Tyrone FFA’s Parliamentary Procedure team made it all the way to regional level competition on April 23, 2015. Although they only placed 8th, the team considered the experience to be a success.

Just reestablishing a Parliamentary Procedure (a.k.a. parli-pro) team in Tyrone after a 27 year hiatus was a significant accomplishment for the students.

Students on a parli-pro team hold a mock chapter meeting to demonstrate their knowledge of basic parliamentary law and procedure.

A team of five debaters then discuss a topic that is not provided to the team until competition. The chairperson acts as a mediator, takes votes and carries out the rules of the meeting.

Skills learned in parli-pro apply to real life situations.  As team member Toni Burns said, “it allows you to see both sides of an argument but you can still voice your opinion in an appropriate way and protects the minority by have an equal opportunity to be heard.”

The skills applied to this competition can be applied to many careers, such as any educational and government based jobs. It can also be used to organize meetings in an extremely effective manner.

Parli-pro is commonly known as one of the hardest competitions in FFA events. A great deal of teamwork and practice is needed to be a successful parli-pro team.

“Competing in this Career Development Event (CDE) is very difficult since each person is scored individually and then the team is score as an whole,” said team adviser Mrs. Tiffany Hoy,  “Everyone needs to have a firm understanding of parliamentary procedures and debates to do well.  The students really have to be a seamless team and trust in each other.”

Although they didn’t get past regionals, the team members were very positive about their experience.

Junior Katrina Hagenbuch said “getting to experience a level of competition that high in our first year was extremely valuable for building the foundation of our team in the future.”

“The actual debate and meeting new people was the best part of this competition, but finding out we lost after waiting so long for the results was terrible,” said Emily Long.

The schools Tyrone went up against were very experienced, some of these schools include West Perry, Cumberland Valley, Bedford and Huntington.

“I’m so proud of how much growth the team show in a few months,” said Hoy.