Engagement & Involvement

I'm Brian Myers. I'm Mike Ratowick. I'm Becky Hiddad. And this is Al pellets, a podcast featuring tips for ag teachers.

We are your agricultural education resource across the web, sharing research based tips and tackling the tough questions facing agriculture teachers every day. Hello everyone and welcome to Al pellets tips for ag teachers podcast. We are excited that each of you are here with us again today. This is Brian with Becky and Mike and we are here by the al pellet and today we are excited to have with us, Steven McBride, Steven welcome to ag pal pellets.

Glad to be here. Thanks for the invite and excited to have a conversation with you about some of the findings of our research. Excellent. Well, to get things started here, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?

I would love to. So I'm Steven McBride. I'm currently working at Purdue University as their assistant director of graduate student success in the College of Engineering. So a lot of things that I focus on are student retention and also engagement with the university, but mainly preparing for life after their degree and getting ready for their future careers.

So a lot of the background that I have in agriculture education prepares me to help students. So I love to do research in that space and to help students and teachers be able to connect on things that maybe they haven't thought of before. And before I came up here to Purdue to do a PhD, which I earned last year, I was an insurance agent in the state of Tennessee where I'm from and then very involved in FFA back in the day. Eight years ago, I was, I guess nine years ago now goodness, I was a national officer on the 2014 15 team and before that I was a state officer in the state of Tennessee.

So passionate about FFA, loving able to hang out with ag teachers and to do research in this space as well. Nine years is like last week. It's all about perspective. It's all about perspective.

He says he for yourself. He's it now. I really appreciate there. You talk about life after the degree and I really appreciate your work.

And your passion in there. And so we can talk all about that as well. But that is not necessarily the topic for today. So Stephen, give us an overview of the topic for our conversation.

Yeah. So while I've been here at Purdue, I've had such a blessing to be able to do research with the National FFA organization to evaluate various programs and also to be able to think about how we can engage students on deeper levels. And one of the bigger projects that I was on that became this research study focusing on students in urban FFA chapters was it was actually a large study about the comparison between some of the barriers to involvement or some of the activities that students in the most remotes chapters across the nation and in the most heavily populated areas as well to compare and contrast. So as part of that study, one of the deeper findings in that that wasn't published in this paper was the fact that it's tough to do studies with some of our most remote chapters.

So the way that we were able to identify these, we had every single chapter listed across the nation with their zip code and then use the NCES data for their locations to see who was in the most heavily populated areas and who was in the most remote areas across the US kind of split those into and then reached out to chapters for a study like this. And some of those remote chapters of their challenges are related to just basic technology to be able to do an online survey like this, but also just the engagement of we can't do as many things as our chapter may not be as big or maybe we're far away from the nearest town that might have some of the engagement that we're talking about on some of these other projects. So that was interesting to go through on that on the rural side of things. But we spent the most time on that became this study that was published in the Journal of Ag ed was related to those urban chapters.

And these are in, we reached out to 31 chapters that are in the most densely populated areas in the United States and some of our large cities. And we're able to get some responses back from those chapters and see what their levels of involvement are. How are these students engaging? That are maybe the farthest away from traditional agriculture communities.

So how are they connecting and what are their interests? And it was a lot of fun to be able to do that and be able to understand more about their involvement in general. But because I've been on some of these studies while I was here at Purdue trying to figure out how we can measure involvement, this time we really revamped that type of tool that we used on how are we engaging students and teachers in this study and what does involvement look like. And this time that was defined more by not just who has done the most, but who has done the most types of things?

How many students are getting involved? Is it just our rock star members that are doing everything under the sun? And now they're considered somebody who's very involved? Or are we redefining what involvement is by going to meetings being, you know, maybe somebody who's not a leader, necessarily maybe not a chapter officer, but still attending a lot, still participating in doing those things.

