Words from the Wise

    
Castleford FFA Advisor Dan Billington 
shares how agricultural education
strengthens a community
      At the last professional development seminar that my school district held, we began by introducing ourselves. We explained what we taught and the reason we chose to teach this one certain area. I told the instructor that I chose to become an agricultural educator because I felt that it is important for students to have an understanding of where their food came from and to take pride in any piece of work that they produce, whether it is in a fabrication course or in floral design. 
       I grew up on my family’s beef cattle ranch in southern Idaho. At an early age I was able to see firsthand that nothing would be handed to you and that the more you worked the more that you were able to reap. I still find it very rewarding today when I have a shy naïve 8th grade student and wants nothing to do with what I teach due to their fear of speaking, and end up transforming them into a state officer, a member of a state winning CDE team or an advocate for agriculture. 
      I am employed by the Castleford School district which is a very rural school in southern Idaho. Being the single ag teacher at the school, I teach all of the courses. The main focus at Castleford has always been to have a very strong vocational and animal science program. That has always been something that I have tried to stick true to. The Castleford community is extremely supportive of anything and everything that the FFA chapter has ever needed. This support helps drive me into making sure that the students that take my classes are able to incorporate the skills from my class and apply them into their family’s farms, dairies, or ranches. Because of the community that I work in I find the dairy cattle evaluation, dairy foods, meats, ag sales, ag mech, job interview, and parliamentary procedure CDE’s to be the most beneficial to the students and serves the Castleford community best.

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