By Savannah Magoteaux, Editor

Bluejacket, Oklahoma, is the kind of town where almost everyone knows everyone else. With a population of about 300 and a K-12 enrollment of about 170 students, it is not where most people would expect to find an FFA chapter sending students across the country, much less across the Atlantic Ocean.

But Bluejacket FFA Advisor Shawn Martin has never believed the size of a student’s hometown should determine the size of his or her opportunities.

Under Martin’s leadership, Bluejacket FFA has grown from about 33 members to between 65 and 70 each year. Students have traveled to National FFA Convention, toured agriculture in Ireland, visited the John Deere factory in Iowa, earned National Three-Star Chapter recognition and been selected for a national chapter exchange program. At home, they weld, build projects, grow produce, sell at farmers markets and help provide fresh food to people in their community.

That list would be impressive anywhere. It stands out even more at a school where a graduating class may number only a dozen students.

Yet Martin doesn’t talk about any of it as though he built the program alone. He keeps coming back to the same point: the students have to buy in.

“The most important thing is getting the buy-in to kids and getting them to want to go and see and do,” he said. “I’m very proud of them. We have lots of kids participating and helping and making these things happen.”

That belief in giving students ownership may be one of the biggest reasons Bluejacket FFA has grown into the program it is today.

Coming home

Martin understands small-town life because Bluejacket has always been home.

He was born and raised in the area, attended Bluejacket schools and was deeply involved in FFA himself. He served two years as chapter president, earned his State FFA Degree and graduated in 1987.

“I just loved everything about the FFA,” he said. “We had a great program there when I was a kid too.”

He considered teaching agriculture early on, but his career went another direction. After attending college for a time, Martin saw the earning potential in pipe welding and went to work in the trade.

He spent about 22 years as a pipe welder, traveling across the country. The work paid well, but it kept him away from home for much of his life. At one point, Martin estimates, he was on the road around 330 days a year.

Eventually, the trade-off became harder to accept. The birth of his grandson brought the decision into focus.

“I came home and I saw him, and I’m like, ‘I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not going to miss these grandkids growing up like I did with the kids growing up,’” Martin recalled.

He couldn’t walk away from a successful welding career overnight. His family was used to the income, and Martin knew he had to prepare financially before making the change. He spent several years putting himself in a position to come home and go back to college.

In the end, the decision came down to what he wanted the next part of his life to look like.

“At some point it’s not worth it anymore, and the money’s not what it’s all about,” he said. “You need some kind of personal happiness and something that gives you meaning. Sitting alone in a hotel room 800 miles away from your own house and your own family, it gets old.”

Martin retired from welding around 2011 and finished his education degree by 2015. Soon afterward, an agriculture teaching position opened at Bluejacket. It was his first full-time teaching job, and his farm was only three miles away.

The boy who once wore the Bluejacket FFA jacket had come home to lead the same program.

Building pride

When Martin took over, the chapter had about 33 members. He felt the program had grown complacent and wasn’t taking advantage of many of the activities and opportunities FFA offers.

Before chasing awards or adding trips, Martin wanted the students to be proud of their own program.

“My first thing when I came back, I wanted to put that pride in that ag program,” he said.

He started with the classroom. Martin remembered walking into a plain white room with little sense of identity or ownership. He remodeled it with rusted tin and gave it a farmhouse feel.

“This is your place, and you guys take pride in it,” he wanted the students to understand.

Students started wearing Bluejacket FFA apparel and joining more activities. Slowly, Martin saw them take ownership.

“We started getting the kids to buy in, and they really did,” he said.

Membership grew. Today, 65 to 70 students are involved each year, most of the students eligible to participate.

A major turning point came when a group of younger members set their sights on National Three-Star Chapter recognition. By Martin’s third year, they had earned it.

“Those kids had set that goal, and like, ‘This is what we want to do,’ and that was a turning point for the chapter right there,” he said.

For Martin, the recognition confirmed that the hours going into the program were paying off.

“It was overwhelming because you put all these hours in, and you’re like, ‘Gosh, I don’t know if we’re getting where we need to get,’” he said. “But when that happened, I’m like, ‘Okay, we’re on the right track, and we’re doing good things.’”

The students traveled to Indiana and crossed the stage at National FFA Convention.

“It blew me away,” Martin said. “I was so excited. The kids were so excited. Got to go to Indiana and cross that national stage and hear our chapter name mentioned.”

Bluejacket is pursuing National Three-Star recognition again, and Martin doesn’t do the work behind the scenes for his students. The application requires extensive documentation of chapter activities and impact, and he expects his officers and members to handle it.

“I don’t sit and fill out their applications and all that stuff for them,” he said. “I help where they need help, but they have to buy into it.”

Seeing the world

That approach carries over into other opportunities, too. When Martin talks about what he wants to give his students, travel comes up quickly.

He enjoys traveling himself and sees great value in taking young people beyond the places they already know. Some Bluejacket students, he said, had not traveled far before joining the program.

“I personally love to travel too, and I’ve kind of encouraged the kids to do that,” he said.

A few years ago, Bluejacket FFA took 10 students to Ireland for an agricultural tour of the countryside.

More recently, Martin and his students asked how they could create a trip for the entire chapter. Through a separate fundraising effort, they took students to Waterloo, Iowa, where they toured the John Deere factory that builds the company’s large 9 Series tractors. The trip also included the Field of Dreams and time at water parks.

For Martin, mixing agriculture with experiences students enjoy is part of the point. He wants them to learn, and he also wants them to discover how big the world is outside their hometown.

“Getting them out of state and showing them how much fun traveling is and what cool places there are to see,” he said.

The trips do more than make memories. Martin hopes seeing different places, careers and industries will change the way students think about their futures.

