Anyone who says planning with your student leadership team is easy and efficient is a master cat herdsman; however, after a few years of experience in this area as an advisor (along with several of my own years as a student) I have established a semi-efficient system that is compatible with the cats that I have the honor of herding.
Each year of planning begins with an afternoon planning session with the officer team during our State Convention. In Texas, we're fortunate that our convention is during the first few weeks of July which makes it an optimal time for planning. While not all of my officers are always able to attend our convention, I do let them all know the approximate time that we will be doing chapter planning so that if they want to be able to FaceTime/Zoom with the team or just make sure they're by their phones to answer any calls or texts the team sends they can. They are also made aware upon being invited to State Convention that a portion of the event includes planning for the year, so if they choose not to attend, they might not be able to provide their input on decisions made by the team. All of that to be said the plans that are made during convention are essentially a rough draft, I will elaborate more on that later!
State Convention Planning
During this planning time we go month by month and set our events and add them to our Google calendar. As we do not have our final Texas event calendar until the end of July I do provide my students with our District, Area, and State events stated as "tentative" until we get the official calendar at the end of July. This provides the officers the opportunity to share their conflicts, whatever they may be, as they might impact the chapter calendar.
Once dates are set for events, we divide events between the officers. Each officer will be responsible for a chapter meeting as well as a day of National FFA week. We divide these, and for some larger meetings (like back to school and the holiday meeting) we assign an assistant officer to help make sure responsibilities are divided equitably between the team. We have one google doc in our officer shared drive stating which officer has what meeting and it is on this doc that they will continue their plans. If you would like my FFA Officer Manual you can purchase your copy here.
After each member is given their meeting that they are responsible for I go over the expectations for the planning of each meeting. When we meet again for our Officer Retreat during back to school PD in August the officers will all come up to the school and work on planning events together (hence convention planning being rough draft plans). Each meeting the officer in charge will plan the theme of the meeting, attire for both the officers and the members (if applicable), set the date of posting for the meeting graphic on social media as well as the date they plan on providing me the graphic they create. Additionally, they have to decide on any snacks, food, or items that need to be purchased for the meeting. Lastly, they should fill in any agenda items they know they should bring up at that meeting. While most of this gets completed at the Officer Retreat in August, I make sure that the required materials are listed on the doc and students know what is expected of them before that time so they can spend time brainstorming if they would like!
The final, and I would argue most important, part of State Convention planning is our chapter t-shirt design. I ask all officers to upload at least one inspiration photo to our team drive before the planning time (even if they don't attend) so that we can pick between the options they have pulled together and alter them to fit the needs of our chapter. Once we decide on how we want our chapter shirts to look I reach out to the company that we use for our shirts and send them the information so that by the time we are at our officer retreat we have a proof from the company and are able to open our online store by the beginning of the school year. It's important that we follow this timeline so that students have the time to purchase a chapter shirt if they want and they can be shipped to the school in time for Agriculture Awareness Day at the State Fair of Texas!
Usually this planning takes a total of two hours. I know... it doesn't seem like a lot of information to go over for two full hours, but like I said... herding cats! However, by taking the time to begin planning during State Convention it makes the planning time during our Officer Retreat go more quickly.
Officer Retreat
As previously mentioned, my students complete their Officer Retreat during the back to school professional development in August. I prefer this as we have all of our dates provided to us by the FFA District, Area, and State as well as our school district. Additionally, I'm actually being paid to be at school that day and I like to take the opportunity to work for free less when I am able. Since we usually have at least one day to work in our classrooms prior to school starting this is generally when I plan on having the students meet at the school for our retreat.
We begin our retreat by doing some bonding over summer activities and a few question games, I usually try to keep this at an hour. Once we've gotten the catching up over it's time to jump into planning. The first thing we go over is any changes to the calendar, the tentative dates that changed are moved and it's the final opportunity for officers to notify me of mandatory events that they should already know of conflicts for (AKA they're expected to pre-plan)! Note: officers are still "allowed" to have other conflicts come up but they should not be pre-existing, other conflicts will follow their officer contract guidelines. With this I also use it as a segue to review their previously signed officer contracts and what is required of them.
With dates behind us, I have students pair off to work on planning their chapter meetings. While they are each responsible for a meeting, I have them work with another officer to plan together to bounce ideas off each other. Usually they spend about an hour completing the google doc and going through our officer workbook and social media for ideas before we take a quick brain/snack break. After returning from this 20-ish minute break we regroup and go over all of the plans everyone made so all of the officers can contribute to help enhance the ideas created and the officers in charge can ask the team if they have things they would like for them to contribute. Generally, this will take us up to our lunch break where we will have lunch together.
When we return from lunch we look over the chapter shirt proof and make sure there are no additional edits that need to be made before finalizing with the company and a few of the officers will make social media graphics and flyers to go around the school to help promote sales. During this time the other officers generally work on putting their officer station back together from the summer and the filling in the bulletin board calendar.
This is when the team generally breaks into groups to complete any additional tasks that we decided on during our time together. This might be changing out the bulletin board in the hall, hanging new banners or awards, or just helping other teachers around the school to help out where needed.
The final requirement before dismissal of the team is the review of quarterly officer requirements. Each grading period our officers switch duties for equitability of efforts, we review what is expected for each duty and what their first quarter duties are as well as where to find their duties in our room. If you would like a copy of my officer job requirements & posters, you can purchase them here. Once all of the items on their checklist is complete, I dismiss them for the day and we're ready to kick off the school year!