Balance and Tradition

As a high school agricultural science teacher in Snyder, Texas, I often sat in my office and pondered the fact that I was living my ultimate dream. I was doing exactly what I had always wanted to do: teach agricultural science and work with FFA members. Along with my teaching partner, we had taken a small agricultural education program and FFA chapter and built it into one that many would say was very successful. The student enrollment in our agricultural education classes averaged around 250 students with 100% of them being members of a very active and successful FFA chapter. As a matter of fact, our chapter had won 1 5 straight Golden Horizon Awards which is an honor bestowed upon the most active and successful FFA chapters in the State of Texas. One of our proudest claims was that every student in our program had a Supervised Agricultural Education (SAE) program. Granted, some of these programs were small and lacked the overall dimensions that would be expected by many teachers; however, every student was taking lessons from the classroom and applying them in a real world situation. Many of these SAE programs had won State and National acclaim in the proficiency and star award programs. As for classes, we offered a variety of subjects within the agriculture industry and were constantly offering new and challenging courses that would better meet the demands and needs of our students and community. Yes, one can say I was living the ultimate dream.Six years ago, I was approached by several of my mentors who asked that I leave this dream job and work on a Ph.D. so that I could join the ranks of teacher educators and begin preparing the next generation of teachers. As I began discussing the matter with these professionals, I remember asking Dr. Paul Vaughn very specifically, Why should I leave a program and job that I love in order to become a teacher educator? His reply was something that I will never forget, David, we need to get balance and tradition back into our programs. We need teachers who recognize the value and importance of developing complete agricultural education programs. We need teachers that are capable of teaching rigorous and relevant classes. We need teachers that recognize the value of a strong FFA program and who expect every student to become involved in some type of SAE. In essence, we need teachers that can see the bigger picture and realize that they are part of a tradition; a tradition that will continue making an impact as long as it remains focused on providing balance.To make a long story short, I realized that becoming a teacher educator would provide a platform that I could use to impact more students. This would be my own way of continuing a tradition of excellence. It would also be my way of helping educate new teachers about the tradition and significance of providing a balanced program that is capable of impacting students and communities. By showing these prospective teachers that the key to great programs is a balance of rigorous and relevant classroom/ laboratory classroom instruction, participation in the National FFA Organization and an expectation that every student maintain some type of SAE, I would be able to continue the tradition of providing excellent agricultural education. It would also allow me to show these new teachers the damage that can be caused by an unbalance in these three areas.All too often I have seen programs that have lost the balance between what has become known as the three circle model of agricultural education. Some of these programs are FFA powerhouses; however, they have sacrificed their classroom/laboratory instruction and SAE requirements in an effort to win more trophies. Others develop incredible academic programs that are commendable in their own right; however, they give up FFA activities because they feel that classroom instruction is all that is needed. These same programs fail to extend their lessons into supervised agricultural experience programs; thus losing an opportunity to continue teaching. …