So that was fun getting to develop that and then see how students in these urban chapters are getting together. But that's just a brief overview of how this study came to be and really trying to see what the implications are for our urban FFA chapter students. Those are in the largest communities in the US. How are they involved and what does their involvement look like in the National FFA organization?

So I'm really fascinated with that involvement and engagement piece and not just focusing on like who do we see? And so if you would be willing to speak a little bit more to kind of that, that's seeing and that like, what does this look like when it's not just the officer, like the ones that we're going to see at stake, once we're going to go on all the trips, what does it look like to really be involved and engaged, especially in an urban ag community? What does that look like? Yeah.

So, you know, if you think about how studies are typically done in this space, not even just in the ag ed type of JAE studies that have been done in general, ag ed, but just any type of involvement is who's doing the most and who's getting the most out of it. If we're talking about sports, who is the captain of the team, who's gone and played the most tournaments and things like that. And where that's fair, we might get a taste of involvement that really doesn't tell us about some of the other students. So, as we tried to look at what involvement was, we had a lot of different categories that were involved in this study.

And so the template that we used, we were asking, you know, for instance, a chapter meeting, what did your involvement look like at that chapter meeting? Did you just attend and leave? Did you come early and help set up attend, stay to the end and help clean up? Were you an officer that was part of the program and the agenda for that meeting?

Or were you somebody who not only got there early but also helped set up, led the meeting, engaged with the students that were there, stayed after, also helped clean up, and also was planned on for the next meeting? Like, what, there's more to look at than just, you know, I attended a meeting. What type of attendance? And the same thing can go for the events that they do, the LDEs and CDEs, if they had a proficiency.

All these type of things are, are we just doing it to check a box or how much work did we actually put into this? If we're talking about LDEs, for instance, one of the questions that we had was, you know, think about the one that you were most passionate about. What did that look like? You just kind of practice for it during the school day with your team or whatever?

Or was this something that you were just so passionate about that every way, he meant you were thinking about it, practicing it, talking about it with your fellow chapter members, because that tells us a little bit more about your involvement than just, I did an LDE. It tells us that, you know, not only for this leadership development event, I was so passionate about it that I really spent all my time in it. It really doesn't matter if I took it all the way to the national level or not. It's how involved was I in that event, even if I never even made it out of my district level or even the chapter level.

And so thinking about that in this realm gave us a deeper insight to what involvement looks like and that's something that I think was needed in a study like this and something that gave us more information on the types of involvement that students had, whereas previously the types of studies that we did was, well, how many CDEs did you do? How many events did you go to? And that tells us information, but it doesn't really tell us how connected they were and how involved that they were. We give some permission for teachers out there to think about this a little bit differently instead of just how many things did I get my kids do?

How much did we do? It's really a lot. How much did we do well and how many students got to be involved at a passionate level? Like we get so intimidated by just the amount of stuff that we kind of forget who were serving through all that stuff.

Exactly. And I think that's such a good point to reiterate here. If I'm an ag teacher and I'm thinking about my program, maybe in comparison with the one across the county from us and we're both competitive in a lot of these events and we both have this little rivalry going, are the students that are participating the same ones? Do we have our amazing members that are our officer team, that are just our go-getters that we know we're going to go and be successful in the world?

And to be honest, even if they didn't have FFA as an outlet, they would probably be successful because they just have that drive and enthusiasm in their personality. Are we taking those students, letting them be our officer team and also letting them do Parliament's procedure, livestock judging everything? And these students are taking everything to the state level and going to the national level as well and they are just absolutely rock stars. Or are we thinking about, I have this one team here, we have this other group of students that maybe they're never going to be an officer, but man, they are really coachable and really love working with them.

Do I have five or six teams of students from my chapter that are participating in different events and maybe hardly any of them are doing more than one because we're spreading it out? When you think about that, that's giving us a deeper level of involvement with those students and those students are more engaged than the ones who are just those rock stars and then everybody else out to pasture. And I know that's difficult. If I was an ag teacher right now, I'd be like, well, what am I supposed to do with my rock stars?

