WOODBURY — Nonnewaug’s new schedule leads into more room for opportunities, and the ag department is seizing every chance they get to fit in their Woodbury FFA meetings.
“With the new schedule, we have a slightly shorter time frame in the period,” said Leanne Foster, advisor of Woodbury FFA. “However we have the ability to now have two meetings per month, rather than one. This allows us to have our standard business meeting, and then a more interactive meeting with the possibility of guest speakers from the ag industry. This will be the status quo for the rest of the year.”
Although there are two meetings a month this year, this does not give the officers time to accomplish everything.
“My personal opinion is that there is not enough time whatsoever,” said chapter president Luciano Pedros. “Last year we had an extra 10-20 minutes, and that little bit of extra time definitely helped us a lot. At the last meeting we weren’t able to finish up in time, and it takes us too long to check in member in the beginning of meetings, which cuts into our time for conducting business.”
Many students, from freshmen to seniors, have complained about the two meetings a month taking up their free time.
“I honestly don’t see the point,” said senior Emma Jones. “I understand that the schedule has changed and we have shorter time, but just make room so you could fit the whole meeting into one day and not split it up. It’s weird, because last year I felt like they were more enjoyable. Now I just feel like they’re all over the place, and nobody knows what’s really going on.”
The ag department put a lot of thought into this to make sure students do have Tribe and Focus time per month to accomplish what they need to.
“We wanted to do our meetings during one Tribe period and one Focus period mainly, ” said Foster. “These times allow our students to attend the meetings without missing important information that is happening during Chiefs, and with having Tribe and Focus once per week students still have plenty of time to utilize those periods to catch up on work, speak with teachers, etc.”
Some freshmen agree that this is taking away their work time.
“I personally think it is probably beneficial because we can review more, talk about what needs to happen, and what is happening,” said freshman Brooke Stokes. “On the other side it does take out of our focus and tribes and our other free periods that we use to accomplish other work.”
The additional meeting per month has added some more challenges to the chapter officers even though it is the same amount of time it is two separate meetings to plan.
“It is a bit more stressful because one officer per month has to decide who the guest speaker will be and make a slide and plan for it,” Pedros says. “So it does add extra work for the officer team, but overall we feel like it is worth the work.”
