Gifft and Merchant discuss recent FFA award
By Shannon McKone on Thursday, December 23rd, 2021 in Northeastern Oregon News Northeastern Oregon Top Stories
BAKER CITY – Bibiana Gifft and Nicole Merchant were recognized earlier this month and awarded with the National Association of Agricultural Educators Outstanding Middle/Secondary School Agricultural Education Program Award. Doug Dalton spoke with Elkhorn Media Group shortly after they received the award, which can be heard here.
Since that time, Bibiana and Nicole have spoken with Elkhorn Media Group themselves to give more detail on the award, what the process was and what FFA does in Baker County.
(Q) Can we start with an introduction from each of you?
(A) I’m Nicole Merchant and I teach half high school agriculture, I do an intro to ag welding class, plant science and then food one semester and ag production in the modern world second semester. And then I also teach the middle school discovery ag classes and then some intro to construction for the middle school, and then I’m one of the FFA Advisors
My name is Bibiana Gifft. I’ve been teaching for 13 years, and I teach mainly the animal science courses and intro to ag with all the freshmen. And then, I also teach an ag business course and the ag leadership and ag management class.
We were able to add the ag business class a couple years ago, which is really exciting, and we’ve had Nicole on for the last four years, so that’s allowed us to add on a lot of these extra classes.
(Q) Recently you both went to New Orleans, Louisiana and accepted the Region 1 Outstanding Middle/Secondary School Agriculture Education Program Award. Can you tell me a little bit about how that process started and let you to you receiving that award?
(A) It all actually started in, I would say, January of 2020. We were nominated by the Eastern Oregon FFA District, and that is comprised of the Union County, Baker County and Wallowa County FFA program. And we were nominated by our district to apply to the state award. So, we applied, filled out a pretty long application for the State Program of the Year Award and then in June of 2020, was a virtual conference. It exciting to win that award. But also, we were like, wait, did we win that, because we found out through a virtual award ceremony, not in person. So, we were awarded Program of the Year for Oregon that June of 2020 Then the following spring we submitted to the national competition and then they judge them across the country based on what region you’re in. We are in the region 1 which has 11 states in it. So, we competed against them.
In our application, we had to highlight our teaching philosophy, the context of our community partnerships, marketing, student leadership, professional development and curriculum instruction that we have in our classes. So, it’s a pretty hefty application and takes a lot of reflecting to get it all put together.
(Q) Now, you mentioned that Region 1 is 11 states. Do you know when the last time Oregon receive that award is?
(A) It’s actually really exciting because we have had other programs in Eastern Oregon receive this in the past. It’s pretty cool to see, not only how competitive our FFA chapters are across the state and the nation, but also to see that out ag teachers and programs in Eastern Oregon are being recognized on a national level. It’s really cool that our FFA district has so much recognition.
(Q) How many students do you have in your FFA programs?
(A) We have almost 300 students in our ag classes that we teach and we’re an affiliate program. So, every student in the ag program is a part of FFA and students can choose how involved they want to be whether they want to do one event or all sorts of events. So, we certainly don’t have everyone doing everything right now, but that’s a goal that we have is to increase engagement but at our last FFA meeting we had five times as many students attend than we have in the last seven years that I’ve been here that’s been exciting.
(Q) Can you share with me some of the different things that FFA does?
(A) There’s lots of different things that we do. We participate in career development events. Which are basically like our contest for kids to take skills that we’re teaching them in the classroom, and they compete with them across the district and state and the nation.
Our thing locally that we’ve done is our drive-thru barbecue in the fall. And then, in the wintertime is when our helping hands barbecue is and we donate half of our proceeds from that to the community or somebody in need. What’s really cool about that program is that I went through this program as a high school student and that’s something that we started when I believe I was a senior and so it’s kind of cool to see how that progressed. Since it started, we have donated $50,000 to the community, which is pretty cool.
We also do Kindergarten Day with the grade school to promote agriculture in the younger grades. We do a lot of different leadership activities. We’ve been working really hard building our local chapter level and providing more opportunities for those students. And I think our next goal is to start getting kids more involved in their SAE projects, which is their Supervised Agricultural Experience where they can start learning and applying more career skills that we teach them in the class and a project of their own.
(Q) If there are kids out there in the school district that are curious about becoming part of the FFA. Maybe they hear this and realize that maybe there’s something for them. How do they go about becoming a part of the FFA?
(A) The key thing to joining FFA is they have to have an agriculture class. It only needs to be a semester long, but it’s actual Federal Law that kids have to be in an agriculture class. So, in a class taught by Bibiana or myself. And then from there, their FFA membership starts and then they can be involved as much as they want to.
Like we said earlier, we have some kids that just do one thing and then we have some kids that try to do as much as possible and there’s really something for everybody in FFA. And like I tell my students, you know, if you ate today, you got dressed today and you have a roof over your head, then you’re touched by Agriculture and it’s important to know what it does for your life.
(Q) Anything else about the award or the program that you wanted to highlight? (A) I think the biggest thing is that if it weren’t for this community that we live in, and for our students and everybody’s hard work from volunteers that support of our school and the staff as well as our administrators. If it weren’t for that, our program wouldn’t be what it is. It’s pretty amazing to see how it’s grown and changed just in the past four years that I’ve been here but comparing it to what it was when I was in high school and then my dad also went through the program and just seeing how it’s changed it’s pretty incredible that it is where it is.