Am I supposed to just not let them be engaged in everything that they want to do? Well, there's a happy medium there. I think we let the students kind of dictate what they want to do, but we also don't need to lean on just this one group for everything when we have other students that have potential that we really want to pull out of them. And a lot of ag teachers do a great job of that.

Maybe some of our other teachers that are either new or maybe haven't thought about this or maybe are in a smaller chapter and go from what they are used to. You might learn that there are different ways of thinking about this to get higher levels of involvement and deeper engagement with our whole chapter and not just a handful of really amazing students anyway. This makes me think about the mission of the FFA organization, developing potential for a career, success, personal growth and leadership, but at a different level. Take a lot of time as ag teachers.

We're thinking about programmatic level. We're kind of what the Becky was saying. We're worried about counting the number of awards, the number of teams and all those kind of things. But what I hear you saying is taking it down to the individual level and how do we help develop individuals for them to move forward in their role and kind of continue to grow, start with where they're at and see that growth.

And that growth is going to look different for each individual. So I think there's a lot of merit in rethinking and giving some kind of thought to what that might look like. Absolutely. And I think that's probably the if you get nothing else out of this outlet stock, that's probably the biggest thing is how do we get everybody engaged as much as possible?

One of my favorite things and when I was a member and we only had less than 500,000 members as a freshman and now we have so many more hundreds of thousand members in that is getting 100% membership, getting all of our students involved and having more ways to build our organization. But the flip side of that that I know some of you've already thought of is does it really matter if we have all these members, if we still are engaging with such a low percentage of them, does it matter that we're getting close to a million members overall, if we only have less than 10,000 that are super engaged with the organization and really living out that mission. So what I would implore all of my friends that are ag teachers and everybody else, how can we if we are getting such a larger membership, how can we engage those members? How can we continue to have it be something of pride?

I was in FFA. Well, what does that even mean to you? I don't know. I took an ag class and I guess I was in FFA or I was involved in this organization that really changed my life because it was able to help me as a student connect and engage with things that prepared me for my future, help me be the best person that I can be.

And I think that's the most important takeaway from something like this. I'll just go with my own life here, my family, very involved in FFA, very passionate about it. It all comes from my dad's involvement in the state of Tennessee. My brothers and I, we would go to our state convention since way before we were old enough to be members and just be enamored with everything going on in the state of Tennessee.

Dad heavily involved in the alumni in our state's foundation. He was a past state president in Tennessee and then me and my oldest brother were both state presidents as well. So that was really just a cool fun fact. But none of that really would have happened because my dad is the shyest person in the classroom back of the room.

Don't want to talk to you at all. Rather you not even look at me and let me go about my business. And that's how he was for all of the first few years of high school until his senior year. He had one of his friends, really his best friend Greg, hold him under his wings.

Say, Hey, we're doing officer elections and you're going to be elected to an officer position. I don't want to do that. What are you talking about? I don't want to do that.

I don't even like talking to people. How am I going to be an officer and they rigged the chapter election and got him elected to an officer position because they said we have any nominations and they said we want Mark and then do we have another and they just elected him that way and made him do that. The next semester, his teacher said you're going to do prepared public speaking. I don't like talking in front of the class much less anywhere else.

I'm not going to do prepared public speaking. And he's like, yeah, you're going to do it. Well, we think about how cold it is when we're recording this podcast right now. It's about 10 degrees where I am.

Well, intensity that year there was a blizzard among blizzards. Nobody's ever had one since then in 1978 or whatever year it was. And they were out of school for 21 days. And for the first 15 days, my dad did nothing.

