West Central Valley High School FFA participants made the trek down to Louisville, KY for the 2013 National FFA Convention & Expo last week, and FFA Advisor Jessica Hebert says it was a more than worthwhile experience for her students.

FFAers participated in leadership seminars, workshops and an agriculture industry career fair over the course of the three day event.  Aside from asking them to better their own leadership skills, Hebert also gave her students a unique challenge at this year’s convention.

“They had to find one person from each of the 50 states as well as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and they had to go and interact with a member and get a picture taken with them.  Instead of just going up and saying, ‘hey, I need a picture’, they went up and sparked a conversation with them… All of my 13 kids performed that task.”

Hebert says she was also proud of how the kids from her chapter stepped out of the box and interacted with other chapters that rode with West Central Valley down to Louisville.  As Hebert would say, a large part of being in FFA is interacting with other chapters so you learn new things that you might not already know about the ag industry, and her students certainly did that.

“It was just nice to watch them build those relationships throughout the week, and then as I’ve listened to them this week, they’re texting or Facebooking these kids and keeping up on building those relationships, (which) is really kind of neat to see.”

To hear more about West Central Valley FFA’s trip down to Louisville, tune in to today’s Let’s Talk Guthrie County for our full conversation with Hebert during the 9am, noon and 5 o’clock hours.