The Superbowl of CDEs

The stage is set, the contestants are ready, one minute of silence, and then "tap, tap, tap", the meeting comes to order. The 2015 Parliamentary Procedure CDE competition held at the 88th Annual National FFA Convention continually remains competitive year to year. With a diversity of states represented and always the best-of-the-best competing, the atmosphere feels similar to one of the Superbowl. I watched the final round digitally and I felt the focus, preparedness, and excitement the competing students had through my screen.

With being newly introduced to Parli Pro this semester, I was incredibly impressed by the students competing. They all demonstrated poise, confidence, and knowledge during, what seems to me, a fast paced contest. Preparation and practice is the way to be successful in this CDE and that was reiterated to me after watching the finals. Parli Pro is also a team event and knowing your team members strengths and weaknesses benefits the team in its entirety during this competition. Also the restriction of verbal communication among members within the CDE while competing forces teams to rely on their knowledge of the contest as well as picking up on the ques their teammates give them to set each other up for success.

Having all sights set on bring home the gold, Parli Pro is no joke to many. I roomed with a Parli Pro coach and through conversation, learned the hours of preparation it takes to be successful. It also takes passion and drive to coach the team. It was inspiring to listen to a PA Ag teacher who is so passionate about Parli Pro and giving and doing everything to ensure her students are as successful as they can be. As soon as the competition was over she discussed what she is prepared to do for next year to prepare her next team after participating in the Parli Pro contest for the first time.

Royers' Parli Pro Refletions from National Convention

I feel fortunate to have been able to attend the 88th National FFA Convention with the Athens FFA Chapter from Bradford County, Pennsylvania. I will be student teaching at Athens in the Spring, and was very excited to spend time with Mr. Steinfelt, the agriculture instructor at Athens, as well as 12 seniors from the Ag Program. We had a busy week experiencing the Expo Hall, the FFA Mall, the sessions, and Louisville. Therefore, I unfortunately was unable to attend the Parli Pro sessions in person.

With the marvels of technology comes recorded sessions! I was therefore able to experience the final round of the FFA Parliamentary Procedure Event right in the comfort of my own home. I was floored! I thought to myself, WOW, this really is the SuperBowl of Career Development Events

I watched the first two teams compete, Oklahoma and Wyoming. I was very impressed with the thoughtful debates from both teams. Additionally, neither team was speaking as fast and jumbled as other Parli Pro events I have witnessed, this impressed me.

The Parli Pro team from Wyoming!

The questions round was actually extremely stressful to watch! I was literally biting my lips watching as some of the students struggled with the questions. The combination of the high stakes situation, the crowd, the questions given orally etc. makes for a stressful situation!

Overall, it was very beneficial to watch the finals. These are the best and most prepared teams in the nation. The videos online are also a beneficial resource that I can share with students in the future!

Best
-Sarabeth Royer

Guests From Near and Far

This week was a rather interesting one in AEE 297b...

With the absence of our instructor for the first class session, we still decided to be productive! We had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Connors, and basically, he is the head of Agricultural & Extension Education at University of Idaho.

Now, Dr. Connors was not physically in our class; however, he did chime in via Skype. He shared with a a bunch of interesting facts particularly on the different types of Parliamentary Procedure competitions. Connors was willing enough to answer all of our question on the rule changes and share his input on the competitions. Being that one of our main goals for the class is to be able to coach a team for the Parliamentary Procedure CDE, the information he share with us was very beneficial!

An example of how a card is set up.

As Thursday rolled around, we jumped right into another mock competition.

For those of you who do not know how a competition goes, Parliamentary Procedure is built up of a team. There are five members and a chairman/chairwoman. Each participant is given a card with a main motion and five motions. Each member is randomly assigned a motion (indicated on the card) and the chair runs the 'meeting'. Each member must debate 4 times and make a separate motion that is not on the card. All of this in 10 minutes 30 seconds or less.

These competitions can get pretty intense, and surely we still need a lot of practice. One strategy that seems to be helping ourselves out is the rotation of the position of the chair. As the weeks go on, I feel that by the end of the semester, we will be able to have basic knowledge in starting up our own parliamentary procedure team.

Immediately after our rough practice session, we had the opportunity to speak with Mrs. Diane Cornman, Agricultural Educator at Penn Manor High School. She started up her very first Parli Pro team last year, and we were able to discuss with her on the process of starting up a team and going about coaching/teaching.

A rather interesting week with #AgEdParli. Now let us hope that we are able to work hard enough to pass the accreditation exam!

Group work day!

This week in Parlia Pro, we got a work day! We were given two questions to try and find the answers to:

• What is the time limitation for a recess?
• where does a motion that was laid on the table go if it is not removed from the table by the next meeting? Unfinished business?  Pending business ? or lost in the voids of space. 

We were having trouble finding the answers in our copies of Roberts Rules of Order so we decided to contact two NAP certified parliamentarians. We are currently waiting for a reply from both parliamentarians.

On Tuesday we powered through to learn several motions, these motions fall under the privileged motions, and Motions that bring back before the assembly or "zombie motions". After contacting the parliamentarians, we decided to continue working on our quiz for privileged and  "zombie" motions. Group work time is very productive!

We will become certified parliamentarians if we keep this up!

What are Incidental Motions?

The past two classes in AEE 297 a were all about Incidental Motions. Our Robert's Rules of Order book is becoming our best friend as we dive head first into these motions.

Incidental motions are motions that are not planned. They have no order of precedence because they are taken up when they are made, unlike other motions. 

