Impact Presentation: Woodbury FFA Alumni

On Tuesday, September 9th, I had the opportunity to present to members of our Woodbury FFA Alumni and Parent Support Group.  This organization consists of primarily current student's parents, some of which are graduates of our ag program, as well as recent graduates, and a former ag program director.  Also in attendance were a few current students, who attended along with their parents, and my fellow agriscience teaching staff. In total, there were approximately 50 people in attendance.

I modified the previous presentations that I have done for our faculty and staff and UConn student teachers in order to target this particular audience.  I tried to focus more on the community based involvement that we witnessed at Suwon, as well as the examples of the recent alumni of their programs coming back to teach students skills in the evening.

Unlike the previous presentations, I did not get a lot of questions.  It might have been that it was about 8:20pm when I started to present.  One question that did stand out what the following:

Were you able to ask the community members who were volunteering their time at the schools why they chose to spend that time in the school?  What benefit did they feel that they were gaining by involving themselves with the education of the students?

I thought this was a great question, but I didn't feel as though I had really asked these community members this question myself.  I attributed their desire to be involved with the students as part of jeong, which is the very classic "Korean notion of caring for others and putting others before oneself."  You can read more about jeong, here.