\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0It is banquet season.\u00a0 Academic banquet, sports banquet, music banquet and of course, the FFA banquet.\u00a0 Throw in an elementary awards assembly, a middle school awards assembly and a high school awards assembly.\u00a0 People get sick of sitting through awards ceremonies.\u00a0 Plus, graduation is looming next.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 There are only a few things that attendees truly care about when attending a FFA banquet.<\/p>\n
1–Did the officers know their parts and did the kids look sharp in official FFA dress?\u00a0 \u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n
2–Was the meal good?\u00a0 Yes.<\/p>\n
3–How long did it take?\u00a0 Tonight was 58 minutes from gavel to gavel.\u00a0 New personal record.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The majority truly don’t care who wins which award.\u00a0 They are interested but it isn’t a priority.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I’m not much of a banquet-type of person.\u00a0 And the longer that I have taught, I have developed my own set of rules for the FFA banquet.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Decorations–limited.\u00a0 Waste of time and money.\u00a0 In all honesty, only a few mothers care about the decorations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Awards–hit the high notes.\u00a0 Not every kid needs an award or a certificate.\u00a0 Get the big ones announced, make it worthwhile and give the others something to shoot for next year.\u00a0 Never be afraid to give more than one of the same.\u00a0 For example, if you have two bad-ass freshman, give two star greenhand awards.\u00a0 Plaques are cheap.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Slide shows\/videos–Keep it under 5 minutes.\u00a0 Upbeat, cool music (of course).\u00a0 Let the kids make the video, let them play it and let the advisor advise (give guidance and approve the final product).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Statistics–This is where most coaches screw up and make an athletic banquet drag on.\u00a0 If you want stats, pull them up online.\u00a0 Likewise, an ag teacher doesn’t need to talk about every win, community service project or high salesman.\u00a0 If the chapter reporter has done their job throughout the year, the people already know who did what.\u00a0 Hit the high notes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Time–One hour and 15 minutes.\u00a0 That is how long a banquet needs to last.\u00a0 That includes the meal.\u00a0 Opening ceremonies, invocation, then send everybody through the meal line and as soon as the last person is seated, start the video.\u00a0 People can eat while watching a video.\u00a0 Once you start nearing an hour & 30 minutes, attendees start getting restless.\u00a0 \u00a0–No guest speaker.\u00a0 They take up too much time, cost money and in the end, nobody really wanted another speaker.\u00a0 Attendees are there to see the kids.\u00a0 If you want to see a good guest speaker, go to State FFA Convention or fire up some youtube videos.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meal–high quality meat items, some sides, some bread and some desserts.\u00a0 \u00a0Tonight was smoked brisket, smoked bologna and smoked Blue & Gold sausage.\u00a0 Some corn and beans for sides along with some rolls.\u00a0 Then cookies and cupcakes.\u00a0 Nobody cares about the sides, the bread or the desserts if you have top shelf meat.\u00a0 We are carnivores.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Practice–don’t just tell the kids to know their parts, practice until you know for sure that they know their parts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0For the Shattuck FFA banquet, I took care of cooking and preparing the meal.\u00a0 Mrs. Abbey took care of making the plaques.\u00a0 Laser etched wood that looked really cool.\u00a0 This is a good arrangement, because if the roles were reversed and I was in charge of awards and Mrs. Abbey was in charge of the meal…..well, the kids would get a sticky note with some illegible scribbles on it and we would have eaten store-bought PB&J sandwiches.\u00a0 By both ag teachers putting in a lot of effort, it saves the chapter a pile of cash.\u00a0 As a side benefit, the kids like knowing that their teachers put in the effort.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I’m not saying that we have the best banquets ever.\u00a0 Some communities WANT a big production…it is tradition.\u00a0 That’s great.\u00a0 But, I do enjoy parents coming up at the conclusion of another FFA banquet and saying, “I wish that you would teach the coaches how to do a banquet. ”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another FFA banquet in the books.\u00a0 Have a good one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0It is banquet season.\u00a0 Academic banquet, sports banquet, music banquet and of course, the FFA banquet.\u00a0 Throw in an elementary awards assembly, a middle school awards assembly and a high school awards assembly.\u00a0 People get sick of sitting through awards ceremonies.\u00a0 Plus, graduation is looming next.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4359"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4387,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4359\/revisions\/4387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kellnlivestock.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}