By Lauren Schwab
LOUISVILLE – Teach Ag Ambassadors will encourage FFA members to go all out and teach agriculture at the 87th National FFA Convention & Expo.
The National Association of Agricultural Educators developed the National Teach Ag Campaign to bring attention to agricultural education careers, get students thinking about a possible career in agricultural education and support current agriculture teachers in their careers.
The 12 ambassadors met for the first time on Sunday and spent Tuesday setting up the booth in the National FFA Expo in anticipation of meeting FFA members who could be future agriculture teachers.
Ambassadors Taylor Fredrick from the University of Missouri and Emily Reed from Northwest Missouri State University are excited to meet FFA members. “As Teach Ag Ambassadors we are here to promote ag education among FFA members and thank our current ag teachers,” Fredrick said. “I am hoping to encourage students to think about agricultural education as a future career opportunity,” Reed added.
When members visit the booth they will meet with and receive a little owl from one of the ambassadors. The ambassador gets the member’s contact information and then puts the member’s owl in the middle of the booth. The member will then get their own owl to take home and receive the Teach Ag twitter name and hashtag to use. When an ag teacher visits the booth, they can adopt a member’s owl and, with the ambassador’s help, tell the member about careers in ag education. “It’s like adopting a future ag teacher; they can communicate through us to them and tell them what the profession is like,” Reed explained.
Teach Ag T-shirts are available for sale in the FFA Shopping Mall during convention. For more information about the campaign and the Teach Ag Ambassador program, visit www.naae.org/teachag.
National FFA Organization Blog 