Interview of Kerry Travis

Katie Cheek (KC): Hello, my name is Katie Cheek.

Kerry Travis (KT): Hello, my name is Kerry Travis and I'm the AG teacher and FFA advisor at Oblong High School, where Katie went to high school at. She was also part of my officer team for a few years during high school, her junior and senior year. This is my 31st year teaching high school agriculture in Illinois and I only have two more years to go, so I'm looking very forward to retirement here soon.

KC: So, we're going to go ahead and start with some background questions. The first one being, can you tell me a little bit about your childhood and early adulthood, leading up to this point in your life?

KT: I was raised in a good Christian home. I think I was in church the very first Sunday after I was born. I always think the world we live in today; how fortunate we really are to go to church and be raised in that kind of atmosphere. With that I was raised in a good Christian home with a mom and a dad that was really loving and very caring. Both grandparents on both sides I had for a long time and even some great-grandparents for a while as well. Both sides were really involved with farming and construction too. My dad was involved in construction and farmed on the side. My mom worked in a factory, but she also was very much involved with our home and things like that. I was very fortunate in that. Then, later in life I was very involved with 4-H and FFA. I also graduated from high school and then I went to school at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and got my bachelors and master's degree in AG education. Got married not too long after that, was single for a while after college. Then I moved to Oblong where my wife was from, got married, and shortly after that had our first daughter. She just turned 25 and my other daughter is 22. We have two daughters and both of them are now out of college and have jobs.

KC: Can you go ahead and tell me throughout your life experience if you had any experiences that have made huge impacts on your life, and what did you learn from them?

KT: I know my experiences, especially getting into agriculture and why I wanted to be a teacher, was in 4-H probably from 5th grade on, all the way until I was 20. I was in FFA all through high school. That's where I learned to show cattle and get very involved in raising that, and it's been very instrumental in my life up until now. We still show cattle on the national level and are in sales throughout the year. To my daughters it was very, very important. They were in 4-H as soon as they could until they were 21. They showed cattle as soon as they could on the national level.Church youth groups have been super important. Going to those activities and singing in church choirs. Important things through that have been how to set goals, work very hard, not give up, and be very determined in what you do and have a goal set and a plan set for the rest of your life. I always had a goal set to have a national champion heifer. It's extremely hard to do. Our national show is usually in Louisville or Denver, and I was fortunate enough about 10 years ago to have grand champion bull on the national level. Some people show their whole lives and don't get a national champion banner. It instills in you, in my kids too, on how hard that is to do and to spend countless hours in the barn, growing up in the summer, to make those heifers as good as

we can make them. Determination, set goals, and reach very, very high for those are some things that I've gained from those experiences through 4-H and FFA.

KC: You always really pushed setting goals and reaching them whenever I was in FFA and AG. Definitely learned that from you. We recently just read a book called the Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. He talked quite a bit about brick walls, so my next question is did you have any brick walls that you have faced, what were they, and how did you overcome them?

KT: Right when I first got married, I got two DUI's really close to each other and lost my license for 18 months. That was hard for us. I mean it really was terrible, terrible, but I really grew out of that. I was always going to church and I didn't party crazy. When I did drink, I drank to get drunk, that's just the way I did it. Through that, I realized that I was an alcoholic, and I had to do AI. You have to jump through many hoops in Illinois to get your license back, so part of that, I was introduced to all kinds of things. That was definitely a brick wall for me and my wife. When we first got married, I don't think she knew I was going to lose my license for 18 months, so it wasn't great. We married each other for the hard times and the good times, but that was definitely a brick wall that was thrown up at us especially me.

A lot of that was perseverance. I would get letters and I thought I was doing everything right, no you didn't do this, sorry you can't do this for another month, or you can't do this for another six months. It was things like that was definitely a bad time in our life, but I always grew up in the church and stuff, but I thought maybe I didn't follow God the way I should have been. I set a goal to start reading my Bible every day and to read through it every year. I've done that every year since I got my DUI, so for 28 years now I read through that Bible every year. That's a really great thing because I'm super busy and everything, but I chisel out time. Maybe I don't read it every single day, but by the time December 31st rolls around I've tried to go from Genesis to Revelations again. I'm a better person because of that terrible time in my life, and it's a long way past that cycle. That's probably the biggest brick wall in my life and how I had to overcome those things. I just had this eye surgery because of a detached retina. I couldn't do anything for almost a month and it's a brick wall. How do you endure that and deal with stuff at school, on the farm, and other things too. I don't know if those kinds of things are brick walls or things you have to deal with on a daily basis or a weekly or monthly basis.

