National FFA Week: Oak Ridge: Students learn leadership skills in agricultural group

Rich Thomas is in his fourth year as an advisor to the Oak Ridge FFA program. His career includes more than two decades of experience in education, with the past 15 being in agriculture-related courses.

While the assumption could be made that Oak Ridge is a long-time farming community, that isn’t necessarily the case with the high school’s FFA activities.

“We’re kind of a new program, we started in 2018,” Thomas said. “Agriculture education and FFA they kind of go hand in hand. We’re one of the younger programs in the state.”

Thomas said other nearby high schools, Saxony Lutheran and Notre Dame, have also added FFA programs a few years ago.

More than 60 students at Oak Ridge High school are involved in FFA. This is more than of the school’s overall enrollment of about 110 kids.

“The focus is on educating our student body on life after high school,” Thomas said. “We’re trying to prepare them for the real world.”

Career success and personal growth are a couple of areas that receive extra attention.

Anybody that is in ag ed also has supervised agricultural experience (SAE).

“The FFA program is the leadership side of it,” Thomas said. “We encourage everyone that is involved with an agriculture class to participate.”

Thomas estimates that 80-85% of students enrolled in an agricultural-related course at Oak Ridge participate in the FFA club.

The primary agricultural course offered at Oak Ridge includes Ag mechanics.

This is often based on local needs and includes building structures, woodworking, metalworking, Thomas noted.

“It’s basic metal work, learning how to weld, how to grind,” he said. “Farm basics, shop basics you might use in the field. The goal is to get them engaged and involved in the career center.”

Thomas said the idea is to get students interested and those that are interested will hopefully continue on at the Career and Technology Center in Cape Girardeau.

The district offers a class that teaches the basics of growing.

“That’s in the greenhouse working with plants,” he said. Those involved with FFA can take part in leadership classes, speech competitions and sales presentations.

The agriculture course offerings at Oak Ridge also include Ag Science 1 and Ag Science 2, which give students a chance to learn about the basics of farming and other agricultural-related topics. This can lead to taking part in various FFA competitions.

“There are different contests throughout the year,” Thomas said, which can lead to award and scholarship opportunities after high school.

“The fall is fair season,” Thomas said. “There is kind of an ebb and flow to it as the year goes along. We’re pretty agriculture heavy, similar to Meadow Heights with students that have a lot of cattle. Our surrounding landscape lends itself to cattle production.”

Students also own hogs and goats. While a few raise rabbits and other animals, there is more of a focus on cows and calves.

Many of the Oak Ridge FFA students are enrolled in an “Ag Power” course.

“It’s a small engines class,” Thomas said. “It’s getting kids familiar with lawn mower maintenance, fine tuning them, making sure they’re working properly. My students have as much interest in doing hands on stuff than kids in the past.”

Several of the FFA members got their start as 4-H members, Thomas noted.

“They have the same principles and ideas,” Thomas said. “Some of my best FFA students have been 4H members.

They have an understandings of leadership and what an officer does, and being involved in the community. I try to feed off of that.”

A few of the volunteer opportunities FFA students at Oak Ridge take part in throughout the year include: Salvation Army bell ringing, donating to a local food bank, and participating in the annual Wreaths Across America event, which putting out wreaths at local cemeteries each December.

“We try to get the students as well rounded as we can,” Thomas said. “They get a chance to give back, and it gets them involved.”

For students that want to continue on at higher levels, there’s a requirement of 20 hours of community service.

Traveling to conventions (bold)

Students that are a part of FFA have the opportunity to travel to either the national or state convention. The national convention takes places in Indianapolis while the state convention is held in Jefferson City.

“We take students to both the state and national conventions every year,” Thomas said. “We have kids that show animals at livestock competitions.”

This involves traveling to Nebraska or Oklahoma and showing cattle.

There also is the opportunity show animals at nearby agricultural exhibits, including the SEMO District Fair and the East Perry County Fair in Altenburg.

“The biggest thing they take from those experiences, those students build relationships with the people they meet,” Thomas said. “It helps them get out of their comfort zone and grow as an individual.”

Fund-raisers in Oak Ridge include selling fruit and hosting fish fries or pulled pork suppers.

While the selling of fruit was a long-standing tradition, there has been a move to other types of fund-raisers, according to Thomas.

“We’ve shifted away from that,” he said.

In addition to events like a fish fry or a pulled pork supper, there are other smaller scale fund-raisers throughout the year.

“Every school does different things,” Thomas said.

Officers

Each school year, the club elects a slate of officers. At minimum, this includes a president, vice president, treasurer and secretary.

“It depends on the number of students involved in the program,” Thomas said. “It varies with how many juniors and seniors there are and how active the students are.”

Additional leadership posts include reporter, sentinel, chaplain and parliamentarian.

Oak Ridge’s FFA Club has seven officers in 2024-25. Thomas said last year there were 10 officers.

“The competitions are events the kids really enjoy,” Thomas said. “It’s a great opportunity. The focus is on leadership.”