FFA chapter develops mental health awareness program

GRANT PARK, Ill. — Students at Grant Park High School learned how to “bend, don’t break” during a project developed by the Grant Park FFA Chapter that focused on mental health.

“Last year at state convention, someone talked about what their chapter had done for mental health awareness in their community and I leaned over to the kids and said we should do that,” said Kole Stadt, ag teacher and FFA adviser at Grant Park High School.

“It blossomed from there and we called our program, ‘Cultivating Minds — Bend, Don’t Break: Be the Bean,’” Stadt explained. “And we got a grant from the Farm Family Resource Initiative for it.”

This program was even more important for the community since a young farmer last spring took his own life.

“This is a small town so everybody is talking about it, but not talking about it,” the ag teacher said. “Everyone was so taken off guard because he was a 27-year-old farmer who was everybody’s friend and had everything going for him.”

The mental health campaign talked about three ways people react to adversity — by being a carrot, an egg or a bean when placed into boiling water.

A carrot becomes soft and weak and the egg, once fragile, becomes hard and unyielding.

“The bean is supposed to be a coffee bean, but we made it soybeans,” Stadt said.

“The bean is the only thing that makes the pot of water better,” he said. “One coffee bean doesn’t do much, but if the whole community is trying to be a coffee bean, then you have a pot of coffee instead of boiling water. That was our message to the kids.”

Throughout the week, this story was told to all the students during the morning announcements.

“Lily Wackerlin designed the T-shirt and the logo for the Cultivating Minds book that has the story of the bean inside to remind the kids,” Stadt said. “Through the grant and a local lady we gave T-shirts to the whole school that say, ‘GP FFA Be the Bean.’”

All the teachers had jars on their desks filled with coffee beans along with teal and purple ribbons around them which are the suicide prevention colors.

Posters were hung in the school about mental health awareness and the sermon was on the board in each of the classes as they were read daily.

“We had different teachers read every day so it wasn’t just me,” Stadt said. “The capstone of the week was a huge coffee bar, a school-wide breakfast and our principal gave a keynote speech.”

Building communities is an important focus for the Grant Park FFA Chapter, the ag teacher said, who is in his third year of teaching at the school he graduated from in 2012.

In the fall, the chapter organizes a benefit that includes volleyball games and a basket raffle.

“For our basket, we go to the veteran’s home in Manteno and get their wish list. If you win our basket, you get the basket, but everything else is donated to the veteran’s home in your name,” Stadt said.

But instead of a basket, the FFA members chose a special item that the raffle winner receives.

“We’ve done a giant Yeti cooler and this year we did a fancy set of directors chairs,” Stadt said.

For Easter, the chapter has a ham drive and works with five to seven churches.

“The churches know who needs help,” Stadt said. “Generally, on Good Friday, we deliver the boxes to the churches that have food to feed five to six people and include items such as ham, bread, stuffing, green beans and pie.”

Stadt is focused on building the ag program and the FFA chapter at Grant Park.

“When I went to high school here, we had a co-op program with Momence for ag classes, but it didn’t work well,” he said. “It was only offered one hour a day and they bused you back and forth, so you missed half the class.”

After completing his agricultural education degree at Western Illinois University, Stadt taught at Prairie Central High School, where he was the third ag teacher.

“I thought I would retire from Prairie Central and then I got a phone call from a local seedsman who was looking for some help with farming and the seed business,” he said.

Since it was one town away from his hometown of Grant Park, he couldn’t pass on the opportunity.

“But after about a year, I missed the classroom,” Stadt said.

“Two of my nephews were coming into high school and they didn’t have an opportunity for ag,” he said. “So, they hired me as a middle school science teacher and I said I’m going to build your ag program.”

Stadt started an Ag Ed Club during his first year at Grant Park.

“When the other ag teachers in our section heard about it, they said start coming to FFA events, so we started doing contests,” he said. “That was great to get the fire started.”

This is the second full year for the Grant Park FFA Chapter.

“We have 45 kids in our chapter and about 30 of them are active,” Stadt said. “I think we did seven livestock judging contests this year and we competed in mechanics, public speaking, job interview, horse evaluation, agronomy and next year I know we’ll have a dairy evaluation team.”

After his first year at Grant Park, Stadt started the Grant Park Ag Ed Alumni and has received a lot of support from the community.

“I called seven people who are the movers and shakers,” he said. “The group now includes truckers, farmers, local businessmen and teachers — people who are excited about the program.”

During the summer, the alumni group hosts a Cash Bash to raise funds for the FFA program.

“They sell 250 tickets, which gets two people in for all you can eat and there’s a small auction,” Stadt said. “There’s a waiting list and it’s only going into its third year.”

These funds have purchased many items for the ag program and FFA chapter.

“The Ag Ed group bought 10 sets of official dress — skirts, pants, shoes of all different sizes, ties and scarves,” Stadt said. “They are amazing — they have really never said no.”

The FFA chapter cooks breakfast for all the staff and kids during the celebration of National FFA Week.

“The local processing plant gave us 30 pounds of sausage and 40 pounds of bacon and a local chicken farm gave us 23 dozen eggs,” Stadt said. “And a local church filled in everything else we needed.”

It is amazing, the FFA adviser said, how excited people in the community are to have the ag program back at the school.

“They just give and give,” he said. “And the kids are excited to have the opportunity to do things like wire something, build a house or work with chickens.”