And then he got bored and he wrote a speech and he came back and he was like, okay, I'll do the contest. I'm going to get in the state, decided the next year to run for a state office position, didn't get it, ran again the next time and got elected a state president. Just a really cool story of somebody all the way to the end that waited, didn't really want to be involved, but had other people in his chapter as advisor, had his friends there that were on the officer team that encouraged him, saw his own potential, changed his entire life and trajectory. But also that was something that had a generational impact for my brothers and me.

And I think that's something that's important for all of our ag teachers to take away is, are we doing what we need to do for the students that we see potential in them? How can we encourage them to get involved? Are we passionate enough about this organization and what it could do for every student in our classroom to try to connect even the shyest one in the back of the room? And if so, what types of steps can we take to get them involved?

And a study like this, I think has some insight into that and some takeaways for ag teachers as well. This is a great topic here to be thinking about it. And I guess, Steven, I would love to get your ideas and think about what kind of language can we suggest that teachers use when they're communicating about this idea of involvement with the other folks? Because I think back of a time, okay, so I know that regardless of what the competitive that was, we could name at least three, probably four of the five participants that would come from a particular chapter.

I mean, every single time. And the reason it was is they were dang good and they want and they did things and they were sharp folks to do that. But I also know other cases to where you had folks that go through and they're like, hey, we're going to be encouraging folks and we're going to be spreading this out to really push people to grow and that longer term investment. How do we help teachers have that conversation with their administrator, with their parents, with their alumni as they're thinking about the idea of involvement and engaging across their chapters?

That's such a good question because I think that's the more difficult things is how do we have those conversations. And there's a few different steps here that I'll offer that I teachers could consider. The first of which is related to sports. Maybe we have some of those students that are involved in different sports teams at the high school level and they aren't participating in FFA because they have these other responsibilities and maybe they would get a lot of out of the organization.

Some schools have engaged in an all presidents club where they have all the captains of the sports teams, all the presidents of each organization in the school where they'll meet regularly just to go over the calendar of events so that they're not double booking things, not pulling students away from opportunities. And if we're planning to have this chapter meeting at this time, but that would not work for a large group of our potential students that could come, maybe we change our chapter meeting date and evaluate what types of events that we really want them to come to. If we want them to be engaged in our state convention or some of our regional events that we have, then make sure that those are understood on the calendar. So that's one way to get those students who might have been interested, but their reason is, well, I've got these other commitments.

Another way is to see how we can learn about the students' interest and what types of things that they want to do and connect them individually with some programs with certain types of SAEs, certain types of LDEs and CDEs that might help them get there. So being able to understand in an evaluation at the beginning of the school year, what do you really want to do after we're done here with school? What's that next step for you? And then being able to use that to connect them with some of our other events.

That's also one of the things that I think the organization and some of our state associations can consider. Do our events cater to the interest of our students in the 2020s now? Are they outdated in any type of way? Or are there new ones that need to be added?

How can we make a consideration for that? So maybe understanding from those evaluations from the students what their interests are? How can we add more if there's a gap? And then also, it's such a difficult job to be an ag teacher and have all these responsibilities and try to stay relevant with the students and try to meet all the requirements of my school and my state association and what the national organization wants me to do.

How do I juggle all that, especially if I'm a new teacher and very overwhelmed? What am I supposed to get out of these types of things? Well, we have things like the National Teacher Ambassador Program that can help engage teachers in deeper levels of training, be able to connect more with some of the resources that exist across the nation, and be able to be a peer mentor and mentee to some of those teachers that are having maybe similar challenges to their work life. And then we also have some of the ways that in our state association, we have other teachers that have been there and done that.

And so being able to have those conversations and say, how are you engaging with the members in your chapter? Or I'm having this challenge here and never be afraid as an ag teacher to ask for assistance and advice, especially from those that have been doing it for a long time, but also those that have not been doing it much longer than you have, to be able to see what types of ideas do we have and how can we engage those larger numbers of students? But some of those ways to be able to engage in and know where the students are coming from and also be able to spot some of that potential and have those conversations with parents and maybe encourage them to be more involved than just the rock stars. I don't want to say that if you have somebody who's just a great potential student that could just take everything and run with it, that we should not let them have those opportunities.