There are 11 incidental motions total, but we focused on the 8 common ones. Our mnemonic device is...

Point of Order 

• This motion does not need a second, is not debatable, amendable, and does not require a vote.
• Point of Order corrects a mistake in the rules. It should not be used on minor infractions because it can be a waste of time during a meeting. 

Object to Consideration of Question

• This motion does not require a second, is not debatable, amendable, and requires a 2/3 vote in the negative.
• The purpose is to allow an assembly to avoid an original main motion when it can be considered undesirable for the assembly. 

Withdraw 

• This motion does not require a second, unless the question has been stated by the chair. It is not debatable or amendable and does not require a vote unless it has been stated by the chair. Then it requires majority vote to pass. 
• This motion becomes useful when the motion maker realizes the main motion can conflict or won't work for the assembly. 

Parliamentary Inquiry

• This motion does not require a second, is not debatable or amendable, and does not require a vote.
• The purpose of this motion is to ask a question about how to perform parliamentary procedure. 

Appeal

• This motion requires a second and is debatable when it is applied to a motion. It cannot be amended and requires a majority vote.
• A chair is delegated to run a meeting and make decisions, but any member has the right to appeal from the decision. 
• EXAMPLE: There has been a main motion made and seconded and the chair has asked for debate. Three members stand at the same time to be recognized by the chair, one of them being the motion maker. The chair decides to recognize Sally instead. Another member can call point of order, but if the chair decides to continue in recognizing Sally, someone can appeal the chairs decision. 

Division of Assembly

• This motion does not require a second, is not debatable or amendable, and does not require a vote.
• This motion is used during voting. Most of the time there are voice votes taken. Voice voting can be unclear sometimes. A member can call for Division of the Assembly when there is an unclear divide in the vote. 

Division of Question

• This motion requires a second, is not debatable, can be amended, and requires a majority vote.
• Division of a Question is made when the main motion has two separate motions together. 
• EXAMPLE: Sally says, "I move that the 4-H club buys a new set of flags for the meetings and  club T-shirts for all the members." This motion has two motions: to buy a new set of flags and club T-shirts for all members. The motion needs to be split in two, so a member can call for Division of a Question. 

Suspend the Rules

• This motion requires a second and is not debatable or amendable. It requires a 2/3 vote to suspend a parliamentary order or order of business. It requires a majority vote to suspend the standing rule. 
• The rules of parliamentary order, order or business, or standing rules can be suspended. Any rules in the bylaws or fundamental principles of parliamentary law cannot be suspended. This is done when the assembly wants to do something during the meeting that could not have been done with the rules. 
• EXAMPLE: (This is just one of many) The assembly can suspend the rules to allow multiple people to debate on the motion. 

As you can see, some of these motions are very complex with gray areas. They aren't as straight forward as the subsidiary motions. For more information on these motions, you can visit Robert's Rules of Order 11th Edition pages 247-299.

Erin Yoest

Subsidiary What?

 

This week in AEE 297A we delved further into our Roberts Rules of Order...

 ... and focused on Subsidiary Motions! So, if your anything like me you are probably wondering what exactly this is!

Subsidiary motions are motions that "assist the assembly in treating or disposing of a man motion (and sometimes other motions) (RONR p.62, ln. 34-35). Whew, that is a mouthful. So basically, the SEVEN subsidiary motions allow for business to proceed once a main motion has been stated.

So, what are the seven subsidiary motions?

Well, it is helpful to remember LCLPRAP: A table of the subsidiary motions is detailed below

MOTION	2nd ?	Debate?	Amend?	Vote?
Lay On the Table	Yes	NO	NO	Majority
Call Previous Question	Yes	NO	NO	2/3
Limit/Extend Debate	Yes	NO	Yes	2/3
Postpone Definitely	Yes	Yes	Yes	Majority
Refer to Committee	Yes	Yes	Yes	Majority
Amend	Yes	Yes	Yes	Majority
Postpone Indefinitely	Yes	Yes	NO	Majority

This chart helps us to remember that all seven subsidiary motions require a Second, however, not all of them allow debate and/or amendments. Additionally, the motions to Call Previous Question and Limit/Extend Debate require a 2/3rds vote because it is taking away the right for members to debate, and thus requires more than just the majority!

We also discussed the notion of precedence and pending motions. Just as in solitaire, motions have several layers and it is essential to focus and vote on the top priority motion first. The main motion is lower in precedence than all of the subsidiary motions.

So there you have it, from tables and solitaire we get subsidiary motions!

Thanks for reading,

Cheers,

Sarabeth

Diving Into Parli Pro

So let's catch up on what happened the first week of class...

WE CREATED OUR OWN SYLLABUS!!!

Yes this means content, objectives, grades... the whole nine yards. Kind of sweet, right? We took 2, 1 1/2 hour sessions to develop what we wanted to learn in the class and design our roadmap to the semester. As aspiring agricultural educators we learned some of the road blocks that one runs into when developing a course outline such as "there are not enough weeks to learn what we want too!"

Today was the start of week 2 and according to our syllabus we were to start laying the foundational blocks of parliamentary procedure (parli pro)! So today we learned:

1. The Purpose of Parli Pro

2. The Four Main Principles

3. Characteristics of a Deliberative Assembly

4. Types of Assembly

5. Two Kinds of Rules

The Local Assembly of Organized Society is one of the 5 Types of Assemblies and would include organizations such as 4-H and FFA. Below is a video of a 4-H group demonstrating parli pro terminology that I, of little parli pro knowledge, found helpful to watch as extra foundational layers to my base knowledge of parli pro.