Crockett FFA Wins State Awards
By Greg Ritchie
Messenger Reporter
Above photo: Crockett High School FFA State Champions in School Based Enterprise for rabbits Sherlyn Garcia, Diana Gomez and Mia Davis
CROCKETT – Crockett Independent School District (CISD) FFA members won two more state titles following the State FFA Convention, for rabbitry and service learning.
With the impact of Beryl in Houston Texas the week of the State FFA Convention, interviews for the state finalist were postponed. After the interviews, the following students were crowned this year’s State Champions:
Diana Gomez, Mia Davis, and Sherlyn Garcia won the State contest in School Based Enterprise for their participation in Bulldog Rabbitry.
Ayriel Parker and Jennifer Mendez won the State contest in Service Learning for their participation in the Bulldog Buddies Program.
Crockett Ag Teacher Cassie Morrison always knew she wanted to be a teacher and thought about coaching, too. That is, until she took her first ag class, fell in love with it, and decided on the spot she would be an ag teacher. Working in education for the last 11 years, Morrison has taught ag in Crockett for four years.
Working with the kids on floral projects and principles of ag, Morrison said the program has benefitted from how the school and the kids have worked together to make the program so successful.
“We have a really good dynamic between the teachers, the students and the administration at Crockett. So, it works really well. We all teach different things,” Morrison said. “A lot of people think mostly about students showing animals, and that’s what they think FFA is about. But our program is not set up like that. Of course, if we have students that want to show animals, we are going to help them with that, because that is part of being an FFA member, but our program is geared more towards the school district providing opportunities for students.”
Morrison said CISD has geared their program more to practical knowledge, with an emphasis on CDE’s, career and learning development events.
“Our program is very different from most in the county. We offer every single CDE that is available to students. We train 14 different teams when it comes to CDE. We do all of the FFA speaking contests,” Morrison explained. “We start working up to them applying for awards, degrees and scholarships and all of those things.”
The Messenger has reported previously on the young ladies in the rabbitry program, applauded for their dedication, showing up to care for the rabbits early in the morning, late at night and on weekends.
“They really are just so dedicated and they are so in love with the program,” Morrison noted. “They can see the growth because they’re the student leaders of the program. I am always there to help, but they do all of the work themselves. They just finished their sophomore year, so they’re going to be juniors. And they started this. They actually started the program when they were in eighth grade.”
The team had to keep records of their care of the rabbits and in the competition, answer detailed questions about the project. The judges can quickly tell which groups actually did the hard work and know their stuff and the Crockett kids must have proven that beyond a doubt, leading them to take the state title.
The other title was won for service learning, which is less about ag business and more to do with service and helping those around them.
“It’s all about service. For their project, they actually started the program when they were in eighth grade. They go to the elementary school at least once a week and they work with students after school, helping with reading comprehension skills in our elementary school,” Morrison said. “It’s not just about teaching them to read, which obviously is an important skill, but about gaining that confidence in yourself to read and about building relationships with those students.”
Since Beryl affected the Houston area, that meant the kids weren’t able to walk across a stage and get their awards quite how they expected, the students, however, were still proud of their well-earned victories.
The Messenger joins CISD and the community in congratulating these hard working future leaders, who have shown once again, such hard work and dedication will always lead to great things.
Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]