KC: Moving on to the next question. Still on your background, who was your biggest mentor growing up, and what impact did they leave on you? Do you have any advice that you continue to pass forward to the students you have now?

KT: I think my mentors probably would be my parents on both sides, my mom and dad. My dad was a very good Christian man and a super hard worker. He made us work on the farm, cutting wood, things like that. That's the way he grew up. His dad was a very diplomatic man, "This is the way it's going to be, and you're going to work super hard." My Grandpa Travis grew up in the depression and that's what we knew and had to deal with. My dad was a really strong mentor for me, and I got hard work and good Christian ethics from him.

My high school AG teacher was another mentor of mine, and I told him that several times. I said, "Not that I got tons from you," but I got how to get along with kids. He was my FFA advisor when I was an officer. How to get along great with kids and drive them. I want to think that most people like me, and I think that's really important as a teacher. They may not like every other teacher, but somehow they like me and they might hate every other class, but somehow they like AG. You have to be creative to get the most out of people, however you have to do it because whatever words for Katie Cheek isn't going to work for her brother. Whatever might work for Katie and a whole bunch of girls is going to work totally different in the shop for a whole bunch of boys. You have to constantly be prepared to either change or at least think, "Ok. This is working for them." All my classes are pretty good size, like 20 almost, and it might be you have to do something with this set of kids in the shop and this set of kids in the classroom. You have to constantly be prepared to do something different, and I think that's what I go most out of Mr. Washburn. Also, really hard work. He was a teacher that had been teaching AG for 35-40 years and loved to win. I want to win, not that it's super important, but I don't know how these teachers do it that never win anything or as a livestock producer that shows cows. We know those people who never win, hardly the first blue ribbon. Success is not all ribbons hanging on the wall, but it helps along the way. I think that's what my dad and Mr. Washburn meant by always work hard, give 110%, and don't let anything stand in your way. Go after what you want.

KC: This next question is going to tie more into your personal leadership style, but before we get to that, have you held any other leadership roles in the past before this one? If you have, what were they?

KT: I served as a Deacon in our church for several years, and I also teach Sunday school right now. Both of those are leadership things. Throughout my 37 years as an AG teacher, I served on various committees and in offices on the state level. I also served as secretary of the Illinois Simmental Association for 6 or 8 years.

KC: Now we're getting more into your personal leadership styles. To recap, you are the FFA advisor for the Oblong FFA chapter, and you are also AG teacher for Oblong High School. Do you think that you were called into these positions? If so, in what way?

KT: I do feel teachers are called; I really do. Back to Mr. Washburn. Him and his wife were also my 4-H leaders growing up too for many years. I remember going to those meetings early on saying I wanted to be an AG teacher. She'd go, "Oh, there's Kerry Travis. He's going to be an AG teacher someday." I knew back then that I what I wanted to be early on, because I saw Mr. Washburn touch lots and lots of kids, and I thought it was neat how they could touch a kid as a freshman and see him all four years and how they've matured. Most kids will take you as a freshman, and you're going to see them all four years. Some of those kids you don't really like, but they need your help the most. They turn out to be the ones you probably touch the most. I do feel you're called, just like a minister. I don't know if you wake up one day and say, "Oh! I got this touch of God that I'm going to be a teacher." I really do feel that it's a calling. We really go above and beyond. Not that other people don't, but we have such an influence on our kids, and I really think that's the calling.

KC: How would you characterize your leadership style?

KT: I kept wanting to look for some words that I could use to characterize while I was looking over this the other day, and I kept having trouble coming up with that word. Most of my leadership was and is dealing with the FFA chapter and the boards I've served on throughout my years. Most of it is dealing with high school kids. Sometimes that's really good and sometimes you'll get a kid or two on the officer team that isn't so great. I try to let the six officers every year do their thing, and I just follow behind them. We have a weekly meeting on Wednesdays at lunch, talk about this week, and I'll give them an agenda they go with. I don't know if you call that a style, but that's just what I do. Then hopefully those six people are working together to make decisions. If I don't like a decision, I say, "No, we're not doing that. Why don't we go this route instead and still do something sort of like that." It might just be the older person in me saying, "Oh, we can do this, or we can do that." Probably as a teacher I let kids do way more than they probably would get by with in another class. Our old superintendent has said, "You're too nice to them. You don't look at what they could do." That's probably why they like and respect me. I'm not sitting there with a thumbnail on them all the time. That's just my leadership style. I'm not going to sit there and say, "Ok. You can't do this, you can't do that, and we're not going to do this." I let you do things and if we all get in trouble, blame me. It helps to that I've taught there for 30 years, so they're not going to get rid of me. They may slap my hands a little bit if it's something I've did really wrong. For the most part, don't let everyone know what you're doing. For me, I'm almost done so I really don't care what happens as long as our chapter shines and the kids look like they've done a really good job.

