Hello Illinois Valley Community! My name is Landon Mason, and I am the Illinois Valley FFA Chapter Reporter for the 2024-2025 school year, as well as future events we are all excited for. For those of you that do not know what FFA is, it is a dynamic youth organization that focuses on changing lives and preparing its members for premier leadership, personal growth and career success through agriculture education. FFA is different from sports and other clubs because it is an extracurricular organization, meaning that it is a part of our agriculture classes we take at Illinois Valley High School. Agriculture education has three components to it that we learn about in our agriculture classes, and those are classroom/laboratory, FFA and SAE (supervised agricultural experience).
The Illinois Valley FFA chapter has eight officers – President: Kaitlyn White, Vice President: Blake Webb, Secretary: Kaylynn Thompson, Treasurer: Breanna Reed, Reporter: Landon Mason, Sentinel: Kyle Porter, Historian: Aleigha Hix, Parliamentarian: Naomi Merril, and our Advisor: Shelbie Mason. Our chapter membership is continuing to grow, with over 40 active members participating in various activities and events throughout the school year, and over 100 students taking at least one agricultural class during the school year.
Our chapter has been busy since last summer, starting off our year in June with our FFA Leadership Camp held at Camp Cottonwood in Lakeview. At camp, our officer team learned more about our officer roles and how to better serve our chapter and community. In August, we had 18 members raise animals for the Josephine County Fair and sell in the 4theKids Livestock Auction. Starting the school year, we had monthly meetings during lunch, two of the Oregon FFA State Officers visit the school for the day and run workshops for our agriculture classes, participated in the Southern Oregon District Food Science Competition held at Phoenix High School, as well as attend the National FFA Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Eight of our members attended the National FFA Convention in October where we were able to listen to guest speakers attend workshops, talk to colleges, learn so many different things that agriculture has to offer, and we got to share the experience with over 70,000 other FFA members from all 50 states. During our trip, we were also able to visit and tour Churchill Downs and the Louisville Slugger Museum, and attend a hypnotist show and rodeo.
We have so many exciting things coming up in 2025, including being able to use our newly built greenhouse to host our very first plant sale for Mother’s Day, various leadership development events and career development events across the state, attending the Oregon FFA State Convention in March, our third annual dinner and silent auction fundraiser on April 11th, and our awards banquet on May 9th. I look forward to keeping this community updated with what we have been doing throughout the rest of the school year. Thank you to each and every one of our supporters that have helped us get this far, we truly appreciate your dedication to our growth and learning, and look forward to giving back to our wonderful community.
