Hello Waubay!
I wanted to give you a quick update on what our JAG program has been up to for the month of October and into November and the fun we are having!
At the start of October, I took my leadership team to Rapid City for the Emerging Leader's Summit with JAG SD! It was a wonderful trip! My four students really outshined themselves and stepped out of their comfort zone and met other JAG students across the state. We learned what different programs are doing and developed some ideas to bring back to our own program to implement and try out! It was a great trip. Lots of laughs, great conversation, and growth!
We also were super fortunate to have District 1 Senator Mike Rohl come in to talk to us for our Capital Conversations Part I! Part I is all about talking with a politician and learning about our government. The students really enjoyed having a senator come in and talk to them. We learned how the South Dakota government works and talked about some of the bills that have gone through. We discussed what happened with those bills. I will get to take 4 students to Pierre in January to witness a day of the legislative session, so we had Senator Rohl talk to us about what we might see and some proposals he is working on for the legislative session. We are so thankful that Senator Rohl took time out of his schedule to come visit us! We are excited for our future trip to Pierre to visit with him more and have him back in class again after the legislative session ends to debrief about what we saw and learned.
We also had Tanner Christensen from Thrivent come in to talk to us about financial careers, money, and investing! We had fun with some activities Tanner brought to us to learn what it is like to invest your money. Coming into this conversation, students said they didn't know much about finance and investing. Afterwards, they had some interesting conversations about finances and investing.
Finally, we had Cory Zirbel with the Day County Conservation District to talk to us about conservation and the careers within conservation. It was interesting to hear about the different careers and what they do in the conservation world. We learned how the conservation district helps to improve and protect our land and waters. He talked to us about some projects he is involved with and has done along with other opportunities in our area. He talked to us about how this involves farmers along with all the water bodies that we have around Day County.
We are so thankful and appreciative of the people willing to take time out of their days to come talk to us and teach us about their careers and information!
We have been doing other activities in class to further our learning to set the students up for success when they graduate high school. We have been having such a good time in class with all the projects we have set up and done. We are still looking for more speakers for our classroom to talk about different career fields and even go on field trips! Feel free to reach out to me if you feel you have anything that can benefit my students! Anything from careers to money to living to college! We want to learn about it all!
Katie Thompson
JAG Specialist