said. “We rode kayaks down the river and cleaned up the river, which was fun.”
FFA has also toured the K-State Veterinary diagnostic lab. They plan on touring the K-State Veterinary Hospital in the next month.
The combination of educational and fun events makes an impact on the members, with different things standing out to different people.
“My favorite memory is probably when we get to go and do all the events, like we went to the pumpkin patch in October and we also did an ice cream social at the beginning of the year. We’ve done line dancing at chapter meetings,” Stous said.
Khmous has a different highlight of the year.
“My favorite memory was reading to the kindergartners,” he said. “We were reading about milk, like where milk comes from, and I asked the kid has anyone milked a cow. They said no but one kid stands up and screams ‘I milked a cow in minecraft once.’ Adorable.”