KC: Considering what you just said, for a good leader to be successful in an organization, they have to reflect on their own abilities and determine where they need extra support. Where do you think your personal and professional strengths and weaknesses lie? How do you think those strengths and weaknesses help you in your active leadership?

KT: For strengths, I think it's very important to get along great with people. I do have a great outgoing personality and it helps me get along more with my students and pull everything out they might be working with. I also have a good eye for a person that is going to be a good leader. I think it's important that you don't let people just quit when they feel like it. I think it helps too that I'm pretty funny with the kids in class. I don't let them get by with everything. I mean, kids are kids so if they want to kind of make fun of me or say things off the cuff, I'll just slam them right back. A lot of teachers won't do that, but I can turn those bad situations into funny ones. It also helps get kids involved and motivated. Some kids in FFA aren't involved in anything else. It's not the valedictorians or the good kids, thank God I have those too, but in the beginning I did not. FFA can be a dumping grounds for kids that don't want to do anything else, but mine are not like that. I do have a few of those, but I still have really great kids to work with and it's my job to see if I can get them motivated. We have lots of events to get them in to. Last night I had 10 to 12 of them on a bus going to a sectional dodgeball tournament. That's what they wanted to do. Many in that group probably won't go to many other contests, but they wanted to go play dodgeball, so that's what we did. Just like that, getting people involved. We've done big AG days where thousands of people come to our town for that event. I'm very good at planning. My wife and I are very good at planning, she's might right hand man to help me do all those kinds of things. I take the steps that no one knows like, "Let's do this, this, and this to get motivated." To even go to the grade school and teach AG science kits or pumpkin palooza to get grade school

students involved. So when it comes time for them to be in 7th or 8th grade, they remember and want to take a high school AG class. That's why my numbers are up and people want to join. My weakness of everything is computers and technology. I'm not changing. Yes, I can use a cellphone and I can do certain things on a computer, and I can make a PowerPoint. I'm not learning everything else. I'm old enough now where I'm not going that route. During the pandemic when it was Google Classroom, I struggled with that. I didn't do a whole lot, but I had a plan A, B, C, and D to get grades in for the kids that stayed home. "Here's a book. We'll do this and you'll do the questions. Bring it to the backdoor of the AG shop and I'll grade it that way. I created it in a way that not a whole lot was on Google Classroom. My downfall would definitely be computers and technology. A lot of the lessons you teach in AG are very hands-on, so I can see why that's a big weakness.

KC: A lot of the lessons you teach in AG are very hands-on, so I can see why that's a big weakness. It doesn't really make sense to have all those hands-on things and expect to go online.

KT: I know a lot of AG teachers that have retired in the last 5 years are definitely me or worse when it comes to technology. They're in the shop. They're welding. They're in the greenhouse. They're doing all the contests we do that don't have a lot to do with the computer. As long as I teach a few things to you on PowerPoint, but I don't need a Google Classroom in my life.

KC: I feel like this question is pretty straightforward, but what does leadership mean to you? What does it look like?

KT: I would think someone that doesn't have to be told what to do all the time can be a good leader. The don't need to be told, "Ok. We have five things to get done today." I expect them, when they get done, to already be on the 6th step without me telling them. It's important for me to give them some insight, but I think a good leader can take that and get everything done without saying, "Hey KT. What do I need to do next?" Or just sit there and don't even say anything. I feel that good leaders are smart enough to say, "Ok. Here's what needs to get done," or at least, "Hey Mr. Travis. What needs to get done?" Someone that can look ahead and be on time. I get tired of waiting for kids that are not on time anymore. A very big pet peeve of mine is someone who's late and someone who does not give 110%. I think that's super important too. We are not going to give 110% every day or on every project, but it's important to do your best and get a good grade. Eager to work hard. Someone that's eager to try their best, work hard, and to increase the group. I think you trying to increase the activities of the whole group and increase the outcome of what we're working on at the time make you a leader.

KC: You just mentioned pushing your students to be the best they can be. Do you think that it's important to transform them into the best person they can be?

