WOODBURY — AET are three familiar letters to Woodbury FFA students at Nonnewaug.
The Agricultural Experience Tracker is an online record book where FFA students are required to log their SAE hours, FFA meetings, and FFA credits. It is one of the most crucial responsibilities FFA students have.
AET can be time-consuming and commonly overlooked by students. The ag department at Nonnewaug figures the new Tribe and Focus time on Tuesdays and Fridays will be a useful opportunity to meet deadlines.
“Tribe [and Focus] is going to give us the time we need to make sure students meet their benchmark,” said SAE coordinator Jennifer Jedd. “It dedicates time to make sure that SAE teachers can help along the whole SAE process. This year, we were able to work towards changing our rubric so that students can be more involved with their own grade and self-assessments. We weren’t able to really start that until we had the extra time.”
The period is not strictly limited to AET, but having an extra 35 minutes built into the school day will hopefully improve the lack of completion the program usually experiences.
“I think it’s going to be helpful because I’ll be able to log my hours which I don’t usually have time for,” said senior Thomas Lengyel. “It’s another free period where we are able to get help from our SAE teachers and be with our friends.
Ag instructors want what is best for their students and their grades, so being available during Tribe and Focus could have a big impact this school year.
“I’m already seeing an improvement, with only having two or three Focuses,” said Kathleen Gorman, the agriculture production instructor. “I think the difference is now I was trying to catch up with my students during their classes and now we have a specific time to just work on AET. So students who need to update their hours, give me state paperwork, work on switching SAE’s or other individual needs can get one on one time with me to be successful.”
“It’ll be nice having the time to work on my SAE hours and time in general to do other stuff,” said junior Joey Bernardi. ”It affects my grade when I don’t do it, so I really do need the time to work on it.”
Other students also agree with how helpful the addition of the period is predicted to be this school year.
“I feel like it’s nice for students to have their SAE teachers [during Tribe and Focus] and it makes things a little bit easier,” said senior Ashlynn Graziano. “The teachers sort of give us freedom when it comes to what we do, but they recommend that we think about AET. I think it’s a good addition this year because I’m really bad about logging my SAE hours, and I usually just do it randomly during class so it is nice to have the extra time.”
This addition to Nonnewaug’s schedule has been something SAE instructors have been wanting for years.
“I expect to see a huge improvement in AET this year,” said Jedd. Having tribe and focus is going to be helpful for the students and teachers because students will be able to complete their SAE before the deadline instead of after. This is important for our teachers too because they won’t have to regrade everyone’s AET after they find out they need to fix their grades. For everyone in the program Tribe time is going to get rid of a lot of the problems we’ve had with AET.”
