On Wednesday, October 15, 35 FFA members traveled to Arlington for Fall Leadership Day and the general livestock and dairy CDE contests. During leadership day, many different chapters from all around Region VII attended. The regional officer team organizes Leadership Day; this year, they were also joined by Minnesota FFA sentinel Lauren Hunt.

Out of the 35 members, 21 attended Leadership Day. This year’s Leadership Day theme was ‘Leveling up Leadership’ and featured lessons and activities related to video games. The day was filled with fun-filled activities centered around teamwork, problem-solving, and public speaking, all of which are essential attributes of a good leader. Everybody agreed the funnest activity of the day was building the little clay figures.

“I loved building the little clay figures (building a leader activity), we named him Ricky!” Senior Abby Willaert said.

A big part of leadership day is building your teamwork skills. At the start of the day, the officers divided everyone into groups of around 6-7 people. The catch was that the groups had to be people from different tables and chapters. This was because you have to be able to work as a team with people who are different from you.

The group you were in was the people you spent the rest of the day with. As the day went on, there were some icebreaker games and team building activities to grow your connections with your new team.

Senior Lilly Kral saidher favorite part of the day was “getting to meet a whole bunch of nice people.” She also learned “you already have leadership inside of you and anyone can be a leader.”

Leadership Day is open to all 7th-12th-grade region VII FFA members. You can gain many leadership skills over the years.

Willaert said, “I have been to 6 or 7 leadership days, my skills have definitely grown, and I feel like I could be an expert.”