KT: I think no matter what you're doing in life, you should be the best at it. Right now in college there's things, you want to be the best you can be at this interview. In today's world we have been so lazy these last couple years with the pandemic that people don't give 110%, they hardly give 50%, sometimes they don't give any percent. It drives you crazy as a teacher that does

expect a lot. I think it's coming back. There are kids now who really want to try hard on a contest, and there for a year they really did not. I think later in life, maybe not that much later, whether that's college or a job, if you didn't give 110% in high school, you're going to have a hard time when life gets really tough.

KC: What qualities do you think are really important in somebody that's a well-rounded leader?

KT: You got to be a people person. I think that's really important. You could be a leader in some fashion and not be super outgoing but being a people person is very important. You have to be a person that plans things and knows how to carry them out. In the beginning, I had a really hard time with this. I like to get some praise. There for a while I worked with this principal and my superintendent both, you could've won the world on anything and they wouldn't have said thank you or anything. It really bothered me for a while until an older 4-H person said, "As long as you're doing a good job and you know it's good, why do you care? Why are you spending so much time and effort mad at those people because they don't tell you 'Good job'." After that I didn't really care anymore. I thought, "I know a good job and I know my people do, my kids do, my community does. If you can't say good job or anything like that, then so be it. I really don't care." With that, it's important for a leader to stand back and let people get all the glory. They might not get another time to shine. It's really those kids that are doing all the work, so it's important you tell those kids they are doing a good job.

KC: Being on an officer team, one of the things that was super important for us was to communicate with each other, but also build a good relationship with each person and together as a group. What advice can you give people on your officer team and people everywhere to build relationships and build trust in an organization?

KT: It starts at the top. We always have a planning day where the officers come over and spend hours doing fun team building stuff, then we plan the whole year. It's important no matter what you're doing that you either go out to eat or eat something. I think when you're feeding people, they're much happier to work. Always in FFA, no matter what we do it seems like, we have food. I think it's important for the leaders in your group to feel that trickle-down effect, from me to them then down to the kids.

KC: Sometimes when we would plan events, they would go great, better than expected. Sometimes they wouldn't do so hot. Do you think success and failure can be measured? In what way?

KT: I always think it's measured. Certain things can be measured with rewards or ribbons, or even money. To a lot of people that's how they measure success and that's all they measure it by. Just the ribbons on the wall or plaques on the wall if it's FFA stuff or money as a job. Maybe you're working 16 hours a day you never see your kids at home or anything else, you don't get to do anything, but you have this huge salary. What success is that really, because you don't get to do anything with that money. I think events can be successful too. Maybe lots of people showed up to something. Maybe we were successful at a contest. There's way you can measure that, but maybe we don't want to plan this anymore. Maybe it was planned at the wrong time of the year,

but you just have to live and learn from those experiences. You can either say, "Hey! We're not going to do this anymore; it was a total bomb." Or we change it to a different time of the year or season. Even if everything was right, but not enough people came, what do we need to do different? I think there's all kinds of ways to look at success.

KC: How can you enable a leader to be successful, and if they fail, how can you comfort them and push them to become better to be successful?

KT: We just got done with this flag burning ceremony for Veteran's Day. Basically, the officers call the Legion to get help and we set out boxes. I told them everything to do, but when all the students were out there, and we probably had 500 to 600 flags, it was very moving. When it was all done they felt very successful. It's enabling them to be a success, but on the flip side when a kid thinks they are a failure I never tell them they are a failure or let them think they are a failure. How can they improve and be better? There are going to be kids that fail, they're not going to win everything. If they feel like a failure, you just have to pick them up somehow. Not everyone's a winner, so we just have to move on to the next contest or semester.

KC: I only have one more question for you since we are reaching the end. In the Last Lecture, one of the things the author talked about was legacy. Since you only have a few years left in both of these positions, how do you want to be remembered? What do you want that legacy to be?

KT: I guess it is important to be remembered. I've taught for 30 years, so I know kids of kids and I know their grandparents super good because of that. It's crazy the amount of people that you've touched in your lifetime. I'm sure there's been days where I wasn't their favorite teacher because I either pushed them too hard or yelled at them for something in the shop. I still think people have said, "Oh my gosh! You know our favorite high school memories have been on a school bus coming in a midnight from this contest of farm machinery show." That's what I want to instill. When kids walk into my room as a freshman, I always say, "This place, this room, should be where you spend your best four years," and it's my job to make that happen. That's what I want my legacy to be.

KC: I appreciate you allowing me to interview you and ask you so many questions.