National FFA president attends leadership workshop in Charles City

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

The president visited Charles City on Friday.

No, not the president in Washington, D.C., but National FFA President Breanna Holbert.

Holbert was in town for an FFA leadership workshop at the Floyd County Enrichment Center at the fairgrounds, about a couple thousand miles away from Holbert’s home state of California.

“I love Charles City. It’s a small town and so it’s super-intimate. I’ve loved meeting the students here, it’s so great,” she said. “I enjoy how intimate it is in Iowa. California is huge, and it’s cool to see how here in Iowa, the students everywhere know each other.”

Students from 15 different area FFA chapters attended the event Friday.

Bret Spurgin, Charles City ag teacher and FFA advisor, said it was a pleasant surprise to have the national president show up and lead one of the workshops.

“We applied to have national officers come visit, and when found out we got Breanna, we decided to have a full day with the state officers and have leadership workshops,” Spurgin said.

Holbert presented a workshop entitled, “Prioritizing: The Difference Between a Priority and a Distraction.”

Spurgin said it’s a good way to inspire and motivate area FFA students.

“The students are able to interact with people from other schools and with these national and state officers so they can see that, even though they hold these high positions in the FFA, they’re just regular, normal people like us,” he said. “Hopefully that gives the kids the idea that they can strive for these opportunities as well.”

Holbert said she became involved in FFA her freshman year of high school, and the positive experiences she had in FFA, particularly in FFA Creed public speaking events, helped bring her to the position she now holds.

“Through my involvement in FFA, I found I really had a passion for public speaking,” she said.

This led her to become a state and national officer. She ran against 41 other people from across the country to be elected into the position of president for the 2017-18 school year at 90th National FFA Convention and Expo in Indiana.

“I want to inspire other students from across the country in the same way I was inspired,” she said.

Holbert said that one of her priorities as FFA president is to keep agriculture alive into the next generation and beyond.

“Our vision is growing leaders, building communities and strengthening agriculture. My national officer team has really gone with the strengthening agriculture piece of that vision. We’re focusing on next-generation agriculture. We want urban students and rural students alike to take the responsibility of stewarding agriculture.”

There were other leadership workshops about careers in agriculture, priorities, opportunities and time management.

Spurgin talked about one of the workshops — AGVocate — which instructs FFA members on how to be an advocate for agriculture.

“It’s about spreading the story of agriculture,” he said. “As we know, there are fewer and fewer farms every year, and fewer people understand where their food comes from, so it’s really important that there’s somebody to tell those stories.”

Holbert said coming to places like Iowa has helped her expand her knowledge of agriculture and issues pertaining to agriculture.

“I’m excited to be here in Iowa. I think there are a lot of things that I don’t know,” Holbert said. “One of my mottos is, ‘I don’t know everything, but I can know the people who do.’ Coming to Charles City, I get to understand the people who know how to run a really great program like this one.”

Spurgin said it was good to be able to use the Floyd County Enrichment Center, which was constructed about a year ago.

“This is the type of event this facility was built for,” said Spurgin. “It’s built for the youth — it’s called the Youth Enrichment Center — and this is really the first big FFA event that we’ve had here, so it’s really kind of cool that we’re finally able to do that, and to show it off.”

Spurgin added that he was pleased with the turnout, as many area schools were closed on Good Friday, and so the students could have chosen to simply take the day off, rather than come to the event.

“The kids that are here today, a lot of them are here because they want to be,” he said. “Some of these schools aren’t in session today, so these are kids that wanted to come and to develop these leadership skills and to meet with the state and the national officers.

“I think that’s really important, that these kids want to take their own time to do this.”