I don't want that to be the takeaway. I just want us to think a little bit deeper on who else could be involved and how else can we gather them in to this great organization and be able to help them get the rest out of the mission like everybody else. I think that who else question is just so critical because that's not just a question for our students. I certainly question in our classrooms and for our students.

But I think as we think about our purpose in communities and we think about who else can help, who else can do that to have that kind of involvement that you're talking about, that kind of involvement engagement, that's too big a job for one person to do really well. And so when we think about that, who else are we? We're going to the table and we think about who else knows these kids really, really well. I think that's something that we forget that in our role in the classroom, we maybe don't know our students as well as maybe who they're working for in their SAE or who they're engaged within the community that can really know what makes that kid tick that can really cue into some of those things in terms of that involvement and engagement.

That it's not just this thing to put on one person. That's a big, big team effort to really engage kids that way. Yeah. And I would say a takeaway related to how do we get others involved are use our rock stars to help us with that.

If they are already doing everything, if they're the Greg, like my previous story about my dad's buddy, if they're already the one that's doing everything available to them, how can they bring their friends under their wings and encourage them to be involved? Are they having those conversations with those that they're in class with, even outside of the ag classes, to be able to get them interested in some of these events, to do a judging team with them, to hop on this LDE with them? Are they bringing others under their wings and doing the outreach and engagement as well? Because we, that should not just be the ag teacher and the parents that are helping students get involved.

It should really be those rock star students that are also sharing their knowledge with others. I take a lot of pride in my own chapter and being able to see the potential in some of my fellow members. I think it probably came from my relationship with my dad's buddy, Greg, who's been a good mentor to me as well, to be able to see how can we get these other friends of mine involved. I'll be brutally honest, if you're a student whose only focus is being a rock star and getting everything, every accolade, an FFA and going to the very top and you want to be this big officer physician, you're going to have a very difficult time getting elected to a top position in this organization.

If you don't have that ability to talk with your fellow students and engage with them on a deeper level, if you're only looking at what your own potential is and you're only being able to see, oh, I did this and I got to do these events and contests. I took them all the way and I won all these awards and accolades, but I never really helped my fellow students out and never shared my own knowledge. That selfishness in many ways is going to keep you from being somebody that is electable at a higher position because what we want in our officers is somebody who's relatable to our students who can mentor our students and help see the potential in our students and maybe they don't see it themselves. That's one thing that we can also lean on.

If we see our rock stars that are also not helping out their fellow chapter members and being a good fellow student as well, that's one challenge you can give them of saying, hey, I know that you have these goals and aspirations as well, but I want to challenge you to try to do as much as you can here in the chapter to engage with your fellow members because if you're unable to develop those skills now, it's going to be more difficult for you to pretend that you have those skills when you're in an officer interview someday. That's just me being honest with everybody. Well, and that is a great bit of advice from there. Stephen, we've really enjoyed this conversation.

I hope folks are really understanding and really thinking about this idea of involvement over just participation and really looking about how you're engaging all the students and all the members of your chapters and schools. Just a great conversation starter. Hopefully, teachers are talking about this with their colleagues, especially as we move more and more states to 100% affiliation. What does that mean?

Is there a difference between just kind of persons that I think remember or not? And so, encourage their mic to read the paper, engage with us on social media, have conversations with your colleagues around this. Stephen McBride, thank you so much for being with us here today on Out pellets, tips for Ag teachers podcast. Thank you all so much for having me.

It's been a lot of fun. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Out pellets. Check out our website for more information on this topic and to learn more about our guests. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, just stay connected and be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never miss an episode.

For Mike and Becky, this is Brian here by The Out pellets saying thank you and we look forward to seeing you again on another episode of Out pellets, tips for Ag teachers.