For the kids, it’s about more than just showing animals. If you were to ask high school teacher Justin Gillespie, he’d tell you that the point of agricultural education is to help students with their growth personally, professionally and as leaders.
“You know with agriculture—a lot of people when you say that word think you have to wear overalls and drive tractors everywhere you go,” Gillespie explained. He hopes that he can help dispel that myth. With agriculture being North Carolina’s number one industry, he wants more people to realize that there’s a lot more to it than just production farming.
At North Buncombe County High School, he’s been educating students in agriculture and helping to prepare them for the future for years. As part of the agriculture curriculum, FFA students at the high school help raise and prepare animals for livestock shows across the state. For many students, the State Fair livestock shows are their goal show each year.
“Really and truthfully, we’re planning for the State Fair more than a full year ahead of time,” he shared. The students work to breed the animals well ahead of time, and after they’re born there’s still a long way to go before the animals are show ready.
The students start weighing their animals once a week during the spring ahead of the fair to see their average daily gain. This is to make sure the animals are in their target range of either light, middle or heavy weight divisions. They also train the animals to stand in proper show stance and ensure that they know how to properly take care of the animal. Additionally, they must make sure all the registration papers and documentation for each animal are correct well before the livestock shows in October.
Gillespie has taken as few as four kids to as many as 14 to the fair in past years. This year he expects to take 10 or more. For the kids who get the chance to go, it’s an incredibly exciting experience to see all their hard work pay off. It takes months of caring for the animals as well as long hours spent practicing to be ready for the fair. Gillespie shared that the team sometimes spends as many as three hours straight practicing.
For Gillespie, a big part of the reason why he got into teaching agriculture is because he grew up doing it. He considered the agriculture field to be a good way to apply what he was learning. He was able to use his skills in subjects like math and English and apply them to his work and future career. After graduating high school himself he went on to study at N.C. State University before coming back to teach.
“It helps with responsibility and just goes north from there,” he said, describing the impact of FFA and agriculture classes on students. He believes that it helps students with their thought process, problem solving and recognizing that the world doesn’t revolve around them.
The students also see the benefit of the experience.
“We get to meet a lot of different people and get a lot of new experiences. There’s a lot of good people. I was able to learn a lot from the people competing,” said Addison Sprinkle, one of his students, “I’m able to look at them in the show ring and better myself.”
Regardless of the career path these students follow, Gillespie believes that the responsibility and maturity that caring for their animals demands of them will benefit them in the long run and create well-rounded future professionals.
“My hope is that students realize that showing livestock is about learning how to show the animals, but it’s more about the students’ growth and development,” he said.
He’s had some of his former students go on to pursue careers in agriculture and agribusiness while others have gone into fields such as nursing. Regardless of where they end up, though, he knows that the skills they learn from agricultural education will help them to be successful.