The Week of Awards Ceremonies and FFA Jackets

This week brought on some great opportunities for me to experience not one, but two different FFA awards ceremonies: One for Big Spring and the other for Shippensburg. After only having my own FFA chapter awards ceremony as context, it was fascinating to see how both chapters did theirs. 

The first award ceremony was for Big Spring and it was on Monday during school. Parents/families were allowed to come in to see their students be recognized and the chapter got the State FFA president to come in and a national officer to give some remarks. Those who were recognized at the ceremony were the Keystone Degree recipients, American Degree recipients, and the 1st-years who received jackets during Mid-Winter Convention physically got their jackets at the ceremony. After the ceremony, too, the national officer stuck around to do a workshop with the leadership kids!

From this I had a few big takeaways. The first one being that it was so cool to watch the chapter put together and execute their ceremony, showing how the chapter is truly student driven. In reflecting on my home chapter, I feel like a lot of the time we were more advisor driven so it was good for me to see the flip side of the coin and what a student driven chapter can look like. Another big takeaway was the importance of bringing in school administration to the ceremony. This was something that I had a chance to talk to my cooperating teacher about and she was telling me that they invite their administration to everything that they can because it shows that the agriculture department is doing great and valuable things. It's also great for the kids to see that support from administration, showing that others are watching and noticing what they do and that they should hold themselves up to a higher standard. 

The second award ceremony was for Shippensburg and it had many similarities to Big Spring (as mentioned above). They differed by opting to have the ceremony during the evening, and didn't have any guest speakers, but regardless, it was a lovely ceremony. For their opening and closing they did the typical FFA opening and closing ceremonies, which I always love listening to. For their ceremony they showed clips from Mid-Winter convention to introduce Keystone Degree and American Degree recipients, which I thought was another great touch.

My absolute favorite part of both ceremonies was the jackets being presented to the first year students. Being from New Hampshire and having Mid-Winter Convention happen while we are still on break meant that I never really had a chance to attend it. So while I have heard about the jackets being awarded to all the 1st-years in the large arena, I have never seen it for myself. After seeing what I saw during these two ceremonies, I can only imagine how impactful it must be in a typical year to see hundreds of FFA students receiving their first jacket. Watching these students embark on their FFA journey brought me so much joy and excitement and seeing that moment when they first put on their jackets was something special. 

Overall, it was such a great experience being able to sit in on both of these ceremonies and gain more knowledge about how different chapters do award ceremonies. It was also great to partake in these events and celebrate with the students on all their hard earned accomplishments.