News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Cookeville High School FFA has been recognized as an outstanding chapter in Middle Tennessee.
Greenhouse Instructor Jason Dossett said this recognition shows just how hard students worked over the last year. Dossett said that despite the pandemic, students found a way to make a community impact.
“We actually got to do a reforestation project,” Dossett said. “We planted some trees to repopulate some forest area and that was a really good time. Our students make an impact here at our school, they’re very active and very visible.”
Animal Science Teacher Danielle Johnson said the group pushes annually toward the cutting edge of agriculture. The goal for students this year is to simply have a normal year, visiting the national conventions and connecting with agriculture leaders across the state.
“We’re really pushing them into all the different directions that agriculture can go,” Johnson said. “Agriculture has changed so much over the course of the last 50 years. We used to say it was cows, sows and plows and we’ve really gotten away from that. You know, anything from being able to fly drones, running a greenhouse or running an agrobusiness of any sort right now is definitely the direction we’re pushing students.”
Johnson said students start learning to apply these skills outside the classroom early on. She said this is called the circle model.
“Each one of our students are encouraged to have a supervised agriculture experience,” Johnson said. “That could be anything from learning to grow a garden, from taking care of a pet at home, to raising 100 head of cattle.”
Both teachers said the students truly deserve this recognition for continuing to work hard during a year when COVID shut the door on many opportunities. They said the students deserve a normal year with the full FFA experience they’ve worked towards.
