DUBLIN, Ohio – The Ohio FFA Association hosted a leadership conference over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend for more than 400 students. The two-day event, at the Embassy Suites of Dublin, offered two distinct themes for participants.

The Connect Conference, designed for 7th-10th grade students, explained how to connect with others and provided useful tools to help create healthy connections and develop positive relationships.

Eleventh and 12th-grade students attended the I Am Conference. This conference focused on goal-setting principles – helping determine who students want to become and how to create actionable steps to ‌accomplish their identity-based goals.

The National FFA Organization determines the curriculum and provides the facilitators for the annual conference.

“We’ve done it for many years,” Katy Endsley, an Ohio FFA program manager, said.” It’s an opportunity for students from across the state to come together in Columbus and participate in the two-day leadership conference.”

The conference is open to all Ohio FFA members and their advisers, and was so popular this year that another session was added. “Our demand exceeded our number of seats, so we opened a third track happening at the same venue that accommodated 60 more students,” Endsley said. “Our exact number of students we had registered was 420.”

The mid-January date works well for students and advisers. “Historically, it’s always been Martin Luther King weekend,” Endsley said. “We experimented around having different times, but that weekend seems to work for our teachers and our students.”

Cardington-Lincoln Local Schools sent 42 students to the conference. The school district has an enrollment of slightly over 950 students.

“Yeah, we make our mark,” Erin Wollett said. Wollett is in her 10th year as the agriculture instructor and FFA adviser at Cardington-Lincoln High School. “I got hired right out of college and I’ve been here ever since – it’s really close to my hometown.”

The Cardington contingent made the 45-minute trip on Saturday morning, stopping for lunch before the 1 p.m. start. After checking in, students went to their specific sessions. The conference was open to middle school students, but Wollett only brought high schoolers. “It’s open down to 7th-graders, but I only have a traditional 9 through 12 program,” she said, referring to Cardington’s FFA program.

Wollett allows her students to attend the conference all four years in ‌high school. “If they want to go, absolutely,” she said. “Ohio rotates the curriculum. If they went all four years, they would get a different curriculum each year.”

Each conference featured six sessions, ranging from 45 to 90 minutes. The Connect Conference, which had more students, met in a ballroom. “My 9th and 10th graders went to the Connect program and learned about building relationships, how important building your network is, and some strategies on how to trust people and connect with other folks,” Wollett said.

Juniors and seniors focused on self-realization and their strengths in the I Am Conference.  “They learned how to take those things and unpack them in a way that benefits them in the future,” Wollett said.

Between sessions, Wollett spent time with students and other teachers. “They had some breaks during which time students would come out and talk to me,” she said. “Most of the teachers hung out in the lobby – we visited and exchanged ideas.”

Despite not having any sessions for teachers, those in attendance still found benefit in the experience. Wollett knows many of the ag teachers from all over the state through their interactions at camps and evaluations. However, spending time outside of those settings has its value.

“I’s kind of nice to just sit with like-minded people and just be able to chat,” Wollett said. “To have those organic conversations – I feel like I get a lot more out of those because things kind of come up naturally and you can ask questions and maybe they have advice or maybe it’s just comforting that they’re also experiencing that thing as well.”

An added benefit is the chance to spend “down to earth time” with students in between and after sessions. “I went into the dance or last year I sat and played heads up with some of the kids during that time,” Wollett said. “Just that valuable time to be able to build relationships with the students outside of, ‘hey, we’re getting on a bus.’”