The Gazette sat down with FFA Advisor Alysha Kientopf this past Monday to recap some of the awesome success that the program has enjoyed lately.
“First of all, I want to say that it’s all about the students,” she said. “They did this! It was their ideas, and their successes that deserve recognition. My job is simple, it’s to give them the support they need to succeed.”
This year was the first year the students had tried anything like the FFA Meals of Hope program.
“This was brand new, and totally student driven,” Kientopf said. “They came to me with this. They wanted to do this, and even had a workable plan to make it happen. So my job was simple, do everything I could to make it happen. We did it, and we were super successful. Seventy-eight volunteers prepared more than 53 thousand meals. We made the nightly news on both KELO and KSFY! Great exposure for our Chapter, for our School and for our community! To say I’m super proud of our students just doesn’t capture the feeling. I am humbled and awed by them, and grateful to all the volunteers who made it possible.”
Though the blood drive had to be postponed because of bad weather that Wednesday, the new date for the event will be Thursday, March 28 from 7:30 am to 10:30 am and 12:00 pm to 2:30 pm at Garretson High School.
The FFA petting zoo, as always, was super popular, and the FFA’s pancake breakfast was also a solid success. “We like the Legion and the Legion likes us,” she said. “We’re pretty certain that we’ll host the event there in the future. It’s easily accessible and the setup and takedown is easy, and we don’t have to worry about conflicting with other events at the school. The Legion is a great community partner for our FFA chapter.”
Now that the hectic activity of FFA Week has died down a bit, Kientopf wanted to share with our readers several other interesting items going on in her classroom and shop.
First of all, is for her prospective welders. “I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not strong in this area, and we have a lot of students that are, with some experience already,” she said. “But we have other students who are not ready to work with live electricity and open flames. Hence we’ve got stations for six virtual welding programs. They aren’t perfect, and Mr. Matt Shrank (technology coordinator) has been helping us work out the kinks, but they’re an exciting hands-on learning tool that can help our students gain practice skills outside of coursework.”
These welding simulators came from a Perkins Resource Grant to augment shop classes in schools. Also because of a partnership with a Briggs & Stratton curriculum, our students get access to 10 Briggs & Stratton engines, with all the textbooks and gadgets that go with them. In the course work, students will be taking them apart piece by piece, seeing how they tick, and putting them back together.
Through a partnership with Harbor Freight, the shop has gotten new or new-to-us tools, updating or replacing old tools; or adding new tools the shop has never had before. With the greenhouse heater currently down, ag experiments have been difficult as well, but because of a USDA cohort grant they’ve gotten both a light cart and new fish tanks to do planting and water experiments.
In short, it’s a good time to be in the FFA program.
“The biggest thing I’ve emphasized to the students since I started is that this is their program, they choose what direction they want to take,” Kientopf said. “All I ask is that they learn both responsibility and respect, and the rest just follows through from there naturally. They might not know or understand all the technical and logistical details, but that’s what they’re here for. To learn by doing, and trying new things.”