“If we can take them places and show them these things, maybe you might decide, ‘Hey, I want to go to college,’ or, ‘Hey, I want to go get me a career of some kind, even in the trades, where I can make good money,’” he said.

Martin doesn’t discourage students from staying close to home. He wants staying home to be a choice rather than the result of never knowing other options existed.

“Staying local is great if that’s what you want to do,” he said.

He also talks candidly with students about earning a living and building a stable future.

“I know it’s not all about money, but making a good living takes a lot of pressure off of you in your life,” Martin said.

His own career gives him practical experience when those conversations turn to skilled trades. Martin teaches welding at Bluejacket, and every student gets at least some time behind the hood. He can also tell students what a welding career looks like, including the income and the sacrifices that come with traveling work.

Students tend to focus on the paycheck.

“The first thing they want to know is how much money you made, and then that’s it,” Martin joked. “They don’t hear anything after that.”

Still, his advice stays the same. College is not the only path to success, but he wants students to pursue some kind of education or career training after graduation.

The students do the work

The same philosophy of preparation and responsibility runs through the chapter’s activities.

When Bluejacket applied for a national Chapter Connect program, Martin didn’t fill out the application. The students did. He told them about the opportunity and asked whether they wanted to pursue it.

“‘What, you guys want to do it? Fill it out,’” he recalled telling them.

They wrote the application, brought it to him to proofread and submitted it. Bluejacket was selected.

The program pairs FFA chapters from different parts of the country, and Bluejacket was matched with a chapter from an urban area of Virginia. The students will work together online on projects throughout the year, with plans for an exchange that lets each group see the other’s community and agriculture.

When the Virginia students come to Oklahoma, Martin plans to show them what agriculture looks like around Bluejacket. One stop will be the Layton family ranch west of Welch, where students can see horses, cattle and a working ranch and learn about rodeo culture from Landry Layton.

For Bluejacket students, the exchange offers another chance to see a very different part of the country. It is exactly the kind of opportunity Martin wants them to pursue, but he also wants them to understand that opportunities take effort before they ever become available.

“They have to buy into it,” he said.

Bluejacket students compete, and Martin is proud when they succeed.

“My kids get a lot of plaques, and they do great,” he said.

He also wants agricultural education to stay connected to agriculture itself. At Bluejacket, students weld. They build chicken coops, chicken tractors, outdoor furniture and other projects. Before building, Martin makes students draw plans and figure out what materials they need.

“I want everybody to build one project,” he said. “The first thing you do is draw me a set of plans. Then, what materials do you need before ordering?”

The goal is to teach students to think a problem through from beginning to end.

“You may be surprised one day you want to build something at your house, and you could do it,” he tells them.

Martin knows not every student will become a welder or work in production agriculture, but he believes the confidence that comes from learning to build, repair, plan and solve problems pays off in any career.

The same goes for public speaking. Martin remembers one student who told him in eighth grade that she would never give a speech.

“She told me, ‘I’m never going to give a speech,’” he said.

By her senior year, she was almost unrecognizable from that reluctant eighth grader.

“That girl could walk in front of 300 people and control that room and run it and knows how to speak, and just became so good at it,” Martin said. “That’s the stuff I really love to see.”

Those transformations are one reason he resists defining the program by contests and awards alone.

“It’s not all a contest,” Martin said. “They have their place, and they are important. But it’s not all there is to agriculture.”

He sometimes wonders whether agricultural education leans so heavily toward contests that students miss basic hands-on skills.

“Are we forgetting our roots, and are we forgetting that we still need to know these fundamentals of agriculture, hands-on?” he said.

At Bluejacket, Martin is determined that the answer be no.

Growing food, giving it away

You can see that commitment on the school’s 10-acre property. What started as a small garden several years ago has grown into a large outdoor garden, an orchard and a 40-by-120-foot high tunnel. Students help plant, install watering systems, harvest produce and learn what it takes to grow food. They also grow hay on part of the property.

The produce operation now supplies tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables to the school and brings in income for the FFA chapter through farmers markets. Martin estimates the chapter earned around $10,000 to $11,000 from produce sales over the summer.

The chapter has also partnered with the Cherokee Nation, accepting its farmers market benefits and helping bring fresh produce to tribal citizens in the region. At times, the students take produce to Bernice so it is closer to people in tribal food distribution programs.

Not everything the students grow gets sold. When there is extra produce, Martin said, the chapter shares it with about 11 families or individuals, including elderly and homebound people and others who may need help.

Most people never see that part of the program.

“That’s something you’ll never see on the Facebook page,” Martin said. “We don’t talk about it.”

That is intentional. Martin wants his students to learn that service doesn’t need recognition.

“When you do something nice, don’t take pictures of it and put it on Facebook,” he tells them. “Just do it to be doing it.”

For all the national recognition, travel and contest success Bluejacket FFA has earned, that lesson may say more about what Martin wants the program to accomplish than any plaque on the wall.

“We give a lot of it away to families all through the summer months so they can have fresh produce too,” he said. “I’m trying to teach them to be good and to help people when you can, because I think that’s important too.”

It is another kind of preparation for life, one you can’t measure with a contest score or list on an application.

“We’re a small school, but we’re trying to do good things and grow the program and teach the kids the right way,” Martin said. “Be a contributor in the community too.”

Martin once left Bluejacket to make his living hundreds of miles from home. Coming back gave him the meaningful second career he was looking for. Now his work centers on making sure the young people growing up in that same small community see their hometown as a starting point rather than a limit.

They may go to college. They may learn a trade. They may stay in Bluejacket or travel far beyond it. Martin sees his job as making sure they have seen enough, learned enough and done enough to know they have choices.

And more and more, his students are taking responsibility for creating those opportunities themselves.