Members of the Riverbank High School FFA won second and third place honors at the Stanislaus-Tuolumne Section FFA Leadership contest held recently at Enochs High School. There were 11 schools from Modesto, Oakdale, and the Sonora area that participated in the event and Riverbank had a large contingent of FFA members on hand for the competition.
“I am so proud of how they did because we had one of the largest groups in attendance and Riverbank has not competed in this way in many years,” stated Riverbank High School Ag Instructor Isaac Robles.
Students Clayton Walen, Christian Bolanos, Zaira Romo, Hector Sanchez, Arlene Castillo, Yoselin Palmerin, and Jaisen Albor won second place in Best Informed Greenhand Team and Kevin Snyder won third place individual in the Impromptu Public Speaking.
According to the California Agricultural Teachers’ Association (CATA), the objective of the Best Informed Greenhand contest is to understand the aims, purposes, history, and structure of the Local, State, and National FFA student organizations and know the opportunities it makes available as referenced in the current National FFA Manual and State Constitution.
Only first year FFA members can compete in the Greenhand Team contest and the members must complete a test on their FFA knowledge.
The students have been preparing for the contest for the past couple of months.
Impromptu speaking is a contest where each contestant is given a minute and a half to study randomly selected topics on agriculture or the FFA and give a one to two minute speech on that topic.
The CATA states that the purpose of the Impromptu Public Speaking Career Development Event is to foster and develop the speaking abilities of FFA members as well as develop their self-confidence and contribute to their advancement in inter-personal skill attainment and leadership development. The intention of the Impromptu Contest is to offer a more realistic, practical speaking contest to better prepare students for public statements, media coverage, and general questions about the FFA and Agriculture Industry. Students will develop the valuable speaking skills necessary to be professional, competent public representatives of the FFA Organization and Agriculture Industry, leaders indicated.
The primary purpose of the event is to demonstrate the student’s ability with limited preparation time to compose and deliver coherent and focused oral presentations.
Snyder will be competing at the Central Region FFA Public Speaking Contest in Galt today, Wednesday, Feb. 12 due to placing in the top four at the previous FFA Sections at Enochs.
The RHS FFA group has been very active and are preparing for a competition later this spring.
The contest will involve the FFA Career Development Events in the areas of Livestock Judging, Ag Welding, Dairy Product evaluations and BIG (Best Informed Greenhand).
The events will be held at various agriculture universities and community colleges throughout the state of California.
