"A rising tide, raises ALL boats."
I fear that I have given the opinion, to some people, that winning is bad. If so, I never meant that and have never believed that. If that were true, I would have been a hypocrit for encouraging my students to "win" (a decade or two ago). For STUDENTS to have a desire to win is good; and it is also good for ag teachers to have a desire to win, if they don't win at the expense of other students. Ultimately, the desire to win is a valuable human-nature attitude; that we use to help students learn more than they could in the normal school-day schedule.
Unfortunately, I have heard too many stories about a very small number of ag teachers who view winning as a 'personal' goal, obtained through their students. PUBLIC EDUCATION is based upon sharing knowledge with ALL students.
I hope that Iowa Ag Ed can treat CDEs as the wonderful authentic-assessment opportunity that they are. "A rising tide", implies the performance of ALL students will improve. Ag Ed/FFA can only "raise the tide" by teachers openly sharing ideas with each other to increase the achievement of ALL students.
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I think that my experiences at Iowa State helped me realize that winning isn't the goal. Doing your absolute personal best IS. When your goal is to do your best, regardless of the 'result', you end up better for it. When winning is your goal, there is only one chance to win, the rest is failure. Keeping "Work hard" and "Do your best" at the forfront is how I try to keep my competetive nature in check when it comes to FFA events.
FWIW
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