Golden Opportunity
By LILY VILLA and ALYSSA FUENTES
Tower News
The Greenhand Conference is an event hosted by the Manteca Unified School District each September for freshmen curious about agricultural opportunities.
“It is designed to explain to them their role in the organization, what ag classes can do for them, what ag classes are like, how it surrounds the community, and how to get involved in their school,” said Chris Livengood, a shop and agricultural teacher at Manteca High School.
To prepare students for this conference, Livengood goes over first-year member duties and information in class, and the conference elaborates on how to get involved.
Furthermore, the conference is meant to emphasize the opportunities MUSD schools offer, piquing the interest of its students. Most schools around the district have two Agriculture teachers. However, East Union and Manteca high schools have four. This allows teachers like Livengood and the others to help students get involved in the more comprehensive programs offered through the agricultural department. Students can venture into different pathways in agriculture, including mechanics, animal science, and plant science.
The hope is that when they leave high school, they’ll have acquired specialized skills and experiences that can help them with their career or college path. These skills include: working as a team, raising animals, raising a garden, and building with wood.
In addition, there are student presenters who have been in Agriculture classes for three to four years that volunteer to direct the conference activities and groups. Their role as presenters of the Greenhand Conference is indispensable to the success of the Ag and FFA programs.
“We had a schedule and had five workshop rotations which each of the five schools is responsible for putting on, ours was connecting FFA to the real world,” said Manteca High student Aria Serpa, one of the student presenters at the conference.
“We had three people, and each person was split and had groups of 16 kids.”
Students who choose to participate in this conference come from variety of different schools to socialize and build their confidence to try new things in an unfamiliar setting. When you get involved, you participate in the numerous activities, among them CDE teams, speaking competitions, raising animals, and playing games.
Through these activities, students get to know each other and feel comfortable speaking to new people. This is an essential skill for working with others in a professional or informal setting. In the real world, jobs require you to work with others. The presenters aim to remove nervousness among students when it comes to socializing. The overall goal of presenters is to help new members find their place in Agriculture directing them into a path based off their interests.
When asked about his contribution to helping the students, Manteca High’s Grayson Roman said: “I did a little poster about skills that are essential or something that they are good at. I recognized those skills because they are good at it and try to match them to something that they might like.”
The main objective is to help students plan for their future by discovering their interests, developing skills, learning, and gaining experience. The conference introduces a new interactive space for students to work hands-on with skills they have been learning in class and applying them into the real world. Beyond developing skills, students can then incorporate them in resumes, college applications, internships, and volunteering.
The Greenhand Conference serves as an extra hand for students who want to be successful. It provides a broad variety of opportunities within agriculture to assure that students find a specialized field they’re interested in. They learn to adapt to a new atmosphere as well as reacting to scenarios and group interactions that they can use throughout their life in and outside the classroom.
Manteca High senior Ty Flores contributed to this report. Photos contributed by Chris Livengood
