Born in depression and nurtured in adversity, no more effective teaching tool than the FFA has ever been devised. The FFA is as versatile as the imagination, powerfully motivating, and above all, a common bond among students who have similar interests, backgrounds, goals, and challenges. The only limiting factors are the time and imagination of the advisor.

Your first step in using the FFA as a teaching tool is to "Think Big". Use your imagination, set high goals, and establish high standards. Accept only quality effort and workmanship and adapt your program to the local situation. Above all, the program must be challenging and real. "Mickey Mouse", pseudo situations are the antithesis of good education. Avoid them!

The possibilities are infinite. With color, tradition, ceremony and pageantry, there is an opportunity to develop pride in the organization and a challenge for every activity. Initially, you must develop pride in the organization and, in turn, the individual member. With pride comes confidence and from confidence comes ability and from ability a willingness to explore and accept new problems and situations.

The FFA lends itself to developing a compact, close knit organization which can identify with community issues. Where the advisor is a long tenure teacher, continuity of leadership is provided for continuous implementation of community service projects. In today’s society, this is a valuable asset and seems to develop leadership, community pride, and an awareness on the part of the members that they are an important part of the community.

The potential for incentive and motivation provided through the National FFA Foundation, Inc. and the various awards and contests through the National FFA Organization is awesome to say the least. A case in point is Parliamentary Procedure. A contest provides early motivation for excellence and chapter meetings provide opportunities for continuous improvement and reinforcement. This makes the efforts of our colleagues in Social Studies seem drab and lilliputian by comparison.

With many contests conducted at the State FFA Field Day, held at the University of Arizona, almost every instructional unit taught has some application in at least one of these contests. This causes students to be more attentive, speculate a little and try a little bit harder to gain and retain each little gem of information and competency taught.

Proficiency awards and advanced degrees can be used to cause members to reach a little further and become better adults. Minimum course requirements are easy to meet, but the goal of attaining the State FFA Degree, or even the American FFA Degree, challenges the members to broaden their horizons and become involved in problems and situations which develop real potential.

Group activities such as camping trips, horse shows, rodeos, and Christmas baskets offer a real opportunity to develop leadership ability. Planning, organizing, budgeting time and money, selling and expediting are skills that must be demonstrated here, and perhaps best of all, plain old American stick-to-it-iveness are learned from these large projects. Members learn the reasons for carefully planning, conducting and evaluating activities. They learn that no matter how long a day or how tired they are, the show must be brought to a successful conclusion. They learn that, here, the penalty for a poor performance is not a low mark on a card, but financial catastrophe and a loss of face in the community. They learn to face reality.